Behind the labyrinth of barbed wire and concrete walls, 300 metres away, lies Rafah, the southernmost point of Gaza and one of the main theatres of the war. The Israeli army invited Morning Express on Wednesday to visit the Kerem Shalom border crossing, along with other media outlets. Reporters are not allowed to go any further to see for themselves what is happening in the Strip.
The authorities of the Jewish state are blocking access to the Strip to the media, which have been unable to verify Israel’s version of events for more than nine months of conflict, as the Association of Foreign Journalists denounced last Sunday. Asked about this, the military simply replied that the visit to Kerem Shalom is focused on humanitarian issues.
Watermelons, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, lemons, mangoes, cereal… Thousands of kilos of food are waiting in the sun on an esplanade. As soon as the journalists arrive, accompanied by the military, the dance of trucks begins – around fifteen of them – so that the cameras can capture how they load food and transport it to the Palestinian side. Perched on a guard post, an armed guard points in the same direction as the vehicles, all without license plates, are moving away.
At this border crossing, Colonel Elad Goren, one of the heads of COGAT (the Israeli Ministry of Defense agency that manages civil affairs in Gaza and the West Bank), denies that Israel is blocking access to aid to the Strip and even blames the United Nations for the humanitarian crisis affecting the 2.3 million Gazans. “They need to increase their logistical capacity. More trucks, more manpower, more warehouses,” he argues, while also accusing them of reducing the number of trucks that arrived during the war to 26,000 compared to the 40,000 that Israel counts and of not being present in the Palestinian area of the border, where the aid arrives.
According to the Israeli military, on the other side of the crossing “approximately 14,000 pallets are waiting to be collected and distributed in Gaza.” “This is not an attempt by the State of Israel to create any narrative. These are facts,” he says. Although the place is only a few hundred meters away, it is impossible to verify this because access is forbidden to reporters.
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The United Nations does not want to enter into the data war, but it looks at reality from a completely different perspective and recalls the blockade that Israel is imposing on the Strip in the shadow of war and land invasion, according to Juliette Touma, director of communications for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the main support body for the population of Gaza, with 13,000 employees in that territory.
This means, he adds, that they face significant challenges in carrying out their work, such as the number of workers killed, which total 197 in the current conflict; the lack of permission from Israel to move safely through the “active war zone” that Kerem Shalom – Kerem Abu Salem, in Arabic – has turned into and its surroundings; the insecurity that prevails in the Palestinian enclave, with assaults and attacks on truck convoys, the lack of fuel or the precarious communications network.
Israel controls everything that enters the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave by land, sea and air. Goren says they are ready to send aid 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but “the UN is not doing its job,” he says. He also takes potshots at fundamentalists: “Hamas would like to create the perception of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza while interfering in the humanitarian effort. [Lo hace] As a tool to exert international pressure on Israel. We will not allow that to happen.”
“It is not us who decide how many trucks will enter the crossing. They [la ONU]“Let them decide how many trucks to send. We will scan them and send them,” the COGAT colonel insists. But “there is no space on the Palestinian side because they have no logistical capacity. So even if we bring 1,000 trucks today, there is nowhere to put them on the Palestinian side. That is one of the main problems.”
Juliette Touma argues that the UN is known for its global work: “It is the largest logistical organisation in the world for responding to natural disasters and conflicts. We do it everywhere. We have done it and we continue to do it.” The UN official argues by telephone that these accusations “are not new.” “The context of Gaza depends on political will.” [de Israel]”, adds Touma, regarding the accusations made by Colonel Elad Goren. He then cites conflicts such as those in Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen and various parts of Africa where, despite the difficulties, the situation is not the same as in Gaza. He recalls that 500 trucks were entering the Strip every day before the war.
Information blackout
“Never before has Israel applied such a long and strict information blackout measure,” the Association of Foreign Journalists denounced on July 7 in a statement that spoke of “shock and deep disappointment.” Israel “has repeatedly rejected our requests for access to the media.” [a la Franja] and has fought them in court to maintain this draconian ban. It has only offered a handful of highly controlled embedding opportunities for a small number of our members,” the text adds. The Israeli authorities have not accepted Morning Express’ requests to accompany the occupation troops in Gaza due to the impossibility of independent access.
Similarly, “Palestinian journalists in Gaza continue to face unprecedented threats and restrictions on movement as they bravely attempt to cover this story,” the reporters’ association warns. “This raises questions about what Israel does not want international journalists to see,” it concludes, reiterating its call for an end to the news blackout. Colonel Elad Goren and the uniformed officers accompanying him on the visit to Kerem Shalom do not respond to the reason for the ban or clarify whether the Israeli authorities plan to end the measure at some point. They simply respond that they deal with humanitarian matters.
On the other side, in the Palestinian enclave, more than 100 journalists or media workers have been killed since the war began on October 7, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). More than 38,000 Gazans have died in the Strip since then, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
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