With two million Palestinians made homeless, internally displaced within Gaza, there is a humanitarian crisis already happening that is about to become unimaginable. On 22 December 2023, the World Food Programme reported that, “Gaza on the brink as one in four people face extreme hunger.”
Long before October 7th, Israel’s now more than 16 year long blockade on the Strip had made the situation in Gaza dire. On 21 June 2022, Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, commented:
“Largely due to the blockade, poverty, high unemployment rates and other factors, nearly 80 per cent of Gazans now rely on humanitarian assistance.”
Source: https://www.unicef.org/mena/press-releases/fifteen-years-blockade-gaza-strip
Obviously, aware that the world’s TV screens are about to be filled with images of starving Gazan children, Israel has been attempting to head off criticism at the pass by emphasising its “humanitarian efforts” for the people of Gaza.
Israel completely controls the border with Egypt. All international aid must pass through Israeli checkpoints. Even aid from Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, was diverted on a 54-mile round trip before reaching the border to reach the sole, Israeli-approved crossing point. On 17 December 2023, Reuters reported that:
“The Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza opened on Sunday for aid trucks for the first time since the outbreak of war, officials said, a move intended to double the amount of food and medicine reaching the enclave. The crossing had been closed after an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and aid was being delivered solely through Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt, which Israel said could only accommodate the entry of 100 trucks per day.”
Yesterday, on 8 January 2024, the UN stated that “Before the conflict erupted, more than 500 trucks carried aid into the Strip every day”. The spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Adnan Abu Hasna, had talked about the crisis with the Middle East Monitor on 28 November 2023:
Abu Hasna noted that the volume of humanitarian aid entering through the Rafah crossing is only five per cent of the volume that entered before the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on 7 October. On average, he explained, 50 trucks are entering the Strip each day, while before the aggression 500, sometimes 600, trucks entered per day. “What we need is the entry of 200 trucks daily for at least two continuous months in order to respond to the necessary humanitarian needs.”
Here is the UN tally since any aid truck passage was permitted by Israel after it was reinstated on 20 October 2023:
The Israeli Defence Forces military branch known as “COGAT”—Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories—are the bureaucrats who manage Israel’s 57-year-old military occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank (including East Jerusalem).
Yesterday, on 8 January 2024, I published “Israeli Propaganda: Israel’s ‘Humanitarian Efforts’ for Gaza” to offer an introduction to Israel’s aid propaganda efforts, describing the intentionally complicated and burdensome process of getting any aid in, and noting COGAT’s mid-December 2023 launch of its “Operation Shields of Iron: Humanitarian Efforts” website (pictured right)—a fancy production designed to distract the world from the fact that the current average of 76 aid trucks a day currently entering the Strip is just 15.2% of the pre-October 7th rate of 500 trucks a day.
Israel’s forced trickle of aid is an intentional policy set by its leaders
As promised by Israel’s leaders, Israel has dramatically reduced the amount of aid it permits to reach the increasingly desperate Gazan population. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant offered one of the most genocidal comments, as reported by The Times of Israel on 9 October 2023:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” [Defense Minister Yoav] Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/
Israel’s Energy Minister, Israel Katz, tweeted a similar sentiment on 16 October 2023:
The following day, on 17 October 2023, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also tweeted a similar sentiment:
Israel’s policy to reduce aid cannot be denied
The current trickle of 76 aid trucks a day—compared to 500 a day before October 7th—is very much a product of Israeli policy, inspired by a mix of straight-up revenge, the long-expressed Israeli desire to make Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians, and a way for Israel to achieve its obvious goal of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza without appearing to do it directly.
The 22 December 2023 UN General Assembly resolution, that was repeatedly delayed, calling for more humanitarian aid to Gaza was surely another reason for a new burst of hasbara (Hebrew for “explanation”) to mitigate the completely correct global perception that Israel is not letting aid into Gaza.
Even as Israel slows aid to an intentional, genocidal trickle, it doesn’t want us to see it doing that. The “Humanitarian Efforts” website and associated social media campaign emphasise how much and what kind of aid Israel is ‘facilitating’ for Gaza.
