The ship "Open Arms", from the Spanish NGO of the same name, was scheduled to arrive this Thursday in the Gaza Strip, after setting sail from Cyprus on Tuesday with some
200 tons of food aid.
The ship was approaching the coast of Israel this Thursday afternoon, according to the Marinetraffic website.
It is the first ship to take
a new maritime corridor that allows it to reach Gaza.
The landing, an odyssey
Opern Arms has overcome all bureaucratic obstacles, but the most difficult thing is yet to come because landing that large amount of food
in a territory at war
where
there is no deep-water port
is a challenge for this humanitarian mission.
Open Arms with the help of World Central Kitchen on the trip to Gaza.
Photo: EFE
"The only port that existed in Gaza
was destroyed a long time ago
and the temporary port that the US has announced will still
take weeks to build
, so the most delicate point of this journey will be the disembarkation. The entire coast of the Strip is a beach and unloading 200 tons of humanitarian aid is going to be very complex on a technical and security level, especially in the last mile," Open Arms spokesperson Laura Lanuza explained to "20 Minuto."
Cyprus' foreign minister said
a second, larger ship
is being prepared in Larnaca port.
The maritime corridor that allows aid to be transported will be
complemented by a temporary dock in front of Gaza
that will be built by US troops, the Washington administration indicated.
The recent airdrops of aid from several countries
are "not an alternative" to ground deliveries
, 25 NGOs, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, said in a statement.
There is no port in Gaza.
The entire coast is a beach.
Photo: Reuters
Israel vowed to "annihilate" Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack, when Islamist commandos killed about 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
They also
kidnapped about 250 people
, 130 of whom are still held in Gaza, although Israel estimates that 32 of them died.
Israel has responded with
an intense campaign of bombing
and ground operations in Gaza that has left at least 31,341 dead, most of them civilians, according to the Ministry of Health of the territory of 2.4 million inhabitants.
In its offensive,
Israel sieges Gaza,
allowing trucks with humanitarian cargo to enter slowly through the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt, which has caused signs of famine, especially in northern Gaza, where it is a war zone. .
How else can humanitarian aid enter Gaza?
The vast majority of humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip arrives through this route and
is meticulously reviewed by the Israeli authorities
before entering the south of the Palestinian territory.
Because the international community considers the aid that enters in this way insufficient, it seeks
to diversify the entry routes with air launches or a maritime corridor from Cyprus
.
Israel also brings six trucks into northern Gaza as part of
a "pilot project."
Aid generally arrives in Egypt through
the ports of Port Said or al-Arish
.
The latter, much smaller than Port Said, is the closest to the Gaza Strip but
is quickly overflowing
, according to NGOs, due to the volumes entering.
The ocean liner "Pacific World", anchored in Port Said, displays a sign calling for "an end to the slaughter in Gaza".
Photo: AFP
All this aid is reviewed by the Israeli authorities, who scrupulously control everything that enters the territory since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The main inspection point is located in Kerem Shalom, in the southeastern corner of the Gaza Strip.
Another checkpoint exists in Nitzana, an Israeli town located about 50 km east of Kerem Shalom.
Before being checked, the trucks, which mostly enter through the Rafah crossing on the border between Egypt and Gaza,
wait days in a transit zone
whose capacity, of about 50 places, is considered insufficient by NGOs.
Products allowed to enter after inspection are unloaded from trucks between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, then loaded aboard other vehicles driven by Palestinians working for NGOs with a view to distributing aid in the territory.
The trucks, which mostly enter through the Rafah crossing, wait for days in a transit zone.
Photo: Reuters
According to NGOs,
Israel's drastic
controls
are the main cause of the slow movement
of aid.
The Israeli authorities refer to the inability of humanitarian organizations to handle all the aid in the Gaza Strip.
Except for Rafah and Kerem Shalom in the south,
no other crossings are open.
International organizations and the United States have been pressuring Israel for weeks to open steps towards this part of the Palestinian territory where the humanitarian crisis is the greatest.
Israel announced on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday that six aid trucks from the World Food Program (WFP) entered directly into the north "through "gate 96" of the security barrier", a "pilot project" of the army.
The
transfer of aid from the south to the north
of Gaza is very complex due to the prevailing destruction and fighting.
Last week, the WAP announced that one of its caravans was blocked by Israeli authorities before it could pass north.
After returning,
he was looted by a "desperate crowd."
Given the insufficiency of aid, several countries (United States, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, France, Belgium...)
carry out air drops,
particularly in the north.
Given the insufficiency of aid, several countries carry out air drops, particularly in the north.
Photo: Reuters
Small quantities, random nature,
danger of air drops on highly populated areas:
these initiatives are not considered sufficiently satisfactory by international organizations and the inhabitants of Gaza.
Morocco, for its part, indicated on Tuesday that a 40-ton load of aid landed at the Tel Aviv airport to be transferred by land through Israel to Kerem Shalom.
With information from AFP and 20minutos.es