UN official: Gaza assistance access is “at a low point”

Deliveries to areas of the besieged north of the enclave are virtually impossible, putting assistance access in Gaza at a low point, a UN humanitarian official said on Friday.

The comments contradict a prior assessment by the United States this week that Israel is not now preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the Gaza Strip, so circumventing constraints on military aid from the United States. Israel has stated that it has made a concerted effort to support Gaza’s humanitarian needs.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson, Jens Laerke, responded to a question at a Geneva press briefing about whether humanitarian access had improved by saying, “From our perspective, on all indicators you can possibly think of in a humanitarian response, all of them are going in the wrong direction.”

The state of access is poor. “Despairing, chaos, death, destruction, and displacement are at an all-time high point,” he continued.

Concerning north Gaza, where civilians have been told to go south due to the ongoing incursion by Israeli forces that has lasted more than a month, Laerke expressed his concerns. According to Israel, the goal of its actions there is to stop Hamas fighters from reassembling.

“We have seen and been particularly concerned about the situation in the north of Gaza, which is now effectively under siege and it is near impossible to deliver aid in there. So the operation is being stifled,” Laerke said.
“One of my colleagues described it as, for humanitarian work… you want to jump. You want to jump up and do something. But what he added was: but our legs are broken. So we are being asked to jump while our legs are broken.”

In a letter dated October 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin provided their Israeli counterparts with a list of urgent actions Israel must take to address the deteriorating situation in Gaza within 30 days.

The letter stated that failure to do so might potentially affect US military assistance to Israel. The claims that Israel has not fulfilled the demands are denied by other non-UN aid organizations.