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18-10-2024
JERUSALEM/ GAZA STRIP: Israel has stopped processing requests from traders to import food to Gaza, according to 12 people involved in the trade, choking off a track that for the past six months supplied more than half of the besieged Palestinian territory’s provisions.
Since Oct. 11, Gaza-based traders who were importing food from Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank have lost access to a system introduced in spring by Cogat, the Israeli government body that oversees aid and commercial shipments, and have received no reply to attempts to contact the agency, the sources said.
The shift has driven the flow of goods arriving in Gaza to its lowest level since the start of the war, a media analysis of official Israeli data shows. The details of the halt in commercial goods into Gaza have not been previously reported.
Cogat did not respond to Reuters’ questions about commercial food imports and aid to Gaza. The agency says it does all it can to ensure that enough aid enters the coastal enclave, and that Israel does not prevent the entry of humanitarian aid. It rejects allegations Israel has blocked supplies.
Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 16, the overall flow of shipments to Gaza including both aid and commercial goods fell to a daily average of 29 trucks, according to Cogat statistics.
That compares with a daily average of 175 trucks between May and September, the data shows. Commercial shipments goods bought by local traders, trucked in after direct approval by Cogat, and then sold in marketplaces in Gaza accounted for about 55% of the total during that period.
Two sources involved in food supply said the reason for halting commercial shipments was because Israel worried that the Hamas militant group was receiving revenues from the imports.
A Hamas spokesperson denied that the group had stolen food or used it for revenue and said it was trying to ensure the distribution of aid in Gaza.
The commercial system’s apparent closure came as Israel launched a new military operation against Hamas in northern Gaza, a parallel development that has obstructed humanitarian aid deliveries. The U.N.’s World Food Program said in a statement on Sunday the operation cut off all aid deliveries through crossings in the north for at least two weeks this month.
A series of measures by Israeli government departments and the military were already reducing food deliveries to Gaza. In August, Israeli authorities introduced a new customs rule on one aid channel, and began scaling down the separate track of commercial goods.
Plummeting volumes of aid into Gaza have prompted the United States to threaten to withhold military support to Israel and fueled alarm over the risk of famine in Gaza.
A global food security monitor issued a fresh warning on Thursday. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said the recent surge in hostilities might lead to double the number of people in Gaza with “catastrophic” hunger.
Getting enough food to Gaza’s 2.3 million people, almost all of whom have been displaced, has been one of the most fraught issues of the war.
In May, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors asked the court to issue an arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying they suspected Israeli authorities had used “the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Israeli authorities have denied this, saying they facilitate food deliveries despite challenging conditions. They have filed two official challenges to the ICC, contesting the legality of the prosecutor’s request and the court’s jurisdiction. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
