Amid a growing outcry over the worsening conditions for civilians in Gaza, Israel announced steps on Thursday to ease the humanitarian crisis, saying it would allow some more fuel into the enclave and would add a second inspection point for trucks carrying relief supplies.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli government had decided to allow “a minimal supplement of fuel” into southern Gaza in order “to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics.” It did not specify how much fuel that would be, or when the supplies would be allowed in.
“The amount of fuel is something we are assessing with the U.N. agencies,” Col. Elad Goren, an Israeli military official, told reporters on Thursday. He said that Israel would adjust the volume of supplies based on needs in Gaza, as long as “there is a full mechanism that we trust that this fuel is not going to Hamas.”
Colonel Goren also said that “in the next few days,” Israel would open a second point to inspect international aid destined for Gaza, at Kerem Shalom, an Israeli community near the southernmost tip of Gaza, to facilitate the entry of additional assistance.
Martin Griffiths, the chief humanitarian official at the United Nations, said that negotiations underway to open a second inspection site would be “a huge boost” for humanitarian aid deliveries. But he added that Israel’s military assault on Gaza has left international efforts to provide that aid in tatters.
“We do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name any more,” he said.
Israel’s announcement came as Palestinians in southern Gaza endured catastrophic conditions, with nearly nine weeks of Israeli bombardment driving nearly 1.9 million people to flee their homes, by aid agencies’ estimates, amid severe shortages of food and clean water.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel triggered all-out war, Israel has sharply restricted the flow of supplies, including fuel, into Gaza, and has insisted on inspecting trucks carrying aid into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Israel says the measures are essential to bar the entry of supplies that Hamas could divert for military use.
Kerem Shalom, in Israel, is much closer to Rafah than the lone site where Israel has conducted the inspections until now — Nitzana, which is roughly 46 kilometers, or 29 miles, south of Rafah. Some international aid groups say that the process of sending trucks full of supplies to Nitzana and back has caused further delays in essential supplies reaching Gazan civilians.
Israel has denied that its procedures are causing a bottleneck, saying it can inspect up to 250 trucks a day at Nitzana.
“The problem is not Nitzana,” Colonel Goren said on Thursday. “The problem is the capability of the U.N. agencies to collect all the international assistance that, after we check it, goes to Rafah.”
On Thursday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said relief efforts in Gaza had been severely impeded over the past few days because of shortages of trucks, telecommunications blackouts and fighting.
“The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said this week. “If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond.”
Kerem Shalom was the main commercial crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip before the war. It regularly saw hundreds of truckloads of imports and exports pass between the two sides daily.
The Israeli government has ruled out reopening Kerem Shalom for shipments into Gaza, meaning that all supplies for now pass through Rafah.
Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting.