UN agency says Israeli plan for aid distribution ‘designed to further control supplies’

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs rejects a plan by Israeli authorities to shut down and replace the existing aid system in Gaza.

“We do not accept a proposal and a plan that does not live up to the core fundamental humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independent delivery of aid,” says OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke in Geneva.

Israel’s plan is “designed to further control and restrict supplies, which is the opposite of what is needed,” Laerke adds.

The overhaul to the aid delivery system, approved by the cabinet late Sunday and first reported by The Times of Israel on Friday, would entail the IDF transitioning away from wholesale distribution and warehousing of aid and instead have international organizations and private security contractors hand out boxes of food to individual Gazan families.

International aid organizations briefed on the initiative say that they won’t cooperate with it, as it doesn’t properly address the humanitarian crisis.

Data and testimony from inside the Strip point to a worsening hunger crisis and rising rates of malnutrition.

Israeli officials to date have claimed that Gazans are not yet starving and that enough aid entered the Strip during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year to sustain the Strip for an extended period of time, and also argue that Hamas has been stealing aid.