The ceasefire began on Friday when Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza City and other areas, while Hamas leaders said they would release Israeli hostages on Monday.
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Next comes the aid. Under the terms of the deal, Israel is expected to allow about 600 trucks into Gaza each day. It said this began on Sunday, local time (overnight, Australian time). Egypt said it sent 400 trucks into Gaza across their shared border on Sunday.
Video from The Associated Press at the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza shows trucks heading into Gaza.
Those supplies appear likely to go to the distribution points set up by Israel this year, but Medicins Sans Frontieres and others want the UN to oversee the aid.
“The UN-led humanitarian coordination mechanism must be reinstated to guarantee safe and impartial access to aid for those in need,” says MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders. This follows a warning from more than 100 aid groups in August about the way Israel restricted the aid.
Almost a quarter of the Palestinians in Gaza were experiencing famine, the world’s peak hunger monitor warned in August. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system, which is backed by the UN, estimated the number of those suffering was likely to surpass 600,000, and it has yet to release a revised forecast in light of the ceasefire.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, set up with Israeli government approval, has distributed aid since March, replacing the previous UN system. The system is overseen by an Israeli agency, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, known as COGAT.
Under the GHF system, Israel replaced about 400 aid distribution points overseen by the UN with a limited number of points overseen by the Israeli military. The Israeli authority insists that aid has been delivered daily, and it says some aid organisations have used “twisted facts” and manipulated data to distort what has been happening.
There are signs this will change. The Associated Press reports that food distribution sites run by the GHF are being shut down under the terms of the ceasefire deal, citing an Egyptian official and another official in the region.
One aid group, CARE, warns that the ceasefire deal does not explain how international organisations can bring in supplies that have been stuck outside Gaza.
Jolien Veldwijk, CARE’s director in Gaza and the West Bank, says the group has shelter items, mother and baby supplies, clothing and medical supplies stockpiled in warehouses in Egypt, Jordan and the West Bank, ready to be moved into Gaza.
“None of those shipments have been approved for entry yet,” she says.
Israeli authorities are allowing only a limited number of approved non-government organisations to supply aid under the government’s registration scheme.
“CARE is ready to move its aid consignments via any operational crossing into Gaza,” she says. For now, it is sustaining the work at its clinic in Deir al-Balah with supplies from UN partners.
Cummings, speaking from the Save the Children clinic in Deir al-Balah, says her team wants to provide more food, water and health supplies but needs them in greater volumes.
“We need humanitarian and commercial supplies to enter Gaza at scale and consistently,” she says.
“We need access to populations – we need to be able to move around Gaza safely to provide that protection and security for our teams.
“And, of course, with the humanitarian supplies entering Gaza, we need to be able to provide safe and dignified distributions to communities who are really now only starting to rebuild.”
