Israel not letting enough fuel into Gaza: EU
Disease could be bigger killer than bombs: WHO
Israeli restrictions on fuel supplies to Gaza are hampering aid deliveries and humanitarian access required under an UN resolution, an EU commissioner, Janez Lenarcic, said Tuesday.
Lenarcic – who is in charge of crisis management – was speaking as the EU countries and aid organizations scrambled to provide relief to Gaza’s 2.3 million population under a truce agreed by Israel and Hamas.
“We are calling for the increase of fuel supplies to the (Gaza) strip,” Lenarcic told journalists in Brussels.
“The humanitarian access should be based on the needs, and not on some restrictions,” he said.
Much of Gaza’s population has been displaced by Israel’s war, and the narrow coastal territory’s health system has been brought to its knees, while water, food, medicine and power supplies have been all but exhausted.
Israel launched its war on Hamas in retaliation for the movement’s October 7 attack on Israeli cities close to Gaza, which Israel says killed 1,200 people.
Authorities in Gaza say the relentless Israeli bombing and ground offensive has killed 15,000 people, thousands of them children.
Lenarcic said aid deliveries to Gaza were encountering two bottlenecks.
One is that trucks needing to enter Gaza via the Rafah crossing with Egypt – the only entry not giving onto Israeli territory – had to undergo screening at a point 90 minutes’ drive away.
The other is that Israel is allowing only restricted amounts of fuel to go into Gaza which are “still not sufficient for the needs” of the territory.
Critical infrastructure in the besieged territory has been crippled by fuel and supply shortages and targeted attacks on hospitals and United Nations facilities.
Bigger killer
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said more people could die from disease than from bombings in the Gaza Strip if the health and sanitation systems are not repaired.
Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO described the collapse of Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza as a “tragedy” and voiced concern about the detention of some of its medical staff by Israeli forces who took over the complex earlier this month.
Her remarks came a day after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend an initial four-day truce which has facilitated the release of dozens of people from both sides. It has also helped surge in humanitarian aid delivery into the Gaza Strip, which has been under a total siege by the Israeli regime since the beginning of the conflict on October 7.
Short truce
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the extended truce as “a glimpse of hope and humanity,” but warned it was not enough time to meet the aid needs of the Gaza Strip.
Mediator Qatar said on Monday that the initial four-day truce had been extended by two days, continuing a pause in seven weeks of warfare that has killed thousands and laid waste to the Palestinian territory.
“I strongly hope that this will enable us to increase even more the humanitarian aid to the people in Gaza that are suffering so much – knowing that even with that additional amount of time, it will be impossible to satisfy all the dramatic needs of the population,” Guterres told reporters.