UN runs out of tents, food in southern Gaza due to Israeli blockade

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: The Guardian
16 May 2024 09:11
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As the Israeli military attacks Rafah, the UN reports that its warehouses have run out of essentials, amid a renewed Nakba.

Forcibly displaced Palestinians walk near tents that they set up for shelter along a beach of the Mediterranean Sea, in Deir al-Balah, the Gaza Strip, Palestine, on May 13, 2024. (AP)

The United Nations has run out of tents and food to distribute to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, UN officials told The Guardian on Wednesday.

The announcement comes amid an ongoing Israeli ground invasion of Rafah and an aggression targeting Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. The military aggression on the southernmost Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip has also seen the closure of all crossings leading into the besieged territory, including the Rafah border crossing. This crossing, linking Palestine to Egypt, witnessed the entry of the bulk of humanitarian aid to Rafah.

UN officials reported that the agencies' warehouses, located south of the Netzarim Axis, which splits Gaza City and some towns from the rest of the Gaza Strip to the south, have been completely emptied and will not be resupplied if the Israeli occupation continues to block humanitarian routes.

"There are no tents in humanitarian warehouses. There are also no stocks of food left with the World Food Programme or UNRWA [the UN agency for Palestinian refugees] south of the [river]," UN officials told The Guardian.

The head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Georgios Petropoulos, said that he expected food available on the market and what the organizations have distributed to be finished soon. The official warned that "time is running out," urging authorities to make available "a sustainable crossing open for predictable humanitarian supplies into southern Gaza."

1948 Nakba renewed

In the context of the renewed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, Amnesty International said that the 1948 Palestinian Nakba was rewriting itself on its 76th anniversary, amid the forced displacement of the people of Gaza, who have had to flee their homes and locations several times since October due to the Israeli aggression targeting the entirety of the Gaza Strip.

In Rafah alone, the UN reports that nearly 600,000 people have been forcibly displaced within the area, to the Gaza Strip's southern coast. The coast is ill-equipped and cannot host hundreds of thousands of refugees, especially at a time when the UN reports that it has run out of tents, which are used to build Palestinians makeshift shelters.

In a statement, Amnesty said that the forced displacement of almost two million Palestinians, alongside the Israeli destruction of Palestinian civilian property and infrastructure, highlights the occupation's "appalling" history of displacing the people of Palestine while simultaneously neglecting their right to return for 76 years.

Nakba Day, which is commemorated on the 15th of May of every year, is a day in which Palestinians remember the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, when "Israel" ethnically cleansed at least 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and properties.

Amnesty drew parallels to the forced displacement of at least 150,000 Palestinians who fled Rafah in recent days due to its invasion by Israeli occupation forces (IOF). It also emphasized that most of those currently escaping Rafah have been displaced several times since October.

In 1967, Palestinians were also forced to flee Gaza and the occupied West Bank when "Israel" occupied their properties and displaced over 350,000 of them.