Gaza ceasefire brings hope but aid workers warn of major hurdles ahead

Tel Aviv, Israel (CNN) — As the Gaza ceasefire takes hold, aid workers caution that the toughest challenges are yet to come, describing the truce as only the first step on a long road to recovery.

For humanitarian workers and aid agencies, the road is expected to be long and arduous – with challenges including areas in the north of Gaza that remain hard to reach and criminal gangs that loot United Nations convoys carrying precious food, to a looming Israeli ban on the main UN agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza.

At least 630 aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, with at least 300 of them headed to the north, according to a senior UN official. The UN, which said it has 4,000 trucks ready to enter Gaza, says the availability of food is not the problem, but that the delivery mechanism is wrought with obstacles.

“The issue is not to get the goods in,” Palestine Country Director for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Antoine Renard told CNN from Gaza last week. He added that there are currently goods on standby at the Egyptian border with Gaza, and that the aid is gradually making its way from Ashdod in Israel, where it arrives for redistribution.

Enough food aid is waiting at Gaza’s borders to feed 1 million people for three months, WFP has said. It also has supplies such as food parcels, wheat flour, commodities for hot meals, and nutrition supplements.

But some areas in Gaza remain totally cut off from aid.

“Barely any food has gone into besieged North Gaza for more than two months. Winter cold and rain are further reducing people’s ability to survive,” WFP warned.

Israel launched a military offensive in northern Gaza in October for the third time since the war began, leading to a “full closure” to aid for the first 15 days of that month, Renard said. Israel had said it was battling resurging Hamas fighters.

Some Gaza governorates began slowly opening up after last October, including in Gaza City, Renard said, but parts of the north remained choked ahead of the ceasefire, which came into effect Sunday.

The northern governorates of Jabalya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun remain severely restricted. “We had to cut everything (there after the Israeli military operation),” he said.

WFP said that in the north, West Erez (Zikim) crossing is operational, but is only supplying aid to Gaza City. “Access to North Gaza governorate has been consistently denied,” it said.

Israeli ban on UN agency

Apart from cutting off parts of the north, an Israeli ban against WFP’s aid partner, UNRWA, is set to come into effect in two weeks. WFP and UNRWA each support 1.1 million people in Gaza, making UNRWA’s role crucial for aid distribution.

The ban came after Israel accused some UNRWA employees of participating in the attack that left 1,200 people in Israel dead. A UN investigation found that nine employees from UNWRA “may have” been involved in the October 7 attack and no longer work at the agency.

UNRWA has, however, long been a target of Israeli criticism. Israel has accused the UN agency of anti-Israel incitement, which UNRWA denies. In 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to dismantle the UN body.

Last year, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed two bills; one barring UNRWA from activity within Israel, and another banning Israeli authorities from any contact with UNRWA – revoking the 1967 treaty that allows the agency to provide services to Palestinian refugees in areas under Israel’s control.

The move is expected to severely restrict UNRWA from operating in territories Israel occupies, including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“We do not know how Israel is going to implement the Knesset bills,” Renard said, adding that the UN agency will nonetheless remain operational.

It is unclear if the UN has a contingency plan for when the ban comes into effect.

“Our plan is to stay and deliver until we cannot,” UNRWA Communications Director Juliette Touma, told CNN Friday, adding that UNRWA can only hand over operations to a Palestinian institution, which can only happen through “a diplomatic solution that will also address the plight of Palestine refugees.”

The UNRWA official added that the agency has not received “any communications from the government of Israel on how they plan to implement those bills.”

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that there are “a lot of other agencies” that can help with humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“We have states that want to help to achieve that goal. So UNRWA is not an objective. UNRWA is also not the solution,” Sa’ar told reporters Sunday, adding that “the UN is in a position to help assure that the objective of the humanitarian aid to Gaza residents won’t be hurt.”

Criminal gangs in Gaza

Another challenge faced by aid groups is looting of relief supplies by criminal gangs operating in Gaza.

One of the ways aid trucks try to mitigate that risk is to use protected roads that aim to circumvent looting areas.

Israel has repeatedly accused the UN of allowing aid that’s been delivered into Gaza to pile up at the enclave’s borders without being distributed. But Renard said that convoys are often looted as soon as they enter Gaza.

Distributors “are too afraid of losing the cargo,” he said.

Palestinian NGOs inside Gaza have previously accused Israeli forces of targeting civil police and other aid safeguarding bodies “to incite chaos and lawlessness.”

CNN has reached out to the IDF about their stance regarding Gazan civil police.

“The law and order remain a sticky point, but with the ceasefire coming in, would the blue police be able to operate?” Renard questioned, referring to Gazan civil police.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 46,900 people during the 15 months it has dragged on, according to the health ministry there, as well as decimating large swathes of the territory and displacing nearly the entire population.

The number of people killed is believed to be significantly higher than the figure reported by authorities in the enclave, according to findings announced by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in The Lancet journal, which found that the ministry has underreported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%.

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