UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher today said on BBC Radio that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die in the next 48 hours. When the show’s host Anna Foster remarked that 14,000 is “an extraordinary figure,” Fletcher replied that it is an “utterly chilling” figure. When she asked how the UN arrived at the figure of 14,000, he stated: “We have strong teams on the ground, and of course many of them have been killed…. [W]e still have lots of people on the ground—they’re at the medical centers, they’re at the schools … trying to assess needs. But this is what we do, we keep going. It will be frustrating, we will be impeded and run huge risks. But I don’t see a better idea than getting that baby food in.” He said that “we need to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid.”
While the UN has officially gotten permission from Israel for 100 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza today—an amount 80% below the normal day’s level prior to Oct. 7, 2023—it is likely that Israel will “slow walk” the entry over 2-3 days. Even though hundreds and hundreds of trucks full of aid have been at the entry points of Gaza for many weeks, yesterday, Israel had approved only nine trucks, and then they passed only five of them through.
UN Deputy Spokesman OCHA Jens Laerke, in a Geneva press briefing today, said: “We have requested and received approval for more trucks to enter today, many more than were approved yesterday.” Asked to specify how many, he said, “around 100…. We expect, of course, with that approval, many of them, hopefully all of them, to cross today to a point where they can be picked up and get further into the Gaza Strip for distribution.”
Fletcher had acknowledged the extra problem, that whatever trucks do make it through are at risk of Israeli airstrikes. The uncertain situation, along with Israel’s new order for the population of Khan Younis to evacuate southward, adds to the logistical problems.
Getting such grossly inadequate amounts of food and medicine into Gaza—what is likely to amount to no more than 10% of pre-Oct. 7, 2023 levels—is coherent with the policy to keep them at starvation levels enunciated at the Sunday, May 18 Israeli cabinet meeting. It also coheres with the statement by Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein, who said that dozens of trucks per day was their goal, and the more pessimistic formulation of the Foreign Ministry Director-General Eden Bar Tal, who said, “in the coming days, Israel will facilitate the entry of dozens of aid trucks.” By any stretch, it will take 3-6 days to reach 100 aid trucks, supposedly for 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Still, it was too much for National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, who complained: “This is a serious mistake, which is delaying our victory. I call once again on the prime minister to explain to our friends in the White House the implications of this ‘aid,’ which only prolongs the war and delays our victory and the return of all our hostages.”
