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      How Is Aid Entering Gaza?

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      The amount of aid reaching Gaza has fallen sharply since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas, leading to what humanitarian officials say is a catastrophe for the territory’s population of more than two million people. Gaza was subject to a blockade before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, but around 500 trucks of food and other supplies a day were still crossing into the territory. That number has since fallen by around 75 percent, according to United Nations data.Here is a look at the ways aid is getting into Gaza:RoadRoads are by far the most important delivery route: More than 15,000 trucks of aid have entered the territory since Oct. 7 at two entry points in the enclave’s south. Most enter through Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt. The other point is at Kerem Shalom, an Israeli crossing. Since January, protesters have sometimes blocked the Kerem Shalom crossing, arguing that Gaza should receive no aid while armed groups still hold captives taken on Oct. 7. Aid groups have called for more crossings to be opened.Israel subjects all aid for Gaza to rigorous checks, saying that it is attempting to block items that could potentially be used by Hamas. Britain’s foreign minister, David Cameron, said this week that too many goods were being turned away on those grounds, echoing the stance of officials at aid agencies and the United Nations.Israeli officials say that there is no limit to the amount of aid that can enter Gaza by road, and that responsibility for bottlenecks lies with aid agencies. They say that they can inspect more aid deliveries than humanitarian organizations can process and distribute.Even after supplies get into Gaza, aid groups have struggled to make deliveries because of security challenges — and particularly to transport goods to northern Gaza from entry points in the south. The north of the territory is on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program. This week, Israel allowed the agency to send an aid convoy with food for 25,000 people directly into northern Gaza through a crossing point that had not previously been used for aid during the war. The agency said it was the first time since Feb. 20 that it had delivered food in the north.SeaThe United States, Britain, the European Union and other governments announced last week that they would establish a sea route for aid to Gaza from Cyprus, and the U.S. military has announced plans to build a floating pier to facilitate deliveries because Gaza does not have a functioning port.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      First Aid Ship Heads to Gaza, but Far More Is Needed

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      The maritime package of more than 200 tons of food is a welcome milestone, but not nearly enough to prevent famine, said relief officials, who called on Israel to allow more aid delivery by land.The World Central Kitchen aid group said the barge was carrying food including rice, flour, beans and meat.By ReutersA ship hauling more than 200 tons of food for the Gaza Strip left Cyprus on Tuesday morning, in the first test of a maritime corridor designed to bring aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who the United Nations says are on the brink of starvation.The ship, named Open Arms, for the Spanish aid group that provided it, was the first vessel authorized to deliver aid to Gaza since 2005, according to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, which has supported the effort and describes it as a “pilot project” that could clear the way for more sea shipments.The rice, flour, lentils, beans, and canned tuna, beef and chicken that it was hauling on a barge were supplied by World Central Kitchen, a charity founded by José Andrés, the renowned Spanish American chef. The United Arab Emirates was providing financing and logistical support for the operation, he said.“We may fail, but the biggest failure will be not trying!” Mr. Andrés said on Tuesday on social media.Still, the food was only a tiny fraction of what it would take to alleviate the widespread hunger in Gaza, and aid officials emphasized that it was no substitute for the volume of goods that could be delivered by truck, if Israel opened more land crossings into Gaza. The enclave has been under a near-total blockade since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, clashes flared anew along another front, Israel’s northern border, between Israeli forces and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies, both backed by Iran, and the fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border has raised fears of a wider regional conflict.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Thousands of Pregnant Women in Gaza Suffer From Malnutrition, Health Authorities Say

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      When Wafaa al-Kurd was nearly due to give birth, she said, she weighed less than she did before becoming pregnant and was surviving on rice and artificial juice.She gave birth to a girl weighing nearly six pounds, named Tayma, just over two weeks ago, she said. Since then, her husband has spent his days scouring markets in northern Gaza, where the family lives, trying to find enough food for his wife to breastfeed and keep Tayma alive.Nearly 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and lack of proper health care, according to the Gaza health ministry. In a statement on Friday, the ministry said that about 5,000 women in Gaza were giving birth every month in “harsh, unsafe and unhealthy conditions as a result of bombardment and displacement.”The ministry added that about 9,000 women, including thousands of mothers and pregnant women, had been killed since Israel’s bombardment and invasion began in early October.The United Nations and aid agencies have warned that famine is looming in the besieged enclave, where health officials reported that at least 25 people, most of them children, died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent days.Dr. Deborah Harrington, an obstetrician working at Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, said the expecting and new mothers she treated had not received nearly enough pre- and postnatal care, risking both their lives and their babies’.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Military Enters a New Phase With Gaza Aid Operations

