Even as international governments and aid agencies try to find air and sea routes for delivering food and supplies to Gaza, experts say land deliveries are still, in theory, the most efficient and cost-effective route.
But the aid getting into Gaza is not meeting the needs of an increasingly desperate and hungry population. As many as 1.1 million people could face deadly levels of hunger by mid-July, according to a new report from a global authority on food crises.
Humanitarian organizations have said that the problem is not a lack of available aid: The United Nations said it has enough food at or near Gaza’s border to feed the enclave’s 2.2 million people. Instead, humanitarian workers say they face challenges at every point in the process of delivering aid, through Israel’s security checkpoints and into an active war zone.
Here are some of the reasons why aid to Gaza has not helped people meet their basic needs so far.
The land delivery route is complex
Just two entry points into the territory are regularly operating, both in the south. Typically, aid must travel dozens of miles and make multiple stops, a process that can take three weeks.
Most of Gaza’s international aid is inventoried at warehouses near El Arish, after being flown into El Arish airport or trucked in from Port Sa’id or elsewhere in Egypt. Some aid is also delivered through a different route from Jordan.
One arrow on a map points from Port Sa’id east to El Arish airport and another arrow points toward El Arish over the Mediterranean Sea. Another arrow indicates trucks carrying aid overland to El Arish.
From El Arish, the trucks carrying aid typically undergo security checks in Rafah, Egypt, shortly before reaching the border with Gaza.
The map shifts to center the Gaza Strip, and an arrow points from El Arish to an area near Rafah crossing, on the border between Egypt and Gaza.
Still on trucks loaded in Egypt, the aid then heads toward Israeli inspection at Kerem Shalom crossing or Nitzana crossing some 25 miles southeast. The inspection process is often lengthy.
One arrow points from near Rafah crossing to Kerem Shalom crossing, and a second arrow points from near Rafah crossing to Nitzana crossing.
After clearing Israeli inspections, trucks in Nitzana might make their way to the Rafah crossing or to Kerem Shalom.
One arrow points from Nitzana crossing to Rafah crossing, and another points from Nitzana to Kerem Shalom crossing.
Those trucks unload their cargo at the crossings, where it is loaded up on different trucks and taken to storage facilities on the Gazan side. Aid is stored at a warehouse, then sometimes another, before being distributed throughout southern and central Gaza.
Arrows now point from Rafah crossing to another part of Rafah and Khan Younis.
Aid headed into northern Gaza has to pass through one of two other Israeli checkpoints. Aid agencies, citing Israeli restrictions, security issues and poor road conditions, have largely stopped deliveries to the north.
Arrows now point from Rafah crossing to the Salah Al Din and Al Rashid checkpoints in northern Gaza.
Gaza has long been reliant on humanitarian aid, as the territory has been under a yearslong blockade by Israel and Egypt. Before the war began in October, two-thirds of Gazans were supported by food assistance. Now, nearly the entire population is dependent on aid to eat.
Over the past four weeks, an average of about 140 trucks carrying food and other aid have arrived in Gaza each day, according to a database maintained by UNRWA, the U.N. agency that supports Palestinians. But the World Food Program estimates that 300 trucks of food are needed daily to begin to meet people’s basic food needs.
As of Tuesday, about 1,200 trucks were waiting at El Arish in Egypt, including more than 800 containing food supplies.
UNRWA has been responsible for a majority of aid coordination in Gaza since the war began. In January, Israel accused a dozen of the agency’s employees of being involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel. The U.N. said it fired several employees after being briefed on the allegations, which it and the United States are investigating.
Inspections have been onerous
UNRWA has said that convoluted Israeli inspections hold up aid. Trucks sit in miles-long lines at every checkpoint and are forced to start over if even one item inside is rejected.
Some aid workers have said it is not clear why a shipment might not pass inspection. Inspectors do not usually say why an item is refused, aid officials have said, and if a single one is rejected, the truck must be sent back to El Arish with its cargo and repacked.
U.N. and British officials have said that critical goods, such as water filters and scissors included in medical kits for treating children, are being rejected because they could be used for military purposes. COGAT, the Israeli unit that supervises aid deliveries into Gaza, denied this and said that only 1.5 percent of trucks are turned away.
Scott Anderson, deputy Gaza director of UNRWA, said Israel needs to improve the efficiency of its inspections by adding more scanning equipment and should extend working hours at the crossings, which close on Friday afternoon through Saturday for Sabbath.
Israel has said it is not preventing the flow of aid. Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, said the bottlenecks are concentrated on the Gazan side of the border, after aid is inspected but before it is distributed.
Mr. Freedman said the unit has improved the efficiency of its inspections by providing more scanning equipment, adding more staff members and increasing working hours at both inspection points.
“The amount of aid that we are able to inspect is much higher than the amount that the organizations are able to distribute,” Mr. Freedman said. He added that the unit has the capability to inspect 44 trucks an hour.
