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Six hundred lorries per day are not nearly enough to feed two million starving Gazans, aid agencies told The National.
After more than 460 days of Israeli bombing and deprivation, a 42-day ceasefire was announced on Wednesday. The deal allows 600 lorries of humanitarian aid into Gaza every day of the ceasefire -100 more lorries a day than Palestinians in Gaza required before the war obliterated at least 65 per cent of the coastal strip's infrastructure, including hospitals, water and power supplies, sewerage systems, schools and homes.
"We need a comprehensive and sustainable solution because what unfolds here is not a humanitarian crisis but a catastrophe," said Abed Al Wahab Hamad, head of the Gaza office for Palestinian NGO Juhoud for Community and Rural Development.
Aid groups are having to choose between sending food or shelter in the face of dire needs and desperation, he said.
A year after Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, the UN warned that 91 per cent of the strip's population would face food insecurity. About the same percentage have been displaced, many of them at least three times. That means they are in need of both food and shelter.
Additionally, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which was the main entry point for humanitarian assistance into the strip, has been closed since Israel seized control of the Palestinian side in May last year.
"For nearly eight months, no tent has entered the Gaza Strip," said Osama Al Kahlout, who heads the operations room at the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS). "People need tents instead of living in dilapidated structures that are not fit for human use."
He is a witness to the brutality of the hunger in Gaza, especially among children. "Food items with high nutritional value are an immediate necessity," he told The National. "Children have been arriving to the hospital dehydrated and malnourished, and disease has spread among them as a result of being on a constant diet of canned food for over 15 months."
Mr Al Kahlout is currently in the PRCS-run Al Amal Hospital in Gaza's south. The hospital was put out of service by Israeli bombardment but has since undergone rudimentary repairs that have enabled it to restore some services.
With Gazans in need of "everything" – from blankets, to real food, ambulances and fuel – "600 lorries is not enough at all", he said.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, hospitals will be repaired or rebuilt entirely where needed and assistance will be brought in for civil defence and emergency crews who have had to resort to using their hands to rescue survivors from under rubble or recover the dead.
At least 11,000 Palestinians are registered as missing, presumed dead, or under rubble, Gaza's Ministry of Health says.
The opening of the Rafah border crossing means more people can leave for treatment abroad. Just under 450 sick and injured people have been evacuated from Gaza through the crossing since May.
The UN estimates that at least 12,000 people need "urgent, life-saving evacuation".
"Hundreds of people have died due to a lack of treatment, medicines and medical supplies since the closure of Rafah border," Mr Al Kahlout said. Thousands more want to leave before they suffer the same fate, he added.