Reading the text of their posts, you would be forgiven for thinking that the aid comes from Israel, when 100 percent of it is international aid that Israel is merely permitting to enter, as grudgingly as it can get away with. See Israeli Propaganda Israel’s ‘Humanitarian Efforts’ for Gaza on this website for more information on the process by which aid gets in.
We are meant to be convinced that, at this stage, Israel is doing everything it can to help resolve the very same humanitarian catastrophe it created. The numbers, however, are not on Israel’s side. It has even blamed the UN for its trickle policy, tweeting on 3 January 2024 at Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee aid agency:
COGAT’s new gaslighting campaign
Today, on 9 January 2024, COGAT turned up the dial on its gaslighting stove to the very highest setting. Knowing that all the aid Israel has permitted to enter has averaged 76 trucks a day since October 7th, COGAT’s social media team cooked up a 1-minute video featuring spokeswoman Shani Sasson, introduced with the obviously false claim that, “Before the war, an average of 70 food trucks entered Gaza every day. The average last week was 109.” Here’s the video:
“3 facts you need to know about food in Gaza”
- “Over 3,500 trucks carrying more than 76,000 tons of food have entered the Gaza Strip.”
- “Before the war there were an average of 70 trucks carrying food that entered every day. The average last week was 109.”
- “Last week the WFP (World Food Program) opened 10 bakeries and with the supplies Israel facilitated they have the capacity to provide 2,000,000 pita breads a day.”
“And this number can grow,” continues Shani Sasson, “Israel has not and will not stand in the way of providing food or any other form of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza because our war is against HAMAS, not the people of Gaza.”
Examining Israel’s claims
It’s hard to know what to say about these claims, they’re very rosy. Israel’s first claim that 3,500 food aid trucks have entered since the beginning of the war may actually be true, as the total of all aid trucks that Israel permitted since October 7th was 6,535 as of 2 January 2024. This would mean that 3,500 carried all-important food, leaving roughly 3,000 trucks carrying other aid—water, fuel, and medicine.
Focusing in on just the food aid is also notable. This is one area that elicits an immediacy in public outrage and gives Israel a myopic focus to emphasize to distract from its obvious reduction of all aid from 500-600 trucks a day to an average of 76 a day. Thus, Israel can communicate a pretence of caring about the human beings living in Gaza that it so obviously just wants to disappear.
Obviously, Israel’s second claim that, “before the war there were an average of 70 trucks carrying food that entered every day” seems light when held up to the pre-October 7th norm of “500, sometimes 600” trucks that entered daily and given the fact that there are now two million homeless Palestinians in Gaza. There were also repeated Israeli interruptions to aid pre-October 7th, as evidenced by this 13 May 2023 ‘Humanitarian situation in Gaza: Flash Update #4’ from OCHA (the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).
Israel’s second claim also doesn’t work with a total average of 76 trucks of all kinds of aid per day since October 7th, as this is obviously not just food aid but also includes water, fuel, and medical supplies. Estimates I’ve found so far from the pre-October 7th period suggest at least double that amount of food aid trucks—when aid was allowed in.
Israel’s third claim makes me want to tour one of these magical Palestinian bakeries that each can produce 200,000 pita breads a day. A 2018 article in the Lebanese Examiner features high speed machines producing 12,000 pita breads per hour but is featured precisely because this is seen as high.
Assuming each of the ten bakeries in Gaza had two such machines running for 24 hours a day, the figure is theoretically possible with the same machines equipment but the Lebanese bakery production factory featured in the Examiner’s report is 6,000 square meters (65,000 square feet).
Zadna Bakery, one of the bakeries that reopened in Deir Al-Balah in Gaza after 50 days of closure (video), looks like this:
This setup requires fuel to power generators, which has been extremely scarce since Israel’s post-October 7th siege. Even assuming the very unlikely ‘two million pita breads a day’ claim, that still amounts to less than one piece of bread a day for each of the 2.3 million Gazans.
All of this bakery cheerleading by Israel is designed to help us forget that, as Al-Jazeera English reported on 2 November 2023:
Five bakeries in the Gaza Strip have been directly targeted by Israeli strikes, and at least eight more have suffered so much damage from attacks near them that they have been rendered out of service.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/11/2/gaza-bakeries-destroyed-by-israeli-strikes
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