The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Sunday of a collapse in “public order” in the Gaza Strip following the looting of food aid warehouses and distribution centers it manages.
• Also read: The situation in Gaza is becoming “increasingly desperate”
• Also read: The Israeli army is calling on Palestinians to move to the southern Gaza Strip, where humanitarian aid will be “increased”.
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“Thousands of people broke into several UNRWA warehouses and distribution centers in the center and south of the Gaza Strip,” the UN agency said in a statement.
AFP
“This is a worrying sign that law and order is beginning to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege in the Gaza Strip,” said Thomas White, UNRWA’s head of operations in Gaza. “People are scared, frustrated and desperate.”
As the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which NGOs say is already catastrophic, continues to deteriorate, an AFP journalist on Saturday observed dozens of Palestinians looting one of the UNRWA distribution centers in Deir el-Balah (center).
AFP
Displaced people who had fled their homes in the north of the territory left these centers. One carried a bag of flour on his shoulder, the other carried bottles of oil under his arm or even bags of lentils or sugar.
Food rations are usually distributed to the most needy among refugees. These Palestinians were expelled from their land during the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and today, along with their descendants, make up about 80% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents, according to UNRWA figures.
“Supplies in the market are running low, while humanitarian aid trucking into the Gaza Strip from Egypt is insufficient. The population’s needs are enormous, even for basic survival resources, while the assistance we receive is meager and inconsistent,” Mr White added.
AFP
According to him, since the delivery of this humanitarian aid began on October 21, only “just over 80 trucks” of aid have arrived in Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.
“The current convoy system is doomed to failure. “Very few trucks, slow processes, strict controls, deliveries that do not meet the needs of UNRWA and other aid agencies, and above all the ongoing fuel ban, all of this is a recipe for systemic bankruptcy,” he warned.