Gazans Lack Tents And Food When Winter Arrives

Gazans are in refugee camps. (Twitter/@UNHumanRights)

JAKARTA - Aid that reached the Gaza Strip was too few, nearly four weeks after the ceasefire, humanitarian agencies said on Tuesday, as hunger continued ahead of winter and old tents began to damage following Israel's devastating two-year attack.

The Gaza local government, which has long been controlled by Hamas, said most trucks had not yet reached their destinations due to Israeli restrictions, and only about 145 trucks per day delivered supplies.

The United Nations, which previously during the war published daily figures about aid trucks entering Gaza, is now no longer providing these figures regularly.

"His condition is very bad. There are no proper tents, proper water, proper food, or decent money," said Manal Salem, 52, who lives in a tent in Khan Younis in southern Gaza which he says is "very obsolete" and he fears it will not last during winter. November 5th.

The ceasefire was meant to channel heavy aid throughout the densely populated Palestinian enclave where hunger was confirmed in August and where nearly a total of 2.3 million of its population had lost their homes to Israeli bombings.

However, only half of the required food comes, according to the World Food Program (WFP), while an umbrella group consisting of Palestinian bodies says the overall volume of aid is between a quarter and a third of the expected number.

Meanwhile, Israel said it fulfilled its obligations under a ceasefire agreement, requiring an average of 600 supply trucks to enter Gaza per day.

Israel blamed Hamas fighters for the food shortage, accusing them of stealing food aid before it could be distributed, accusations the group denies.

Separately, the United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) said the ceasefire and larger flow of aid since mid-October had brought some improvements.

Last week, OCHA said a tenth of children who were discringining in Gaza were still acutely malnourished, down from 14 percent in September, with more than 1,000 children showing the most severe form of malnutrition.

Half of the families in Gaza reported increasing access to food, especially in the southern region, as more and more commercial aid and supplies entered after the ceasefire. Households eat on average twice a day, up from one meal in July, OCHA said.

However, there is still a sharp gap between the southern and northern regions, where conditions are still much worse, OCHA said.

Abeer Etefa, a senior WFP spokesman, described the situation as "a race against time".

"We need full access. We need everything to move quickly," he said.

"The cold season is coming soon. People are still suffering from hunger, and the needs are huge," he said.

Since the ceasefire, the agency has brought in 20,000 metric tons of food aid, roughly half of the amount needed to meet community needs, and has opened 44 of the 145 targeted distribution locations, he said.

"The food diversity needed to prevent malnutrition is also still lacking," he added.

"The majority of households we talk to only consumemountarities, nuts, and snacks for dry foods, which cannot last long for the population. Meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruits are very rarely consumed," he explained.

A sustainable fuel shortage, including gas for cooking, has also hampered efforts to fulfill nutrition, and more than 60 percent of Gazans cook using burning garbage, OCHA said, adding to health risks.

With the approaching winter, Gazans need shelter. Tents are running low. Buildings that survived military attacks are often vulnerable to weather or unstable and dangerous.

"We will soon enter winter - rainwater and possible flooding, as well as potential disease due to hundreds of tons of garbage near densely populated areas," said Amjad al-Shawa, head of Palestinian bodies in collaboration with the United Nations.

He added that only 25 percent to 30 percent of the amount of aid expected to enter Gaza had so far entered.

"The condition of life there is inconceivable," said a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)ular Low who led a group of institutions dealing with the problem of the shortage of shelter in Gaza.

The NRC estimates 1.5 million people need shelter in Gaza, but large numbers of tents, tarpaulins and related aid are still waiting to arrive, awaiting Israeli approval, Low said.