Israel-Hamas War Civil Order Is Breaking Down in Gaza, U.N. Warns
U.N. humanitarian officials warned that intensified fighting had all but incapacitated aid operations and that civil order was breaking down, as relief workers in southern Gaza on Friday anxiously awaited additional fuel deliveries and the opening of a second border inspection point for shipments of critical supplies.
People are growing desperate for food, and some aid convoys have been looted and United Nations vehicles stoned, Thomas White, the Gaza director of the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, said on social media.
The streets “feel wild, particularly after dark,” he said on Friday, adding that “society is on the brink of full-blown collapse.”
Southern Gaza had been the “cornerstone” for the distribution of much-needed food, water and medicine to civilians facing dire shortages, Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ chief humanitarian official, said on Thursday. With Israel dialing up airstrikes and ground operations in the south in recent days, and roads increasingly mined or destroyed, relief efforts have become erratic and undependable, he said at a news briefing in Geneva.
“We do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name anymore,” he said. “Without places of safety, that plan is in tatters.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday that the Israeli government would allow a “minimal” supply of additional fuel “to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics” without specifying when it would be delivered. Col. Elad Goren, an Israeli military official, told reporters on Thursday that Israel was discussing the quantity of the supply with U.N. agencies, but that it needed a “mechanism” to ensure the fuel wouldn’t go to Hamas.
Israel has severely restricted the flow of fuel into Gaza for fear it would be diverted for military use by Hamas, the armed group that controls the strip and staged the Oct. 7 attacks. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Thursday that its ambulance center in northern Gaza had been forced to stop transporting the injured because of a lack of fuel.
Since the fighting resumed a week ago after a brief cease-fire, Israel’s airstrikes and ground operations have expanded to the southern half of Gaza, again displacing the many civilians who had been sheltering there after fleeing the north in the early days of the war.
Even in southern Gaza, where there has been more access to relief supplies than in the north during the war, more than eight out of 10 households are taking extreme measures to cope with food shortages, the World Food Program said in an assessmentthis week that was based on a survey carried out during the pause in fighting. In the northern half of the enclave, 97 percent of households are taking such steps, according to the report.
Israel also said on Thursday that it would “in the next few days” open a second inspection point along Gaza’s southern border, at Kerem Shalom, to speed up the flow of critical supplies into the strip.
Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications, on Friday called on Israel to open Kerem Shalom and “any other crossing that would allow the delivery of much-needed humanitarian supplies into Gaza as soon as possible.”
Edward Wong and Yara Bayoumy contributed reporting.
Israeli forces struck hundreds of targets across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours as troops pushed deeper into the embattled enclave, the Israeli military said on Friday morning, while scores of Palestinian civilians sought shelter in rapidly shrinking areas designated as safe.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled northern Gaza for the south, complying with Israeli orders to leave the area. Israeli troops began their ground invasion in northern Gaza in late October before advancing south over the past week, leaving Gazans with few places to flee to.
President Biden has welcomed Israel’s decision to allow some more fuel into Gaza, the White House said, but he stressed during a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that more aid was urgently needed and called for corridors to allow people to flee for safer areas.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel triggered all-out war, Israel has sharply restricted the flow of supplies, including fuel, into Gaza, arguing that it could fall into the hands of Hamas. Under international pressure over the dire humanitarian situation there, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday that it would allow “a minimal supplement of fuel” into the enclave and add a second inspection point for trucks carrying relief supplies.
The first time she and her family had to move was in the early days of the war, when they fled their home in Gaza City.
Ola Abu Hasaballah, 35, recalled leaving home, under relentless bombing, with her husband, her 4-month-old baby and her 5-year-old son. Describing the night as a catastrophe, she said she thought they’d be gone for a day, maybe two.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had apprehended hundreds of people suspected of terrorism, including wanted Hamas operatives, across the Gaza Strip in a single day, and that many had surrendered and been transferred to Israel for further questioning.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said in a televised briefing that many of the suspects under interrogation by the military and the Shin Bet domestic security agency had turned themselves over to the Israeli forces.
Israelis gathered again on Thursday evening in the Tel Aviv square where for two months protesters have called for the release of hostages in Gaza, but this time they came to mark the start of Hanukkah.
Reporting inside Gaza is extremely challenging right now. Israel has prevented journalists from entering the region except when accompanied by its military, and then only under certain conditions, while Egypt, along its border, is also blocking access. Communications have been limited, in part because of the Israeli siege of the enclave. Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed in airstrikes. And even before the war, Hamas restricted what reporters could cover in Gaza, limiting their movement, interrogating their sources and translators and expelling foreign reporters for work deemed objectionable.
The Times, along with other news organizations, has asked the governments of Israel and Egypt for direct access to Gaza because reporting on the ground is vital to understanding this crisis. Throughout the war, The Times has been working with journalists who were already in Gaza when the siege began. We have been interviewing residents and officials in Gaza by phone and using digital apps. We have asked people in the area to share their stories with us on video, which we then confirm are real. We also verify photos and social media posts using similar techniques, scrutinizing them to determine where and when they were taken or written and cross-checking with other sources, such as satellite imagery. We cross reference any information we gather with interviews with the U.N. and other international organizations, many of which have employees in different parts of Gaza.
In general, we try to avoid relying on a single source and we seek to include detailed information whenever possible."
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