Gazans’ suffering goes on amid intensifying Israeli strikes

In occupied East Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israeli protesters illegally entered a compound of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

The development comes after the Israeli military coordination unit COGAT said on Saturday that 388 trucks had entered Gaza since last Monday – the first aid to arrive in well over two months of blockade that have caused hunger levels to spike.

Humanitarians have repeatedly warned that at least 500 to 600 trucks need to cross into Gaza every day to provide people with their daily needs – as they did before war erupted on 7 October 2023 after Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel.

Token assistance

“We are on the back of 11 weeks of nothing entering the Gaza Strip, no food, no medicines for 11 weeks, nothing apart from bombs,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“And so today, a week after life-saving aid was finally allowed into Gaza again, the scale of that aid is painfully inadequate,” he told UN News. “It looks like a token that appears more like cynical optics than any real attempt to tackle the soaring hunger crisis among children and civilians in Gaza.”

Today, Gazans remain at “critical risk of famine”, UN-backed food security experts warned earlier this month. In their latest update, they estimated that one in five people in Gaza – 500,000 – faces starvation.

Another school hit

Reports on Monday indicated meanwhile that Israel’s intensifying military operation in northern Gaza against alleged terrorists and their infrastructure had killed at least 50 people in air strikes.

One attack hit a school in Gaza City sheltering hundreds of people uprooted by more than 19 months of violence. Footage reportedly taken after the incident showed the silhouette of a child stumbling through a classroom set ablaze at Fahmi al-Jarjawi school.

Another air strike hit a home elsewhere in Gaza City killing four people, according to the health authorities.

UN-run shelters are now “overwhelmed with displaced people desperately seeking safety”, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in an update on Monday. It also underscored that the lack of food has added to people’s suffering.

“Many families are sheltering in abandoned, unfinished, or damaged buildings,” the agency explained. “Sanitation conditions are dire; in some cases, hundreds of people are having to share a single toilet. Others, including children and pregnant women, are sleeping in the open.”

Settler protest

Following the protest at the UNRWA compound in occupied East Jerusalem, a spokesperson for the UN agency noted that one member of the Israeli Knesset had joined the settlers inside the gates. Monday is a national holiday in Israel, marking the moment following the Six-Day War in 1967 when the country’s troops occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The UNRWA facility – located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem – has been targeted in past arson attacks that set light to the perimeter fence.

At the end of January, UNRWA withdrew its staff from the compound in protest at the entry into force of an Israeli law banning the agency's operations in occupied East Jerusalem.

The location retains its status as a UN facility that is protected under international law.