UN decries ‘systematic’ blocking of aid to north Gaza hospitals

Israel is consistently blocking humanitarian convoys into northern Gaza, making it increasingly difficult to bring desperately needed fuel and other aid to hospitals there, the United Nations said Friday.

After planning aid missions to the north, UN agencies said their convoys were subjected to slow and unpredictable inspections and then a near-systematic refusal from the Israeli side to proceed.

“Operations in the north [are] increasingly more complicated,” Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN aid agency OCHA’s office in the Palestinian territories.

Speaking from Jerusalem to a virtual press briefing, he describes how detailed coordination was required with a network of checkpoints, and “the Israelis have systematically, or quasi-systematically, refused” to let them through.

In recent days, he says the agency had had three missions partially approved out of 21 requested.

Since ordering civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate southward at the war’s outset, the IDF has severely limited the amount of humanitarian aid to the region, citing fears that those who remain are potential Hamas fighters seeking to hijack assistance. But UN agencies say hundreds of thousands of civilians still remain in northern Gaza in dire need of assistance.

Lucia Elmi, special representative for the UN children’s agency UNICEF in the Palestinian territories, also laments that “we can’t get sufficient aid in.”

“The inspection process remains slow and unpredictable, and some of the materials we desperately need remain restricted, with no clear justification,” she says.