The
Jennifer,
one of four ships operated by the American NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK) and the Spanish company Open Arms, had arrived from Cyprus on Monday morning in front of the breakwater that its local collaborators in Gaza built in March with the rubble. of the Israeli bombings. On board, they carried more than 300 tons of food, including one of great symbolic meaning for Muslims in Ramadan: dates, the first thing they eat at sunset, when the fast is broken with
iftar
. But when they had only unloaded about 100 tons, she had to set sail again, taking much of the food with her again. Three Israeli missiles had just killed seven WCK aid workers, four of them Westerners.
In the statement in which it confirmed the death of its seven workers, the organization founded by the Spanish-American chef José Andrés also announced the suspension of all its activities in Gaza. This announcement was followed the next day, on Tuesday, by a similar one from another NGO: Anera. This Thursday, another American organization, Project Hope, said it was “evaluating the safety of its staff,” after suspending its work for three days.
The pause in humanitarian aid from these NGOs has raised fears that other organizations will follow their example at a time when Gaza is mired in a human catastrophe. Especially in the north, where water and food arrive in dribs and drabs due to Israeli restrictions. According to a UN statement on March 20, in the first two weeks of last month, Israel only gave permission to enter the north of the Strip to 11 of the 24 convoys with food that international organizations tried to introduce into that region. . The rest were “denied or deferred.” Among the vehicles that obtained this authorization, several belonged to WCK.
The United Nations estimates that 300,000 people remain in the north of the Strip, of which at least 210,000 are on the verge of famine. Videos posted on social media and Palestinian journalists have shown residents preparing soups with grass or making bread with animal feed, which, in some cases, is toxic to humans.
On March 25, the Israeli authorities had already banned the entry into the northern region of the trucks of the main humanitarian actor in the territory: the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Those who live north of the Gaza River, which divides the Strip in two, were thus deprived of the agency's flour distribution, from which more than 1,800,000 Gazans had benefited until March. Food distributed by UNRWA represented 50% of all food arriving in the north, according to the UN.
Israel's veto of UNRWA was another step in the campaign against the agency by the Israeli authorities, who accuse it of being infiltrated by Hamas, although without providing evidence of this. This recrimination led 16 countries to suspend their financing, although several of them—Canada, France, Australia, Japan and the European Union, among others—have reestablished it.
With UNRWA funds depleted and the agency unable to access that area, the role assumed by organizations that distribute food such as WCK and Anera had been acquiring crucial weight. In mid-March, chef José Andrés' NGO claimed to have distributed almost 200 tons of food in northern Gaza. On March 1, WCK participated in an airdrop of 500 pallets of food and medicine in the region. One of Anera's community kitchens is located in the northern town of Yabalia.
Throughout Gaza, in the almost six months of the war, WCK managed 60 community kitchens in the center and south of the territory. At least 43 million meals have been served in them. In the case of Anera, in addition to the Yabalia kitchen, the organization had six other facilities of this type in the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Yunis. Anera has distributed more than 23 million meals, 150,000 a day, its president Sean Carroll recalls by phone from the United States.
Guarantee
Carroll does not hide his sadness at having had to make a decision that he defines as “the worst.” His organization has been forced, he says, to “choose between continuing to feed starving people or protecting the workers and the beneficiaries themselves.” He states that if his aid workers suffer an attack, “the people they are trying to help can also die.” The president of the NGO then adds that his teams “can't wait to get back to work.” And he concludes: “The only thing we ask is that Israel gives us some guarantee that it is not going to attack us.”
In Gaza there are still 23 agencies of the United Nations system and dozens of international NGOs, but the food aid from WCK, Anera and, in the north, UNRWA, are difficult to replace.
Last week, the UN International Court of Justice issued new precautionary measures against Israel, urging it to allow humanitarian aid, including food, into Gaza “without delay.”
Obeying that order in material terms would be easy, if it were not for the fact that Israel continues to ignore requests like that of that court. In March, James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef, who visited the Strip that month, recalled how, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, on the border with Gaza, long lines of trucks loaded with food were waiting for Israeli permission. Another UN agency that also works in Gaza, the World Food Programme, has reiterated on several occasions that it has sufficient reserves to feed the more than two million Gazans without problems.
Meanwhile, in the north of the enclave, the UN also states, one in three children under two years of age suffers from the most acute form of severe malnutrition: wasting, which is reached when the body is so consumed that it loses the ability to absorb nutrients. nutrients. Many times, it is irreversible.
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