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      As the United States continues providing Israel with munitions, the Pentagon will deliver food and other assistance to Gazans by sea and air.The United States has a history of using its military to get food, water and other humanitarian relief to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The walls of the Pentagon are decorated with photographs of such operations in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.But it is rare for the United States to try to provide such services for people who are being bombed with tacit U.S. support.President Biden’s decision to order the U.S. military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip that would allow aid to be delivered by sea puts American service members in a new phase of their humanitarian aid history. The same military that is sending the weapons and bombs that Israel is using in Gaza is now also sending food and water into the besieged territory.The floating pier idea came a week after Mr. Biden authorized humanitarian airdrops for Gaza, which relief experts criticized as inadequate. Even the floating pier, aid experts say, will not do enough to alleviate the suffering in the territory, where residents are on the brink of starvation.Nonetheless, senior Biden officials said, the United States will continue to provide Israel with the munitions it is using in Gaza, while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians under bombardment there.So the Pentagon is doing both.For decades the Army Corps of Engineers, using combat engineers, has built floating docks for troops to cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that the Army’s Seventh Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near Norfolk, Va., would be one of the main military units involved in the construction of the floating pier for Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Providing Both Bombs and Food, Biden Puts Himself in the Middle of Gaza’s War

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      The president’s decision to send aid by air and sea represents a shift prompted by the growing humanitarian crisis. But it raised uncomfortable questions about America’s role.From the skies over Gaza these days fall American bombs and American food pallets, delivering death and life at the same time and illustrating President Biden’s elusive effort to find balance in an unbalanced Middle East war.The president’s decision to authorize airdrops and the construction of a temporary port to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza has highlighted the tensions in his policy as he continues to support the provision of U.S. weaponry for Israel’s military operation against Hamas without condition.The United States finds itself on both sides of the war in a way, arming the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result. Mr. Biden has grown increasingly frustrated as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel defies the president’s pleas to do more to protect civilians in Gaza and went further in expressing that exasperation during and after his State of the Union address this past week. But Mr. Biden remains opposed to cutting off munitions or leveraging them to influence the fighting.“You can’t have a policy of giving aid and giving Israel the weapons to bomb the food trucks at the same time,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said in an interview the day after the speech. “There is inherent contradiction in that. And I think the administration needs to match the genuine empathy and moral concern that came out last night for Palestinian civilian lives with real accountability for Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing government there.”The newly initiated American-led air-and-sea humanitarian campaign follows the failure to get enough supplies into Gaza by land and represents a sharp turnaround by the administration. Until now, American officials had eschewed such methods as impractical, concluding that they would not provide supplies on the same scale as a functional land route and would be complicated in many ways.Airdrops are actually dangerous, as was made clear on Friday when at least five Palestinians were killed by falling aid packages, and they can create chaotic, hazardous situations without a stable distribution system on the ground. The construction of a temporary floating pier will take 30 to 60 days, if not longer, according to officials, and could entail risk for those involved, although Mr. Biden has stipulated that it be constructed offshore with no Americans on the ground.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Forces ‘Fired Precisely’ at Gazans During Aid Convoy Chaos, Military Says

