Minutes after the first stage of the US-backed Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas kicked in at noon local time on Friday in the Palestinian territory, Eyad Amawi, a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee, a local organization coordinating smaller humanitarian NGOs, told DW that signs on the ground were that the Israeli military had gradually begun to withdraw.
The next step, he hoped, would be an increase in the supply of food, tents and mobile shelters, as well as heavy equipment to remove rubble, clear roads, and to prepare land for new camps as displaced people start returning to their original towns and cities.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UN’s Palestine refugee agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said that there was enough food ready to be trucked into Gaza to feed the entire population for three months.
This amounts to 170,000 metric tons [which means between 8,700 and 11,000 truckloads of 15 to 20 tons each] of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid, according to UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher.
“We will aim to increase the pipeline of supplies to hundreds of trucks every day,” Fletcher said at a briefing in New York on Thursday, adding that the UN would “scale up the provision of food across Gaza to reach 2.1 million people who need food aid and around 500,000 people who need nutrition. Famine must be reverted in areas where it has taken hold and prevented in others.”
“Given the level of needs, the level of starvation, the level of misery and despair, will require a massive collective effort, and that’s what we’re mobilized for,” he said. “We are absolutely ready to roll and deliver at scale.”
“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stands ready to increase its humanitarian response as conditions on the ground allow,” Sarah Davis, spokesperson for the ICRC for Israel and the Occupied Territories, told DW on Friday.
“We are ready to bring in assistance, as well as to distribute it safely and effectively, in accordance with humanitarian principles,” she said.
In addition, European Commission spokesperson Anouar El Anouni told the AP news agency that the EU was ready to send in aid rapidly and to support reconstruction efforts and security in Gaza if the ceasefire held.
The population of Gaza has long been dependent on humanitarian aid, and this situation has been exacerbated by Israel’s war on Hamas over the past two years. After the Palestinian militant group and its allies launched attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages back to Gaza, Israel retaliated with a campaign that has destroyed large parts of the territory and killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of children. Some 90% of the population has been displaced several times.
In July, after Israel violated a ceasefire and imposed a blockade, the UN and other international organizations warned of famine.
How will more aid get into Gaza?
On Friday, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said that the Italian police would resume patrolling the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on October 14. In 2005, the EU established a mission to provide a neutral, third-party presence at the crossing. “In compliance with the Trump agreement, the Rafah Crossing Point will be opened in two directions alternately, outbound to Egypt and inbound to Gaza,” Crosetto said in a statement.
It is generally a crossing for pedestrians but over the course of the past two years, humanitarian aid trucks have amassed on the Egyptian side of the border.
Crosetto predicted that every day in total about 600 trucks carrying humanitarian aid would flow into Gaza via Rafah and the two other crossings into Gaza, Kerem Shalom and Erez, which both border Israel.
The UN children’s charity UNICEF has also called for food aid to be brought into Gaza via all three crossings. “The situation is critical,” said UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires. “We risk seeing a massive spike in child death, not only neonatal, but also infants, given their immune systems are more compromised than ever before.”
HRW warns of future deaths
“Now is not the time to exhale,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told DW on Friday.
“Palestinians in Gaza will continue to suffer and die so long as Israel maintains its unlawful blockade of the Gaza Strip, including by restricting the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations from delivering desperately needed aid at scale,” he said.
He also warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza had likely died, and would continue to die as a result of malnutrition, dehydration, and disease stemming from the Israeli authorities’ blocking access to food, water, and other supplies necessary for the survival of Gaza’s population.
What about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?
It is currently unclear what role the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli-and US-backed contractor that replaced the UN and other international groups as the primary supplier of food to Gazans in May after Israel accused Hamas — categorized as a terror organization by the US, EU and many other countries — of looting supplies.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday that he was not aware of any role for GHF during the ceasefire.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher praised the fact that the US-backed ceasefire plan highlighted “the importance of the UN role at the heart of the humanitarian response.”
Israel and the GHF came under heavy criticism after the IDF, contractors, or armed gangs, were accused of killing and injuring hundreds of Palestinian civilians at aid distribution points. The GHF has rejected the accusations, pointing to the difficulties of distributing aid in conflict zones.
In a recent post on the social platform X, GHF Executive Director John Acree said that the organization remained committed to supporting the “people of Gaza with hope, dignity, and trust, and are eager to work alongside all those who share this mission. Let us hope that the coming days and weeks will bring lasting peace.”
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