After a year without fresh food, a sudden reprieve in Gaza: Apples

When they found out recently that fresh food had finally arrived, the children—ages 4, 6 and 10—were elated.

“My children were so happy to see apples for the first time in nine months," said Dalou, a father of two girls and a boy. “They jumped out of their beds when they knew they would eat fruit."

The reaction of the children, who live in Gaza City with their father and mother, reflects the level of food insecurity that many people in Gaza experience. While the U.S. and other countries have sought to increase food deliveries to Gaza, aid groups say it hasn’t been enough.

A majority of the roughly 2.2 million people who live in the enclave are facing severe hunger. Dozens have died from malnutrition, according to the United Nations. Months of relying on canned food, with little to no access to fresh fruit, vegetables or protein, is having a severe impact on people’s health.

In recent weeks, however, some in northern Gaza suddenly got a reprieve.

Aid groups say they have recently been able to deliver fresh fruit and frozen meat to the north, where many Palestinians haven’t seen such items for months.

Intense bombardment and fighting made it difficult, and frequently impossible, to deliver aid there earlier in the war. After the Israeli military moved into Rafah with the stated goal of uprooting Hamas in May, many aid organizations had to shift their operations away from the southern Gaza city, which had served as a nerve center for them. They have relied more heavily on land crossings in northern Gaza since then.

Cogat, an Israeli military body responsible for aid coordination, said it hasn’t recently changed its policies on aid deliveries. “We emphasize that coordination requests from organizations are received equally and individually, without distinction between the northern and southern parts of the Strip," the agency said.

Arwa Suliman, a 29-year-old mother of two in northern Gaza, received a chicken this past week for the first time since the war started. Suliman and nine relatives, including her children, parents and siblings, will split the chicken after months of living on limited canned food, which has caused health problems in the family.

“We decided to keep the chicken for Friday," she said. “That’s the day of the week we traditionally cooked special meals before the war."

The deliveries, however, aren’t an indication that Gaza’s hunger woes are coming to an end. Far from it.

Food shortages overall in Gaza have only worsened in the months since Israel pushed into Rafah, shutting down the main border crossing there. The U.N. said last month that the volume of aid that has entered Gaza has decreased by more than half since early May.

August had the lowest number of trucks entering the enclave since May, according to U.N. data, which the body said may include some gaps due to dangers in monitoring all of the crossings. About 1,600 trucks entered Gaza in August, compared with about 3,000 in July and 2,500 in June.

The International Court of Justice, the top U.N. tribunal, ordered Israel earlier this year to allow better aid flow into the enclave and to reopen the Rafah border crossing.

The flow of aid in the south has worsened in recent months. The U.N. says the number of humanitarian missions Israel has permitted in southern Gaza decreased by 28% in August, compared with July, while it has increased by 10% in the north during the same period. Cogat, the Israeli military body, said coordination requests are refused due to operational constraints.

Efforts to bring in supplies through routes other than Rafah have frequently failed or have been insufficient, according to aid groups. Costly humanitarian airdrop missions from the U.S. and its Arab and European allies have barely made a dent in Gaza’s starvation crisis. A $230 million U.S. project that built a pier meant to facilitate aid flow into Gaza was permanently dismantled in July following a series of problems. Aid deliveries have also been complicated by a number of deadly incidents, including an Israeli airstrike on a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers in April.

It is unclear whether the recent deliveries of fresh fruit, vegetables and frozen meat in northern Gaza will expand, or even continue.

In addition to the limited border crossings into Gaza, distributing perishable items such as meat presents significant challenges, with frequent power blackouts in Gaza.

“The need to keep perishables like meat frozen or refrigerated is also a logistical obstacle now, given the very limited availability of refrigerators or power sources to run them," said Steve Fake, a spokesman at American Near East Refugee Aid, a U.S.-based humanitarian organization that recently distributed in northern Gaza a rare 22-ton shipment of frozen meat—a monthslong endeavor. “The need for ensuring a continuous cold-chain was a major source of delay."

When Dalou, the father in Gaza City, in the strip’s north, received his 15-pound box of fruits and vegetables earlier this month, neighbors who were yet to receive one offered more than $150 for it.

“I had to refuse," he said. “My kids badly need it."