UN says northern Gaza aid has been blocked for 66 days, leaving tens of thousands without essentials

UN says northern Gaza aid has been blocked for 66 days, leaving tens of thousands without essentials

Event date: 2024-12-10

The United Nations says humanitarian aid to northern Gaza has been largely blocked for 66 days, worsening a crisis that has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without reliable access to food, water, electricity or health care.

The update, reported by the AP from United Nations briefings in New York, focuses on the northern part of the territory where Israel launched a ground offensive on October 6. In that area, the UN says civilians in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya have been largely denied relief deliveries while local conditions continue to deteriorate.

The picture described by UN officials is broader than a simple interruption of trucks at a border crossing. The UN says law and order has broken down, looting has increased, and aid groups have struggled to get food and other essentials to people who need them. That has helped turn the lack of access into a longer, more severe humanitarian emergency.

Sigrid Kaag, the UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the Security Council that civilians in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation,” according to the AP account. Her comments underscored the gap between the logistics the UN says it has in place and the political access it says it still lacks.

Kaag also said the UN has repeatedly asked Israel to allow convoy access to northern Gaza and elsewhere, to let in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south, and to approve dual-use items. The UN’s position, as presented in the AP report, is that it can organize an operation, but cannot create the political conditions needed to move supplies at scale.

The consequences extend beyond immediate hunger. The UN says only four U.N.-supported bakeries are operating across the Gaza Strip, all in Gaza City, which means food distribution is both concentrated and fragile. The same briefing said about 5,500 people were forcibly displaced from three schools in Beit Lahiya to Gaza City, adding another layer of displacement to a population already under pressure.

Israel’s U.N. Mission did not comment on Kaag’s remarks in the AP report. The UN, meanwhile, is pressing member states to use their leverage to change the conditions on the ground. Kaag’s message, as summarized by AP, was that there is no humanitarian substitute for political will.

The immediate policy question is whether aid agencies will be able to move supplies into northern Gaza in sufficient volume to address the shortage. The broader question is how long a population can remain cut off from basic necessities before the humanitarian toll becomes even harder to reverse.