©Reuters. The aid ship sets sail, during a test to launch a new sea route from a port in Cyprus to deliver aid to residents of the Gaza Strip who are on the brink of famine, at sea, on March 12, 2024, in this screenshot taken from a video flyer. Central World Kitchen/Pantry vi
2/5
By Michele Kambas and Nidal al-Mughrabi
LARNACA, Cyprus/CAIRO (Reuters) -A ship carrying 200 tonnes of aid for Gaza left Cyprus on Tuesday as part of a pilot project to open a sea corridor to deliver supplies to a population that aid agencies say is on the verge of brink of famine after five months. of war.
While welcoming the project, however, senior UN officials said it could not replace the delivery of humanitarian aid by land from Egypt and Jordan. Separately, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Tuesday that it had managed to get the first aid convoy to Gaza city in the northern Gaza Strip since February 20.
The Open Arms charity vessel was seen sailing from Larnaca Harbour, towing a barge containing flour, rice and protein. The mission was mainly funded by the United Arab Emirates and organized by the US-based charity World Central Kitchen (WCK).
The journey to Gaza takes about 15 hours, but a heavy towing barge could lengthen the journey considerably, perhaps up to two days. Cyprus, the European Union state closest to the war between Israel and Hamas, is located just over 320 kilometers northwest of Gaza.
The U.S. military said one of its ships, the General Frank S. Besson, was also en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. Separately, the US military said it dropped air aid into northern Gaza on Tuesday alongside the Jordanian air force.
With aid agencies saying deliveries to Gaza by land have been blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and security concerns since the war began on October 7, attention has shifted to alternative routes, including sea and air drops.
Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said Tuesday that negotiators seeking a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, were no closer to an agreement.
LANDING BRIDGE
Given the lack of port infrastructure in Gaza, WCK said it is building a landing dock with material from destroyed buildings and rubble, a separate initiative from a plan announced by US President Joe Biden last week to build a temporary dock.
Construction of the pier is “well underway,” WCK founder Jose Andres said in a post on X accompanied by an image of bulldozers apparently leveling the land near the sea.
WCK activation manager Juan Camilo Jimenez told Reuters a second vessel would depart Cyprus in the coming days.
Aid agencies say such efforts can provide only limited relief as long as most land crossings into the Palestinian coastal enclave are completely sealed by Israel.
Some Gazans have also been skeptical of aid deliveries by sea, fearing they could become an alternative to land shipments.
“I’m not a political analyst, but I think it (the pier idea) has political objectives that are not known to us Palestinian citizens,” said Jehad Assad, a Palestinian displaced from Khan Younis in central Gaza.
“I think the land crossings are sufficient for aid to enter the Gaza Strip.”
Israel says it is not responsible for hunger in Gaza as it allows aid through two crossings at the southern tip of the territory. Humanitarian agencies say this is not enough to get enough supplies, particularly to the northern part of the enclave which is effectively cut off.
Commenting on Tuesday’s aid delivery to the northern Gaza Strip, WFP spokesperson Shaza Moghraby said: “We finally managed to deliver enough food for 25,000 people in Gaza City in the early hours of this morning. This… shows that moving food by road is possible.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians who died from dehydration and malnutrition in the past two weeks had reached 27, after the deaths of two people on Tuesday.
The UN estimates that a quarter of the small coastal enclave’s 2.3 million people are now at risk of starvation.
“We are hungry in two ways: food is scarce, and the little that is available is so expensive that it is beyond imagination,” said Yamen, a father of four whose family has taken refuge in Deir Al-Balah, in center of Gaza.
FIRE
The conflict has displaced most of Gaza’s population and there have been chaotic scenes and fatal accidents during aid distribution, as desperately hungry people struggled to get food.
Palestinian health officials said Tuesday that nine Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli gunfire as crowds waited for aid trucks in Kuwait Square in Gaza City. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the incident.
The war erupted after Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people in a lightning attack on Israel on October 7 and returned 253 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli counts.
According to Gaza authorities, Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 31,184 Palestinians and wounded 72,889.
Israel says it is only interested in a temporary truce to free the hostages. Hamas says it will only let them go as part of a deal to finally end the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday that Israel will continue its military campaign in Rafah, at the southern tip of Gaza, where 1.5 million people have sought refuge.
“We will finish the job in Rafah by allowing the civilian population to escape from danger,” he said in a video address to a conference of the pro-Israel organization AIPAC in Washington. She did not say where civilians might go.
Warning Israel against any such move, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden believes the path to peace in the region “is not about breaking through Rafah… in the absence of a credible plan to address the local population”.