Last month, hundreds of thousands of people returned to northern Gaza – where famine was declared in late August – but their access to food is “severely limited,” said Abeer Etefa, chief spokesperson for the World Food Program (PMA).
And although many returnees have found their homes in ruins, displaced people who remain in the south “often live in tents and without access to food or services,” he warned.
Speaking from Cairo, Ms Etefa said that three and a half weeks after the fragile ceasefire, the WFP has distributed food parcels to around one million people across the Strip, against a target of 1.6 million, as “part of the broad operation to roll back hunger in Gaza”.
“Supplies are still limited, so each family receives a reduced food ration, which is one package, and it is enough food for 10 days,” he explained.
To continue expanding operations to the required level, “We really need more access, more border crossings to open and… more access to key roads inside Gaza.”insisted the WFP spokesperson.
Aid crossings remain closed
UN Aid Coordination Office OCHA It said Monday that no food aid convoys have reached the north through direct crossings since Sept. 12.
“We still only have two operational border points,” Etefa stressed, referring to Kerem Shalom in the south of the enclave and Kissufim in central Gaza. “This severely limits the amount of aid that the WFP and other agencies can bring to stabilize markets and address people’s needs,” he said, highlighting the fact that the continued closure of northern crossings into the Gaza Strip means that aid convoys are forced to “follow a slow and difficult route from the south.”
The UN food aid agency spokesman also said that some 700,000 people receive fresh bread daily through 17 WFP-supported bakeries, nine in southern and central Gaza and eight in the north, with the goal of reaching 25.
Speaking from Gaza, Nour Hammad, WFP Communications Officer, said that while she witnessed “apocalyptic scenes” across the enclave, she also saw on people’s faces “the joy that the guns have fallen silent after all this time and the fear of whether the silence will last or not.”
He said Gazans were comparing the destruction caused by more than two years of war to “the consequences of an earthquake.”
‘This help matters’
“At all the distribution points I have been to throughout the Gaza Strip over the past few days, people tell me one thing: this assistance is important,” he said. After months of “surviving on scraps, rationing food and spreading a meal over days”, people finally have access to “fresh bread, food parcels, cash transfers, nutrition and support”.
“This is where the road to recovery begins,” he stressed.
While 200,000 of the most vulnerable are now receiving digital cash payments to “supplement food baskets with fresh food” from local markets, prices there remain prohibitive.
“Food is slowly returning to shelves, but prices are still out of reach for families, considering… they have exhausted their resources to survive two years of war,” Ms. Hammad said. “Today, for example, I buy an apple for the price of a kilo before the war,” he explains.
The fragility of the ceasefire and aid flows is at the heart of people’s concerns, Hammad said, as he told the story of a displaced mother he met in Gaza City. Although the woman is receiving assistance, she has warned her children not to eat the rations immediately because “she cannot trust that tomorrow we will also bring them food,” the WFP communicator said.
“Families invite us to their stores… worn out by the cold of winter and the heat of summer, and they want to show us their reality. And their reality is that people need food. People need shelter, they need warm clothing because winter is around the corner and they need continuous support,” he concluded.
