(NewsNation) — A new corridor for the delivery of humanitarian goods to Gaza is now open. The maritime route from Cyprus to Gaza follows a string of airdrops carried out by multiple nations.
A ship carrying 200 tons of aid, operated by the Spanish aid group Open Arms, left Cyprus on Tuesday towing a barge laden with food sent by World Central Kitchen.
Israel has been under intense pressure to get more help to the people of Gaza as it continues its offensive.
One of the crossings that has been most crucial in getting humanitarian aid to the people who need it is Kerem Shalom.
Every single truck carrying food, water, or medical supplies going into Gaza is inspected.
Colonel Elad Goren, head of Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, says they can inspect 44 trucks an hour. In recent weeks, he said, they have been clearing over 200 a day.
“Almost 99% of trucks that go into inspection are approved,” Goren told NewsNation. “The issue is not with our inspection but with the distribution capabilities of the international organizations.”
Israeli officials say that aid groups have yet to pick up hundreds of trucks on the Gaza side that are ready to go — but the United Nations agency in Gaza says these distribution routes are not always safe.
The Associated Press reports the Palestinian Health Ministry accused Israeli forces of launching an attack near an aid distribution point in Gaza late Thursday, killing 20 people and wounding 155, as they ran to get food from a convoy.
Last month, witnesses said there was another attack, as Israeli troops fired on a crowd of Palestinians also trying to get food at an aid convoy. More than 100 were killed in the chaos.
Juliette Touma, director of communications for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said there have been hits on aid convoys either on the way up or way down from northern Gaza.
“The population (in Gaza faces) displacement, the bombardment, the war,” Touma said. “The shops were running out of basic supplies. What was allowed in has been very, very small. We’ve seen a slight increase in the number of trucks that were coming in. By far (it’s) not enough.”
The last time UNRWA was allowed and able to bring in supplies safely to northern Gaza was Jan. 29, Touma said, according to Reuters.
Israel opened a northern aid delivery corridor where six trucks went in this week. That part of the enclave has proved to be the most difficult spot to get aid as most trucks enter from the south.
“There’s no shelter or anything, there’s no food, no water, nothing,” one Palestinian woman, Umm Nael Al-Khlout, said. “Even the most basic living essentials like bread do not exist. We forage wild plants when it rains and cook them. That’s our situation.”
Goren denied that there’s a “humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” even though aid groups, experts and Western elected officials have all described what’s happening there as one.
Instead, he said people are trying to create a “narrative” about what’s happening in Gaza.
“This narrative is the only way that they think we will stop the war,” Goren claimed. “We’ll continue the war. We will engage. We will dismantle Hamas.”
A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N., and most residents have been displaced, including 1.4 million who are sheltering in Rafah. At least 31,490 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since Oct. 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted by Hamas militants. Israel then declared war.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, at a recent press conference, said Biden administration officials have made it “clear” aid going into Gaza needs to be increased.
“We have seen innocent Palestinian civilians needing important essentials: food, water, and medical assistance,” she said Wednesday. “And that is something that we want to make sure that we can get as much assistance in because there is a humanitarian crisis, period, happening in Gaza.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.