April 10, 2024 (EIRNS)—Is the IDF playing a numbers game with trucks to make it look like it’s letting more relief supplies into Gaza than it actually is? Yesterday, the IDF claimed it had cleared 468 trucks into Gaza including 47 into the northern part of the Strip, for a total more than 1,200 in the last three days, reported the Times of Israel.
However, UN officials disputed the Israeli numbers. “There has been no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north,” UNRWA, the relief agency for Palestinian refugees said in its daily situation report.
Red Crescent officials in Egypt also gave different numbers, saying that more than 350 trucks had crossed from there into Gaza on April 8 and 258 on April 7. That was much more than in recent weeks when the number was usually fewer than 200, they said.
UNRWA said 223 trucks had entered on Monday, April 8, fewer than half the 500 trucks it said are required daily. The UN claimed the discrepancy came because many of the trucks are only half-full, inflating the Israeli count. “Trucks that go in, screened by COGAT (the IDF agency for civil affairs in the occupied territories), are typically only half-full. That is a requirement that they have put in place for screening purposes. When we count the trucks on the other side, when they have been reloaded, they are full,” Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN Office For the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), explained.
He claimed that Israel was still restricting most trucks from being able to move around. “When you put up the statistical number of trucks going in and say, ‘Look at all these hundreds of trucks coming in’ and you put it against ‘Look how few trucks have actually moved around with distribution,’ it’s kind of an own goal, isn’t it,” he said.
