General
Aid Agencies Rush Supplies Into Gaza as Fragile Cease-Fire Holds for Now
The United Nations and other relief organizations delivered tents and other help into the enclave as the truce continued despite a standoff between Israel and Hamas.
Relief agencies rushed trucks full of tents and other humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip on Thursday, trying to take advantage of a fragile cease-fire that was holding despite a standoff between Israel and Hamas over hostage releases and alleged truce violations.
Earlier this week, Hamas indefinitely postponed a planned release of hostages that had been set for Saturday and accused Israel of violating the cease-fire, mainly by failing to allow enough tents and other aid into Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded on Tuesday by warning that “intense fighting” would resume in Gaza if the hostages were not freed.
That sent the United Nations and other relief agencies scrambling to deliver more aid — including by pressuring Israel to let more shipments into Gaza — to try to salvage the cease-fire, now in its fourth week.
The director of the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said Thursday morning that only 40 percent of the hundreds of thousands of tents that Israel was required to provide had entered the territory. In an interview with AlAraby TV, the media director, Salama Maarouf, said other essential supplies also had not arrived despite what he described as a slight uptick in aid trucks entering Gaza in the past two days.
On Thursday, Israeli media said that a convoy of trucks carrying thousands of tents for displaced Palestinians had entered northern Gaza.
A day earlier, the United Nations’ relief agency reported that 801 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Wednesday alone to “seize every opportunity afforded by the cease-fire to scale up” assistance, it said in a statement.
