U.N. agencies and international aid organizations say they are ready to dramatically step up their help for people living in Gaza as soon as the cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas takes effect.
They also are urging the Israeli authorities to remove barriers to aid deliveries so that all Palestinians can receive desperately needed supplies.
Israel’s security cabinet approved the deal on Friday, paving the way for the cease-fire to come into effect as early as Sunday. If it holds, the deal would be the first chance for aid agencies to blitz humanitarian aid to Gaza’s 2.1 million people, including almost half facing imminent famine.
“The humanitarian situation is at catastrophic levels,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said after the deal was announced by Qatari officials who mediated talks alongside the United States and Egypt.
“It is imperative that this cease-fire removes the significant security and political obstacles to delivering aid across Gaza," he said. “From our side, we will do whatever is humanly possible, aware of the serious challenges and serious constraints that we will be facing."
The cease-fire deal is set to begin with the release of 33 Israeli hostages, including all women and children, and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Aid deliveries are to scale up to 600 trucks a day. The World Food Program said 80,000 tons of food were on standby outside Gaza, enough to feed 1 million people, but it needs unrestricted access to reach those in need.
Aid is in short supply across Gaza. Israel tightened its grip on the enclave, leaving some parts of Northern Gaza under siege with a near-total lack of access to aid for over three months, according to the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA.
Humanitarian aid truck deliveries fell to a daily average of 51 in the first week of January, down from a pre-war average of 500 trucks per day. “We have no time to lose,” said the U.N.'s human rights chief, Volker Türk. “Food, water, medicine, shelter and protection are the top priorities.”
'A moment of hope and opportunity'
Top U.N. officials held meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials this week to craft a plan to overcome what are expected to be major challenges to the successful delivery of aid, even after the guns stop firing.
The challenges include the lawlessness of Gaza, which, absent a governing force and with people desperate for food, prompted armed groups to hijack aid shipments, including a delivery of 100 trucks in November. Road damage, fuel shortages and unexploded munitions pose more obstacles.
“This is a moment of hope and opportunity, but we should be under no illusions how tough it will still be to get support to survivors,” said Tom Fletcher, the U.N.'s humanitarian chief. “The stakes could not be higher.”
The surge in aid trucks should help improve security around deliveries, according to Amande Bazerolle, emergency coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in Gaza. “If there is more aid entering, the impact of the looting will be reduced because the market value of the goods will go down,” she was quoted by The New York Times as saying.
With over half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals offline, and many more only partially operational, World Health Organization officials said on Friday that their agency stands ready to deliver critical medicines, trauma care, and prefabricated hospitals and emergency care teams to alleviate the gap left by destroyed hospitals.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the deal "just about the best news we could have hoped for to start the new year," though he noted "it has come too late for those who have died in the conflict."
International aid agencies echoed his relief at the cease-fire but cautioned it must be used to build a more lasting peace agreement. Refugees International described it as "a midpoint, not an endpoint,” and called on all nations to hold the warring parties "accountable for fulfilling these terms and producing a definitive end to this horrific war.”
UNRWA touted as key to keeping societal order
A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published in the Lancet estimated Israel’s military actions in Gaza have likely led to a death toll 41% higher than reported by Palestinian authorities, bringing the casualties up to 64,000 people since the war began.
The study estimates 3% of the population of Gaza has died due to violence – and that the long-term impacts of Israel’s retaliatory assault on the enclave in the wake of Hamas' attack and hostage-taking on Oct. 7, 2023, are likely to last for decades.
A conservative estimate by the Lancet, based on the death toll in July, projected up to 186,000 deaths from disease, chronic conditions, environmental destruction and other long-term health effects caused during the war in Gaza, or around 9% of the enclave’s population.
Another looming question is the fate of UNRWA, which Israel’s Parliament banned from working in Israel or cooperating with its government in October. With the law set to come into effect in two weeks, U.N. officials say no other agency can replace UNRWA’s on-the-ground expertise, staff, facilities, and vehicles to distribute aid in Gaza.
As the largest primary health care provider in Gaza and second-largest in the West Bank, UNRWA does about 17,000 health consultations a day. Its chief, Philippe Lazzerini, said the choice is between letting the agency "implode" or carry out its work under a political process that prevents a societal breakdown.
“The agency’s collapse, whether immediate or gradual, will only compound the immense suffering in Gaza,” he said. “The disintegration of the agency will intensify the breakdown of social order.”
