How Aid Actually Gets To Gaza

The circuitous route to Gaza and Israeli inspections, explained.

Diplomats at the Security Council are deep into negotiations over yet another resolution on the Israel-Gaza crisis. Unlike previous resolutions which were met with a US veto, this text does not center around a ceasefire. Everyone knows that calling for an immediate ceasefire is a non-starter for the United States. Rather, the resolution in question is intended to increase the pace and scale of humanitarian aid that is getting into Gaza. This is ostensibly a stated goal of Biden administration which has publicly and privately prodded Israel to boost humanitarian access for over one million Gazans now displaced near the Egyptian border.

The United Arab Emirates put forward this resolution, the precise text of which has changed multiple times because the rest of the Council genuinely wants the United States on board. Some in the administration are also eager to get to yes on a resolution that would expand humanitarian relief flowing into Gaza. Earlier this week, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield met directly with President Biden at the White House to discuss this issue.

The main sticking point in this resolution is the question of how to handle the inspection of humanitarian relief destined for Gaza. Right now, all aid entering Gaza must be inspected by the Israeli government. The mechanics of these inspections are creating a bottleneck that is limiting the pace and scale of humanitarian relief. (More on that below the fold.) Accordingly, many members of the Security Council, including the UAE, are pushing for inspections to fall under the auspices of the United Nations.

And here it should be noted that the UN has a track record of doing this exact kind of work. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, in which Russia permitted the export of Ukrainian grain, hinged on the UN doing inspections of cargo. Similarly, the only way that Russia would permit aid crossing from Turkey to rebel-held areas of Syria was if aid first underwent UN inspections. In each of these cases, the US saw a neutral UN inspection regime as useful tool to satisfy the concerns of Russia (or its ally Syria) that aid may be used as a cover for arms.

At this point, Israel does not want to hand over inspections to the UN. It simply does not trust the UN to do the job. And the United States seems cool to the idea as well. However, the Biden administration may end up supporting some sort of change to the status quo in which Israel alone does inspections. The current situation is simply unsustainable and inimical to the Biden administration’s stated goal of averting a humanitarian catastrophe in southern Gaza.

There is a dire urgency to speeding up humanitarian relief for Gaza. Moments ago, the World Food Program released the results of a technical assessment of food security in Gaza and predicted a coming famine. “The levels of acute food insecurity are unprecedented in terms of seriousness, speed of deterioration and complexity. Gaza risks famine,” a WFP spokesperson writes in an email. “The population falling into the Catastrophe classification of food security in Gaza or “IPC Level 5” is more than four times higher than the total number of people currently facing similar conditions worldwide (577,000 compared to 129,000 respectively).”

If humanitarian aid is going to start to get to Gazans at scale and disrupt this looming disaster, the status quo needs to change — and quickly.

Below the fold for our community of paying subscribers:

• A description of the logistics of Israeli inspections of humanitarian aid destined for Gaza.

• A map of the circuitous route that Israel requires of humanitarian convoys before entering Gaza.

• The implications of a new border crossing that opened just yesterday