Une enclave toujours à genoux

An enclave still on its knees

Ghaza

“This week, our partners shipped enough therapeutic food to treat more than 1,200 children suffering from acute malnutrition,” said Mr. Haq. The shipments also include more than 32,000 jars of baby food, enough to feed 760 children for two weeks. Thanks to the ceasefire, life is slowly resuming in the Gaza Strip, where UN humanitarian teams are working to restart essential services: access to food, water and healthcare. In the middle of the ruins, survival is organized. Two weeks after the ceasefire came into force, the Palestinian enclave is trying to get back on its feet – with small steps and in a climate haunted by two years of war. UN humanitarian convoys are pushing deeper into the north of the territory every day, on roads that were until recently impassable, to deliver flour, fuel and survival kits. “The UN and its partners continue to strengthen the humanitarian response, in line with our 60-day response plan,” Farhan Haq, the Secretary-General’s deputy spokesperson, said Friday at the UN’s daily press briefing in New York. Behind the sobriety of the statement is in reality a colossal effort: a million hot meals distributed every day, six bakeries supported by the UN which have resumed their bread production, and hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel intended for community kitchens and hospitals. In the North, cut off from the rest of the territory in recent months by a large-scale Israeli ground offensive, food distributions have timidly resumed: rice, canned goods, cooking oil. Teams from the World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF are installing new nutrition points, more than 150 are now operating across the Gaza Strip, compared to barely half before the truce. And 20 mobile teams travel to the most difficult to access areas to treat emaciated children, bring infant milk, therapeutic food and some hope of recovery. Numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. Water remains scarce, shelter precarious, fatigue immense. “Over the course of two days this week, our partners distributed around 600,000 diapers, 11,000 jerry cans, 5,800 hygiene kits and 280 kits for people with disabilities,” detailed the spokesperson. Water tanks are collected one by one at crossing points – more than 140 this week – in an attempt to reduce the use of tanker trucks. At Kerem Shalom and Kissufim, the only two entry points currently operational, 127 trucks coordinated by the UN entered the Gaza Strip, loaded with flour, tents, medical equipment and fuel. Logistics, in this besieged territory, is always a matter of diplomatic balancing act. “More is necessary, and more can be done,” insisted Mr. Haq, calling on the Zionist state to open other crossings, particularly to the north, and to facilitate access for NGOs whose convoys are still waiting at the border. Since the ceasefire came into force on October 10, residents have started moving cautiously again, often on foot. According to the UN office for humanitarian affairs, more than 435,000 movements have been reported from south to north. On the roads, volunteers offer water, biscuits and basic care. But for those who remain displaced, only 10% in collective centers. The others take shelter in improvised camps, often in the open. In this landscape of makeshift shelters, humanitarian data take the measure of a humanity in need of reconstruction.
Humanitarian aid amid rising child malnutrition
The figures communicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) are chilling: at least 57 children have already died of malnutrition, according to local health authorities, a number probably lower than the reality. Humanitarian aid has finally reached United Nations warehouses in Gaza, following the partial lifting, at the start of the week, of the blockade imposed by Israel on the Palestinian enclave, where UN agencies are also observing an alarming deterioration in the nutritional state of children. Nearly 200 trucks carrying life-saving aid entered the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, of which around 90 were able to reach UN warehouses. A race against time is now underway to distribute their content to the population.

Malnutrition on the rise
According to the United Nations spokesperson, this is “a drop of water in the ocean of needs” of the Ghazaouis. But after 11 weeks of humanitarian blockade, the news was hailed on Thursday as a turning point by Tom Fletcher, the organization’s head of humanitarian operations.
Thanks to the arrival of aid, the Al-Banna bakery, in Deir El Balah, in central Gaza, was able to reopen its doors after 40 days of closure due to a lack of sufficient wheat flour reserves for making bread. For now, the bread produced in this bakery should be distributed to community kitchens, within the WFP network, as well as to the most deprived.
While waiting for a massive arrival of aid, hunger continues to gain ground in the Palestinian enclave. According to the latest data from OCHA, the UN office for humanitarian affairs, a “significantly higher” proportion of children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition. During the first half of May, nearly 3,000 children among the 50,000 screened showed signs of acute malnutrition, compared to just over 2,600 out of 60,000 in February. The most serious cases are treated in one of the four overcrowded stabilization centers in the Gaza Strip. That of Kamal Adwan, the only establishment still functional in the north of the enclave, however suspended its activities on May 20, following an Israeli travel order. The children who were hospitalized there had to be transferred to the city of Ghaza, a journey considered dangerous in their condition. And the trend could get worse. The latest report from the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC), which categorizes hunger levels in Gaza according to their severity, anticipates that 71,000 children under the age of five could suffer from acute malnutrition in the next eleven months, if massive aid is not distributed. In Rafah, Khan Younes and in the north of the enclave, many partners were forced to suspend their activities due to lack of supplies and secure access. Furthermore, the routes provided by Israeli forces would, according to Mr. Fletcher, be “inappropriate” for the movement of goods. Between March 2 and Monday, no goods, commercial or humanitarian, were allowed to enter Gaza, worsening an already dramatic food crisis. The recent relaxation of the Israeli blockade, although expected, has not yet succeeded in stopping the emergency. Added to this is an explosive security context. More than 80% of the territory is now in a militarized zone or is subject to evacuation orders. Nearly a third of the population was again displaced last month, according to OCHA, including more than 160,000 people in a single week, deprived of any shelter.
Samir Sabek/UN