Oxfam, an aid organization, warned Sunday of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the beleaguered Palestinian territory, stating that only 12 trucks have delivered food and water in northern Gaza in the previous two and a half months.
The study was dismissed by Israeli authorities, who said it ignored their humanitarian efforts “deliberately and inaccurately.”
“Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.
“For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours,” Oxfam added.
Israel, which has strictly regulated help entering the Hamas-controlled region since the start of the conflict, frequently places the responsibility on what it claims is the incapacity of relief agencies to manage and disperse substantial amounts of aid.
The Oxfam study was criticized by COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry organization in charge of overseeing Palestinian civilian affairs.
“The Oxfam report deliberately and inaccurately ignores the extensive humanitarian efforts made by Israel in the northern Gaza Strip,” COGAT told AFP.
“Since October, over 2,100 aid trucks have entered the northern Gaza Strip,” it said, insisting that specific shipments “including food, water, and medical supplies” had been dispatched to northern Gaza areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia.
In a report on water, Human Rights Watch, located in New York, described what it saw as intentional attempts by Israeli authorities “of a systematic nature” to deny water to Gazans, which it said had “probably caused thousands of deaths… and will likely continue to cause deaths.”
They were the most recent in a string of charges made against Israel during its 14-month conflict with Palestinian Hamas militants, which the nation has rejected.
According to an AFP count of Israeli official estimates, Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which claimed 1,208 lives, the most of them civilians, was the catalyst for the Gaza war.
According to estimates from the UN-recognized health ministry of the Hamas-run enclave, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has now killed at least 45,317 people in Gaza, the majority of whom were civilians.
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