The EU will speed up its attempts to set up a maritime corridor for humanitarian aid from Cyprus to Gaza, after US President Joe Biden warned Israel against using aid as “a bargaining chip”.
A first ship could leave as early as Friday on a test run, with the corridor starting initial operations by Sunday, said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
But details on how the corridor would be able to meet the vast needs of a besieged Palestinian population remain to be worked out, including the unloading and transporting of shipments within Gaza, where the UN and other agencies say Israel has yet to create safe corridors for trucks to travel.
The emergency corridor — the first seaborne shipments of international aid to enter Gaza in at least a decade — is a sign of the deep frustration among Israel’s allies over its failure to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its military campaign against the militant group Hamas has devastated civilian infrastructure.
So little aid has entered Gaza that its 2.2mn population has endured rapidly worsening food shortages. In the northern half of the enclave, completely under the control of the Israeli military, about 300,000 civilians have been forced to the edge of famine, the UN and other international aid agencies warn.
This week, the World Food Programme said a 40-tonne convoy of essential supplies was held up by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint separating the north and the south, then turned away.
“There is deep frustration in the international community that we can’t get in sufficient supplies,” said Tor Wennesland, the UN’s special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process. “I think everybody is in agreement that the most effective way to get aid into Gaza is by trucks . . . even the people who would like to have this sea corridor.”
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides echoed that sentiment, saying the Cyprus maritime corridor was intended to complement other routes, “including the all-important Rafah crossing point from Egypt”.
“It is also clear that we are at the point where we simply have to unlock all possible routes,” he said.
The US military will establish an emergency pier off the coast of Gaza as part of the initiative, working alongside the EU, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates and UN, which would ultimately take over the administration of the aid supplies into Gaza.
“We will continue to work with Israel to expand deliveries by land, insisting that it facilitate more routes and open additional crossings to get more aid to more people,” the US, UK, Cyprus, UAE and European Commission said in a joint statement. “We affirm that protecting civilian lives is a key element of international humanitarian law that must be respected.”
The US-built pier will be necessary in part because Israel bombed a small port for local fishermen in Gaza City, which is in the north, in the first week of its military assault on Hamas. The main streets around the port have also been churned into rubble by Israeli tanks and bulldozers, according to videos from the location.
The US, Jordan, Qatar and others resorted last week to emergency airdrops of food, but that effort pales in comparison to the needs of the population and the carrying capacity of trucks for crucial supplies.
Von der Leyen said the EU would also consider further airdrops if humanitarian groups said they were “effective”.
The images of parachutes of crates of food have embarrassed the Israeli government even as its police refuse to disperse the rightwing protesters who continue to block the passage of aid through the Kerem Shalom crossing where the borders of Israel, Gaza and Egypt meet. Hundreds of trucks are waiting there with aid for Gaza.
Israel and Hamas have both linked the food crisis in Gaza to the fate of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas, with Hamas demanding a long ceasefire and a surge in food aid as part of a deal to free them.
“The hostage situation is also an international humanitarian crisis that requires global awareness and action,” said defence minister Yoav Gallant, who is responsible for ensuring that the Israeli military adheres to international law on facilitating aid shipments during a siege.
Transporting aid within Gaza remains perilous and intermittent, as the scarcity of food and the absence of any functioning police force in the besieged enclave have left convoys exposed to looting by desperately hungry crowds.
The issue was highlighted by a chaotic February 29 private food convoy that was being facilitated by the Israeli military. At least 100 Palestinians were killed as crowds descended on the trucks and Israeli soldiers accompanying the trucks fired live bullets.
The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged opening fire on a small group of men that it said posed a threat to its soldiers, but said most were killed in a stampede or run over by the trucks themselves.
Palestinian health officials said most were killed by Israeli soldiers, and a UN official who visited the hospital where the wounded were taken documented multiple gunshot victims.
The maritime corridor could take “a number of weeks” to be fully functioning, a US official said Thursday. In the meantime, the official said, Israel is expected to open a border crossing into northern Gaza for trucks to enter, after resisting international pressure to do so for several weeks.
“There is not a full understanding in the Israeli system of the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis,” said the UN’s Wennesland, suggesting that Israel needed to move faster. “This talk [of a maritime corridor] is not something that you can snap a finger and it happens tomorrow . . . This needs to be sorted out quickly.”
Read the full article here
