The EU and the US study bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea

The Israeli obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian aid by land to a hungry Gaza and the limitations involved in launching it from the air - as several countries do, the last of which is the United States - are promoting a third way: a humanitarian corridor through the Mediterranean Sea.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will travel this Friday to Cyprus, the closest community country to the Strip (about 370 kilometers), to analyze the project, her spokesperson, Eric Mamer, indicated this Wednesday.

“Our efforts are aimed at ensuring that we can provide aid to the Palestinians […].

We all hope that the opening [of this corridor] can take place very soon,” she added.

A spokesperson for the Cypriot Government has told the Reuters agency that Von der Leyen will visit “the infrastructure related to some phases of the plan” together with the country's president, Níkos Christodoulídis.

Already on Tuesday, White House spokesman for international affairs, John Kirby, assured that Washington is "exploring other channels to introduce aid to Gaza, including the maritime route."

“We are looking at both military and commercial options to move aid across the sea.”

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War between Israel and Gaza, live

The maritime plan has gained new impetus following the death of more than a hundred Gazans last week while pursuing an aid convoy, some of them shot by Israeli soldiers, who opened fire on unarmed civilians.

Images of injuries, desperation and blood-stained food have increased international concern about the humanitarian crisis - caused mainly by Israel's decision to use hunger as a weapon of war.

This event that shocked the world has led the United States to join the airdrop of food, a controversial measure because the quantities are smaller and it is considered a last resort.

It is something that Jordan, France and the United Arab Emirates had already done.

Any entry of aid into Gaza requires the green light from Israel: both by land from Egypt (which first checks shipments and vetoes some supplies) and by air or by sea, since it controls - already before the war - the airspace. and maritime of Gaza.

A new failed land delivery attempt in northern Gaza has highlighted the seriousness of the situation.

The UN World Food Program did so this Tuesday, three weeks after announcing the stoppage of shipments because two consecutive convoys had been attacked by a crowd and one of the drivers had been attacked, making them too dangerous.

The UN agency has indicated that the convoy, made up of 14 trucks, was forced by the Israeli army to turn around after three hours of waiting at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint, which marks the border between the northern area of which the Israeli army forcibly displaced the majority of the population at the beginning of the invasion.

The trucks were then redirected to another area and "later stopped by a large crowd of desperate people, who looted the food, taking around 200 tons from the trucks," he said in a statement.

When consulted by this newspaper, the Israeli army responded that it is investigating the incident.

“Only option”

The World Food Program has insisted that land routes “are the only option to transport the large quantities of food needed to prevent a famine in northern Gaza,” where “hunger has reached catastrophic levels, children are dying of diseases related to hunger and suffer from severe levels of malnutrition.”

The note indicates that the Gazans looted about 200 tons from Tuesday's convoy.

The same program delivered aid that day by air, with the help of Jordanian military aviation.

It does not exceed six tons.

The EU is analyzing the possibility of indirectly joining deliveries from the air, said Crisis Management spokesperson Balazs Ujvari.

“We are studying this possibility very closely, with the obstacle that the EU does not have the means to carry it out and it will have to be done through organizations on the ground or in the Member States, through the Civil Protection Mechanism,” he said. he specified.

This Tuesday, another UN agency, the World Health Organization, denounced that the deterioration of the nutritional status of the population of Gaza in the four months of war "is unprecedented worldwide": the rate of acute malnutrition - the which causes irreparable emaciation or weight loss—in minors it has gone from 0.8% to 15.6%.

The worst records are in the north, where hundreds of thousands of people remain.

Israel keeps the bulk of the work of humanitarian organizations concentrated.

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