Fuel is a fundamental pillar on which the survival of hundreds of thousands of Gazans rests. Only a thousand of the more than 25,000 trucks that have managed to reach the Strip during the war carried this essential cargo, according to United Nations statistics. That represents less than 4% of those vehicles. All have also accessed the Palestinian enclave through the Rafah border crossing, which separates this territory from Egypt, and which was taken by Israeli occupation troops on Tuesday.
Since then, this crossing has remained closed and no humanitarian aid enters there, denounce the UN and other organizations. Nor fuel, without which the vehicles for the distribution of aid cannot circulate or the generators and equipment with which the already damaged Gazan health system tries to survive. “Food and fuel supplies in Gaza will only last one to three days. Without them, our operations will come to a standstill.” The head of the UN World Food Program (WFP) for Palestine, Matthew Hollingworth, draws this bleak picture. The main warehouse of this agency is “inaccessible,” Hollingworth denounces, to which he adds that no aid has arrived through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings – which gives access to Israel – for two days.
In addition, thousands of people are fleeing Israel’s threats to carry out a large-scale invasion in the area, where only one bakery remains open, Hollingworth comments on his profile on the social network X (formerly Twitter). In the same terms, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, and the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, have expressed their concern. He already announced on Tuesday that the Al Najjar hospital in Rafah had been out of service and that it had fuel for three days.
Warnings of the serious problem posed by the shortage of diesel, gasoline or gas are multiplying and also come from NGOs such as Refugees International. “If fuel is cut off, aid operations collapse and collapse quickly. “That means you can’t pump water, keep the lights on in hospitals, or that vehicles can’t distribute aid,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of that organization during an appearance. on-line this Wednesday along with officials from other organizations deployed in Gaza.
The shortage also directly affects the street price of fuel, shaken, like food, by an inflationary earthquake. It costs about 40 dollars per liter (about 37 euros), says Helena Ranchal, head of Médicos del Mundo, from Nablus (West Bank). And the more days trucks continue without arriving, the more their price will rise. “We are not only talking about the mobilization of people, of teams. We need the electronic system to work in the hospital to give blood transfusions and be able to carry out surgeries,” she emphasizes: “We health workers cannot be like this much longer.”
Added to this is that fuel is also necessary for private use, business or for humanitarian organizations, whether for vehicles or to power generators that complement solar panels in homes, offices, companies or for charging electronic devices.
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Some of the families that are escaping the Israeli attacks in Rafah these days are doing so for the ninth time since the war began last October, explains the WFP official. Those who managed to leave this Thursday were about 80,000, according to UNRWA data. They leave behind a town that is not only partially occupied (in its eastern area) by the Israeli army, but is also bombed from the air and attacked with artillery, leaving dozens of civilians dead daily.
“Around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants live in a constant cycle of displacement and flight,” explains Ghada Alhaddad, of the NGO Oxfam, from Deir El Balah, in the central area of the Strip. These are “illegal forced displacements,” says Ranchal, from Médicos del Mundo. “It’s a lie, there is no safe zone in Gaza,” she responds to the announcement made by the Israeli authorities to the population to settle in the Al Mawasi camp, northeast of Rafah. Both also participated in the telematic appearance.
Matthew Hollingworth considers it “catastrophic” that the troops invade the southern town of the enclave, where around 1.5 million people live. Certain progress that has been made recently to serve the population would be lost and, with the current blockade of border crossings, “the operations carried out by agencies such as the WFP will have to stop,” warns its official in Palestine. Furthermore, he demands from the parties that, as long as a ceasefire is not reached; allow at least humanitarian activities.
“Today we have realized that, due to the lack of fuel, transportation is extremely expensive. It’s crazy how much it costs us to have trucks move our goods from one place to another. The price they ask is like triple that of normal days,” lamented Rafeek Elmadhoun, of the Rebuilding Alliance. This organization is trying to relocate its kitchens to areas where those fleeing Rafah due to the arrival of Israeli troops are moving. To the increase in fuel prices, he adds the problem of “the lack of fresh foods, such as vegetables, because prices have skyrocketed due to the impact [de la guerra] in the agricultural season. Tomatoes and potatoes have crazy prices,” he adds.
On the Israeli side, the wind is not blowing in favor. This Thursday, around 150 people prevented a convoy of humanitarian aid trucks from Jordan from advancing towards Gaza. A group of protesters, among whom were some relatives of victims of the Hamas attack on October 7, blocked the path of the convoy and threatened the drivers, according to images broadcast by some media. Then, hundreds of Hamas militants stormed the fence separating the Strip from Israel and killed about 1,200 people while kidnapping about 250, according to official figures. Israel’s military response has already caused almost 35,000 deaths in the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave.
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