The assertion prompted a strong denial from the U.N., whose spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, placed blame for failures squarely at Israel’s feet.
“Kerem Shalom [a crossing point for humanitarian aid into Gaza] is not a McDonald’s drive through where we just pull up and pick up what we’ve ordered, right?” Dujarric told a press briefing in New York. “There are tremendous bureaucratic impediments. There are tremendous security impediments. And, frankly, I think there’s a lack of willingness to allow us to do our work.”
Sa’ar’s comments — which came during the first visit to Ukraine by a top Israeli official since 2023 — also contradicted EU officials who told diplomats on Wednesday that Israel was falling short of its commitment to let more aid enter Gaza, according to two EU diplomats. One of them said that the bloc’s assessment rested on the number of trucks entering Gaza daily, which remained below an agreed threshold.
In further comments to POLITICO, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said its personnel faced “immense bureaucratic challenges” to reach and distribute the aid: “We stand by to deliver at scale, as we did during the last ceasefire when 600 to 700 truckloads of aid were delivered daily. But for that, we need the right operational conditions on the ground, including approvals by the Israeli authorities for the U.N. and our partners to use safe routes within Gaza that don’t pose security threats.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Thursday morning that the body has the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies waiting in Jordan and Egypt.
“Just outside Gaza, in warehouses — and even within Gaza itself — tonnes of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched, with humanitarian organizations blocked from accessing or delivering them,” a statement by Medecins Sans Frontieres and over 100 other international aid organizations said Wednesday.