Israel forces aid organizations to purchase food from Egypt and prevents them from buying it in Israel, which would allow for a more efficient and rapid transfer of goods. Israel also prohibits the private sector in Gaza from purchasing food, which could significantly increase supply. Although Israel recently allowed trucks in through Kerem Shalom Crossing, too, which is designed for commercial transports, this was merely a token addition that has failed to alleviate the hardship.
Aid organizations are struggling to operate under current conditions, and most of the limited aid allowed in remains in Rafah instead of reaching residents throughout the Strip. Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, listed several reasons why aid cannot be efficiently distributed. Among other things, he noted that trucks are inspected several times before Israel allows them into Gaza, and even then, long lines form due to the conditions at Rafah Crossing. The little food that does get in is very difficult to distribute due to the constant bombings, destroyed roads, frequent communication blackouts, and shelters overflowing with of hundreds of thousands of IDPs crowding into smaller and smaller areas.
Israel can, if it so chooses, change this reality. The images of children begging for food, people waiting in long lines for paltry handouts and hungry residents charging at aid trucks are already inconceivable. The horror is growing by the minute, and the danger of famine is real. Still, Israel persists in its policy.
Changing this policy is not just a moral obligation. Allowing food into the Gaza Strip is not an act of kindness but a positive obligation under international humanitarian law: starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited
This is truly horrific. I think anyone with a kid is hit especially hard. Imagining my kid drinking contaminated water, and being too tired to play, and just sitting in a makeshift tent, unable to get a good night’s rest, constantly running from bombs… That’s hell. No child should have to experience that.
I hate gatekeeping anything with anyone but I’ve felt the same as you since day 1. Maybe I just didn’t have enough empathy or kids close to me before fatherhood, but the difference for me is night and day. The idealistic political bullshit I’d espoused before… Now all I think is, all of you get fucked and get out of there so these children can be taken care of and their families can make a living to provide them basics. I have an online friend in Kiev. He mods a game I play. Same middleage, same corp tech sales career. Families. Similar lives two years ago. And we chat and just the usual shit, and, “oh fuck, missiles, brb.” This motherfucker could be anybody in Philadelphia, Seoul, or Vienna, and then, boom, war. It’s fucking horrendous. I’ve always despised war and the machine, but as a parent I don’t have opinions about how to stop it anymore, I just want it to end. And seeing it casually in the West like this, in a way our generation only watched in southeast Europe decades ago at this point… it’s jarring. Then looking over at Gaza from there… it’s hard to function to imagine life for these children. I feel like shit if I snap at my kid or that he’s not growing up less poor or unprivileged than me in spite of how hard I work. That feels like stolen childhood. He hasn’t been to Disney, and even knowing it’s corporate bullshit, I cry over letting him down. And then, again, you look at the kids in Gaza and my lord… How anyone can politicize any of it… They’re children.