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      Israeli soldiers “fired precisely” at Gazans who approached them during a chaotic scene near an aid convoy in northern Gaza last week that led to the deaths of dozens of Palestinians, but they did not fire on the convoy itself, the Israeli military said on Friday after an initial internal review.The account differs sharply from those of witnesses and Palestinian officials who described extensive shooting after thousands of desperate Gazans massed around an Israeli-organized aid convoy. The deaths prompted global outrage and underscored the widespread hunger and hopelessness in northern Gaza, where five months of war and little aid have driven many to the brink.The initial review largely matched Israel’s early account of the disaster, reiterating its claim that many civilians were harmed or killed in a stampede as they crowded around the aid trucks. It said that Israeli forces had opened fire toward dozens of Gazans who had approached them.Gazan officials did not immediately respond to the Israeli review.The Israeli military said that its review found that the soldiers had “fired precisely” at people who were approaching them in what it said was an attempt to keep “suspects” at a distance. “As they continued to approach, the troops fired to remove the threat,” it said in a statement summarizing the review’s findings.Hours after the disaster, doctors in Gaza described receiving scores of casualties at hospitals in the area, many of them killed or wounded by gunfire.A fact-finding committee appointed by the Israeli military chief of staff will continue to investigate the episode, the military said. Some human rights groups say that the Israeli military lacks independent accountability mechanisms and rarely penalizes soldiers for harming Palestinians in contested circumstances. More

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      Kamala Harris Calls for ‘Immediate Cease-Fire’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza, saying that Hamas should agree to the six-week pause currently on the table and that Israel should increase the flow of aid into the besieged enclave amid a humanitarian crisis.Ms. Harris’s remarks, delivered in Selma, Ala., bolstered a recent push by the Biden administration for an agreement and came a day before she was to meet with a top Israeli cabinet official involved in war planning, Benny Gantz. Her tone, sharper and more urgent than President Biden’s in recent days, showed the White House’s building frustration with Israel. Last month the president called Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack “over the top.”Ms. Harris also assailed what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and pressed Israel to allow for the increase of aid into the besieged enclave.Ms. Harris was in Selma on Sunday for the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Her comments on Israel were her most forceful to date on the Middle East conflict, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities, and put the enclave on the brink of famine.“People in Gaza are starving,” Ms. Harris said. “The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”She added: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire.” That line drew loud applause from the crowd that had gathered to mark the civil rights event.Ms. Harris reiterated the Biden administration’s support for a six-week cease-fire, which would allow for a pause in fighting and the release of Israeli hostages taken during the attack in Israel. U.S. officials said this weekend that Israel had all but signed on to the deal, but Hamas has yet to agree to it.Ms. Harris restated the United States’ support for Israel’s right to defend itself against the ongoing threat by Hamas, which she said had no regard for innocent life in Israel or in Gaza.She also said that Israel must do more to allow for the flow of aid into Gaza, including opening borders, lifting any unnecessary restrictions on aid deliveries and restoring services to Gaza.“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid,” she said. “No excuses.”The remarks came as Ms. Harris was scheduled to meet with Mr. Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, at the White House on Monday, and as the Biden administration faces immense pressure to limit the carnage in Gaza. More

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      Deaths of Children in Gaza Likely to Rise Amid Aid Snarls, U.N. Warns

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      Delivering supplies into Gaza, especially the north, has taken on increased urgency as the United Nations has warned that many Gazans are on the edge of famine.Days after an aid delivery in Gaza turned into a deadly disaster, Israel pushed ahead with another convoy bound for northern Gaza on Sunday, a Palestinian businessman involved in the initiative said, as the United Nations warned that deaths of children and infants are likely to “rapidly increase” if food and medical supplies are not delivered immediately.Izzat Aqel, the businessman, said the renewed aid delivery effort on Sunday came after only one of at least 16 trucks carrying supplies to the north a day earlier made it to Gaza City. The rest, he said, had been surrounded by desperate Gazans and emptied in the Nuseirat neighborhood in central Gaza.COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, said on X on Sunday that 277 trucks entered Gaza, what the agency said was the highest number of trucks to enter the enclave in a single day since the start of the war. It was unclear how many of those trucks reached northern Gaza.Delivering supplies into Gaza, especially the north, has taken on increased urgency in recent days as the United Nations has warned that many Gazans are on the edge of famine.Israeli officials have worked in recent days with multiple Gazan businessmen to organize private aid convoys. But a convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended in devastation. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.Israeli and Palestinian officials and witnesses offered sharply divergent accounts of the chaos. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces, and doctors at Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties were from gunfire. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled in a crush of people trying to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had opened fire at members of the crowd who, the army said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More