Israel Takes Control of Rafah Border Crossing, Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza: UN Warning

In the short term, the outlook is bleak for hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians in Gaza. The two main supply points for emergency aid have been closed from Israel Today he captured the Rafah border crossing. The crossing at Kerem Shalom, in the south-east of Gaza, was closed on Sunday after a rocket attack by Hamas.

According to the UN, there is already a famine in northern Gaza aid groups warn that the humanitarian crisis will worsen as a result of the closure of border crossings. “The dire famine in northern Gaza will worsen if supply routes are lost,” said the UN aid agency UNRWA on X. According to a spokesperson for OCHA, the UN humanitarian agency, this morning was “one of the darkest of this seven-month nightmare”.

Michiel Servaes, director of Oxfam Novib in the Netherlands, also fears the worst. “The border crossings are the lifeline for two million Gazans,” he says. “In a way we are back to square one. The whole area is closed and people are again because of the things they left behind.”

It reminds him of the first weeks after October 7, when Gaza’s borders were completely closed. “But people are already in a bad situation. If humanitarian aid is not provided, people will be in dire need.”

Servaes is in close contact with his colleagues in Gaza and hears that the impact is immediately visible. “I heard that the prices of food in the market have increased five times. “

Since the two main border crossings were closed, only the border crossing at Erez in northern Gaza remains in use. Several trucks with emergency aid arrived there today, says a UN spokesman, but that is far from enough. Furthermore, that emergency aid would not have included fuel.

And that is exactly what is needed. According to OCHA, Gaza only has fuel for one day. Petrol and diesel supplies are essential to generate electricity for hospitals, for example.

In March The IPC, the international watchdog for food safety, sounded the alarm. According to a forecast, 1.1 million Gazans would face ‘catastrophic food insecurity’ between March 16 and July 15 (level 5). This is the highest level of warning that the IPC can give and it means that the lack of food is so severe that it could be fatal.

Aid organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam Novib accuse Israel of using hunger as a weapon.

NOS op 3 previously made this video about hunger in Gaza:

Over the past month, Israel has gradually allowed more emergency aid. OCHA data shows that more medicines, fuel and food have entered the closed enclosure recently. Yesterday, for example, more than 340 trucks passed through the Gaza border posts. That was still less than the 500 daily shipments before the war, but significantly more than in the first months of the war.

The UN warned yesterday that this is nowhere near enough to prevent famine. In addition, the people who need urgent assistance are not being reached, said the director of the UN agency UNRWA. “When we ask permission for a convoy from south to north, it is systematically refused.”

And with key border crossings closed, concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza are growing. In addition, Gazans fear a wider offensive in Rafah. Yesterday Israel called on the people of East Rafah to leave the area for Khan Younis or the coastal town of Al-Mawasi, but aid groups their question marks in the security of these ‘humanitarian zones’.

A large number of hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or completely destroyed. 23 hospitals it doesn’t work anymore due to material damage or lack of electricity or fuel. The rest have only partial or minimal activity.

It’s a humanitarian tragedy: Aid workers say Gazans have almost nowhere to go if they’re sick, injured or malnourished. Now that the fuel supply has come to a halt, it is not clear what this will mean for the hospitals that are still (partially) working.

Support groups are mainly concerned about the lack of fuel. For example, Servaes says that his Oxfam colleagues still have fuel for three or four days. “After that, they can’t move through the area anymore and it’s impossible to distribute emergency aid,” he said. “I don’t know for sure about other aid agencies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have a large stock of fuel either.”