He told BBC Radio 4 that the role of the “collective international community” was essential to the delivery of aid, adding that he was in very close contact with the White House.who are determined that we be allowed to deliver at scale.”
The UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, reported that it has enough food supplies outside Gaza to sustain the population for three months, but said Israeli authorities continue to block their entry despite the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Displaced Palestinians travel along the coastal highway back to northern Gaza.
UNRWA remains the “backbone”
UNRWA spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna said UN News that with its unrivaled aid distribution network, the agency must be the “backbone” of the larger aid effort, and if Israel continues to exclude them it would mean “a loss of people’s trust.”
“We see no justification for Israel not to allow this enormous amount of aid. – which cost tens of millions of dollars – in the country.”
He said there are still around 12,000 employees working inside Gaza, including some 8,000 teachers working to allow 640,000 students to resume their studies after two years of lost education.
UNRWA has also played a key role in providing psychological support in the form of around 800,000 consultations. Ninety percent of UNRWA facilities have been destroyed, 370 colleagues have been killed in Gaza: “The only thing that has changed for us is our inability to distribute food, although we have the logistical capabilities.“, said.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it has more than 1,300 truckloads of vital supplies ready for shipment, emphasizing that humanitarian needs remain immense.
still in limbo
UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram, speaking on the ground in a social media post on Thursday, described the current challenges relief teams face as they wait for access to provide critical assistance.
“Nine out of 10 homes in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed,” he said. “What that means is that families all over the Gaza Strip are going back to things like this, the skeleton of a city, the shell of a building, and they are trying to make sense of how they move forward.”
The U.N. aid coordination office, OCHA, said supplies from Egypt still need to take a long detour to the Kerem Shalom crossing for Israeli checks, pending the Rafah crossing being opened to aid.
Aid chief Fletcher highlighted the need for all crossings to be open to allow for a massive increase in aid.
“The humanitarian community cannot act on the necessary scale without the presence and commitment of international NGOs,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said at a briefing with journalists in New York on Thursday.
“Currently, Israeli authorities do not issue visas to several international NGOs and do not authorize many of them to send supplies to Gaza.”
Dujarric pointed to some specific improvements in UN aid delivery: “On Tuesday alone, 21 of our partners distributed almost 960,000 meals in 175 kitchens. The bakeries we support produced more than 100,000 two-kilogram packages of bread. UNICEF distributed more than one million baby diapers.”
Life-saving medical supplies
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been able to deliver three trucks full of surgical supplies and other essential medical supplies to the central pharmacy in Gaza City, which will be transferred to Al-Shifa Hospital, meeting the needs of around 10,000 people.
The WHO has also deployed an international emergency medical team to boost orthopedic surgery and trauma care in Gaza.
UN teams have also finished clearing the main roads leading to the Erez and Zikim crossings in the devastated areas of northern Gaza in anticipation of their possible reopening.