Only five trucks of aid had reached Gaza by Tuesday afternoon with distribution permission still pending, two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the end of the Gaza siege.
UN humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke reported that while Israeli authorities approved “around 100” additional trucks to enter Gaza, they have not yet been allowed to cross.
Israeli officials claimed 93 trucks entered Gaza Tuesday but did not confirm whether distribution of food and medicine had been authorized. Even the approved shipments represent just one-fifth of what reached Gaza daily before the war.
The blockade has sparked international outrage amid looming famine threatening over 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza. Netanyahu announced Sunday he was ending the siege to prevent damage to Israel’s global standing from a “starvation crisis.”
Yair Golan, opposition Democrats leader and former military deputy chief of staff, criticised the government’s approach, stating that Netanyahu was making Israel as isolated as apartheid-era South Africa. “A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal,” Golan said.
Netanyahu condemned Golan’s remarks as “contemptible antisemitic blood libels,” but Golan later reinforced his position at a press conference. He stated that while Israel’s war began as a just response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, it had since become a corrupt war.
Inside Gaza, Israel’s military campaign continues to intensify. Tuesday’s Israeli strikes killed at least 85 people, including attacks on a family home and a school shelter in northern Gaza that killed at least 22 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel also issued evacuation orders for all of central Khan Younis, declaring it a “combat zone.”
The death toll from Israeli attacks has now exceeded 53,000, with more than 28,000 women and children among the dead, according to UN Women.
