An aid ship carrying 200 tonnes of food to alleviate looming famine in the Gaza Strip remained docked in Cyprus on Sunday night, despite the push for maritime aid in the face of stalling ceasefire talks and the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The Cyprus government spokesperson, Konstantinos Letymbiotis, told the island’s official news agency that the exact timing of the vessel’s departure would not be made public for “security reasons”. It was later reported that due to “technical difficulties”, it might not depart until Monday morning.
World Central Kitchen (WCK), a US-based non -governmental organisation, and the Spanish charity Open Arms, set up to rescue refugees and migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, were expecting a first delivery of goods including rice, flour, lentils, beans and canned fish and meat to leave via an Open Arms vessel from Larnaca this weekend and arrive at an undisclosed location in Gaza in two or three days’ time.
But the boat remained moored in Cyprus on Sunday evening. Letymbiotis said the cargo had been inspected by Cypriot officials under a plan approved by Israel.
The WCK spokesperson Linda Roth declined to go into the “full logistical information”, citing an “evolving and fluid situation”, but said Open Arms, towing a barge, would embark as soon as possible. The charities were ready to send another 500 tonnes of aid, funded by the UAE, she added, and work had begun on Sunday on a floating jetty where the aid can be received.
In a separate development, a US military vessel carrying equipment for the construction of a second temporary pier in Gaza was en route to the Mediterranean, officials in Washington said. It could be weeks before the facility was functional, they added.
The delay in the departure of the aid ship highlights the complexity of delivering aid to Gaza through unconventional means. Israel has been repeatedly accused of not doing enough to facilitate humanitarian assistance to Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people. Its shallow shoreline waters and dearth of functioning ports make such maritime operations difficult, and it is unclear how much assistance via the new “sea highway” will affect the dire humanitarian situation on the ground.
After five months of war, the UN says a quarter of people in the besieged Palestinian territory are on the brink of starvation. The local health ministry said on Saturday that 23 people, including several children, had died of dehydration or malnutrition in the previous 10 days.
Aid agencies’ efforts to get humanitarian aid to where it is most needed have been severely hampered by a combination of logistical obstacles, a breakdown of public order and lengthy bureaucracy imposed by Israel.
Israel said it welcomed the sea deliveries and would inspect Gaza-bound cargo before it left the staging area in nearby Cyprus.
As the only two open entry points to the coastal territory are in the far south, humanitarian aid convoys have to traverse up to 25 miles (40km) of destroyed roads, with a continual threat of looting, in order to reach Gaza City and the northern areas of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, where conditions are direst. Many convoys have also been blocked or delayed by Israeli forces.
Last week more than 100 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire at an aid distribution point in Gaza City. The Israeli military said most died in a crush, but Palestinian officials and witnesses denied this, saying most of those taken to hospital had bullet wounds.
The opening of the EU-backed sea corridor from Cyprus, along with aid airdrops by the US, Jordan and others, reflects a growing frustration among even Israel’s closest allies that the country is not doing enough to get aid to Gaza’s desperate civilians. The number of aid trucks entering the territory by land over the past five months has been far below the 500 a day that entered before the war.
Israeli authorities have consistently denied the allegations. “Hamas has been stealing humanitarian aid and stockpiling equipment and food for Ramadan for terrorist leaders instead of the Gazan civilians in need,” the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said on Saturday.
“In coordination with our partners in the US, we are coordinating a temporary floating pier to get more humanitarian aid to Gaza. We will continue our humanitarian efforts while we continue to dismantle Hamas military capabilities and do everything we can to bring our hostages home.”
The most devastating violence in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attack on Israel, in which, according to Israeli figures, about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 31,000 people, displaced 85% of Gaza’s population and left more than half of the strip’s infrastructure in ruins, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory and the UN. At least 15 people were killed by airstrikes and artillery fire in Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza’s civil defence department said on Sunday.
About 100 hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinian women and children held in Israel jails during a week-long truce in November brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatari mediators, but progress on a second deal, designed to last at least six weeks, has proved elusive.
Egypt was in contact with senior Hamas and Israeli figures as well as other mediators on Sunday in an effort to restart negotiations for a ceasefire that can be implemented during Ramadan, two Cairo security sources told Reuters.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, reiterated last week that a threatened ground offensive on Rafah, Gaza’s last area of relative safety, would go ahead despite the ceasefire efforts and the onset of the Muslim holy month.
Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Israel, is now home to more than a million people, most in tents and other makeshift structures, who have fled their homes elsewhere. The southern town is a key logistics hub for aid deliveries; increased fighting there would cut off even the meagre supplies currently reaching the territory and risk massive civilian casualties.
An offensive on Rafah during Ramadan could also serve as a trigger for further violence across Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and the wider region. Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have already been drawn into the conflict.
On Saturday, the US president, Joe Biden, said he believed Netanyahu was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in his approach to the war against Hamas and that the Israeli leader “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken”.
He called an Israeli ground attack on Rafah a “red line”, but said supplying Israel with weaponry was not. “The defence of Israel is still critical, so there’s no red line [where] I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them,” he said, referring to Israel’s air defence system.
Although Washington’s rhetoric on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has strengthened over the last week or so, critics say Biden has opted not to use Washington’s leverage as Israel’s principal arms supplier to bring its ally to the negotiating table or increase the flow of aid to Gaza.
On Wednesday 20 March, 7pm-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East.