Mr. Anderson, of UNRWA, rejected the idea that his agency does not have the logistical capacity to pick up or distribute as much aid as Israel is able to scan, adding that the organization has worked out many of the hurdles in its process.
But even so, he described a slew of security challenges aid convoys have faced, and extensive coordination they have required, after entering Gaza.
Destroyed roads and strained resources make distributing aid inside Gaza a challenge
Distribution can be difficult and hazardous, especially in the north. Trucks driven by contractors and U.N. staffers headed north must pass through an additional checkpoint and travel across rubble and ruined roads. Ongoing military operations also hinder the movement of aid.
Aid agencies have largely suspended deliveries in the north, and there has been little opportunity for organizations to distribute aid to people there. Instead, hungry Gazans who are willing to take the risk must travel long distances to the few trucks and air-dropped supplies that arrive.
“It’s very hard to reach all people,” said Naser Qadous, who coordinates food assistance in Gaza’s north for Anera, an aid organization. “This is why there are many people that are starving.”
In Rafah, where aid is somewhat more available, UNRWA’s distribution infrastructure is strained as more than half of Gaza’s population has sought shelter there. Some Gazans are even trading or selling their aid, and the prices have become prohibitive for most people, exacerbating the unequal distribution of food supplies.
Aid convoys are frequently beset by violence
The threats of desperate crowds and Israeli gunfire make the transfer of food to people dangerous.
More than a hundred Gazans died near a convoy on Feb. 29, after thousands massed around aid trucks. Israel said most victims were trampled by crowds, but witnesses described shooting by Israeli forces and hospital doctors said most casualties were from gunfire. At least 20 people were killed at another convoy on March 14. Gazan health officials accused Israel of a targeted attack, but the Israeli military blamed Palestinian gunmen.
Note: Death tolls are according to the Gaza health ministry.
UNRWA and U.S. officials have said it is extremely difficult to distribute aid without the help of police escorts, and their security is needed to protect convoys from swarms of people. Israel has struck Palestinian officers escorting U.N. aid convoys. The absence of security officers has enabled organized criminal gangs to steal aid or attack convoys, U.S. officials and Palestinians in central and northern Gaza have also said.
Israel has said that members of Hamas have been seizing aid, though U.S. and UNRWA officials have said there is no evidence for the claim. Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas’s operations in Gaza.
After the World Food Program said its trucks encountered gunfire and looting while distributing food in northern Gaza, the organization suspended its deliveries there in late February. But Israel recently allowed the aid group to bring small amounts of aid directly through a northern border crossing: six trucks last week and an additional 18 over the weekend.
“This cannot be a one-off, but this needs to be sustained, regular and at scale to support those in need,” said Carl Skau, the World Food Program’s deputy executive director.
COGAT said it has taken measures to improve security in distribution by setting up “humanitarian corridors” and declaring daily tactical pauses for aid trucks to move through Gaza.
Air and sea efforts are ‘not going to solve the problem’
The U.S. and other countries have announced measures to provide aid by air and sea, including thousands of ready-to-eat meals and humanitarian aid packages that have been airdropped into Gaza by the United States, France, Jordan, and other countries in the region.
But aid officials and experts say that such efforts are costly and slow, emphasizing that delivering aid by trucks remains the most efficient way to distribute desperately needed food in Gaza. Sarah Schiffling, an expert in humanitarian aid supply chains and logistics at the Hanken School of Economics in Finland, described airdrops as “an absolute last resort.”
At worst, they can be deadly: Gazan authorities reported this month that at least five people were killed and several others were wounded by humanitarian aid packages that fell on them in Gaza City.
Recent and proposed efforts to deliver aid in the north
Recently announced plans by the United States and aid groups to deliver aid by installing temporary ports off the coast of Gaza have the potential to bring much more aid into the enclave. The Biden administration said its operations could bring as many as two million meals a day to Gazan residents.
The first ship organized by the nonprofit World Central Kitchen arrived in Gaza on Friday loaded with 200 tons of food, including rice, flour and canned meat — the equivalent of about 10 trucks’ worth.
Shipborne aid into Gaza is a “good step, but it’s not going to solve the problem,” said Dr. Schiffling.
Since Gaza does not have a functioning port, such an operation requires an entirely new infrastructure to efficiently offload aid from barges. And once the aid arrives on land, humanitarian groups will most likely face the same challenges they have already been contending with on the distribution side.
The only solution to increase the amount of aid that enters and is distributed in Gaza is a cease-fire, Dr. Schiffling added.
Juliette Touma, the director of communications at UNRWA, has also raised concerns that building a pier, which the United States has said it can do in about two months, would take too long, especially for northern Gazans who are severely hungry and facing starvation. According to the report on hunger in Gaza, nearly two-thirds of households in the north had nothing to eat for at least 10 days and nights over the past month.
“The people of Gaza cannot afford to wait for 30 to 60 days,” Ms. Touma said.