Palestinians attempt to collect water in a displaced persons camp in Gaza, on May 20, 2025. (Credit: Bashar Taleb/AFP.)
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are desperately waiting on Wednesday for a distribution of humanitarian aid, as international pressure mounts on Israel, accused of allowing only a fraction of aid into the besieged territory, a fraction that does not meet the immense needs of the population.
The Israeli army is intensifying its offensive in the Gaza Strip with the stated goal of annihilating the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, whose attack on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel triggered the war, and bringing back the hostages being held in the Palestinian territory. "The situation is unbearable. No aid has come in and no one is distributing anything to us," said Oum Talal al-Masri, 53, over the phone to AFP from a neighborhood in Gaza City.
"We can barely prepare one meal a day. Aid is not a luxury — we have an urgent and desperate need for everything: food, medicine, drinking water, and hygiene products," she added.
After more than two and a half months of a total blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, Israel announced it had allowed a hundred U.N. trucks in on Monday and Tuesday. The authorization of limited aid to Gaza by Israel was described by the UN as a "drop in the ocean," and 22 countries demanded a "full resumption of aid, immediately." The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) complains of complications imposed by Israel that hinder the delivery of aid to its final recipients once it has entered Gaza.
"Just words"
"For now, the aid is just words," laments Masri, as the expanded military offensive launched Saturday by Israel intensifies. "Our teams transported 19 dead, mostly children, and dozens of injured after air raids by Israeli warplanes in various areas of the Gaza Strip last night and early today," said Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for civil defense, in the morning.
Footage from AFPTV shows continued Israeli strikes, particularly on the southern Gaza Strip since daybreak.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders accused Israel of allowing only "ridiculously insufficient" aid into Gaza, given the territory's needs, solely to avoid being accused of "imposed famine on the population." "This plan is a way to instrumentalize aid, turning it into a tool for the military objectives of Israeli forces," declared Pascale Coissard, MSF emergency coordinator in Khan Younis, Gaza, in a statement.
Pope Leon XIV issued an "urgent appeal" on Wednesday to allow "decent humanitarian aid" into Gaza and to "end hostilities," "whose atrocious price is paid by children, the elderly, and the sick."
In the face of the catastrophic humanitarian situation and the intensification of Israeli military operations in Gaza, many European countries have stepped up pressure. The European Union will review its association agreement with Israel, in effect since 2000, announced its chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, on Tuesday. The United Kingdom said it would suspend negotiations with Israel on a free trade agreement.
"Complex reality"
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed on Wednesday the voices raised abroad to reject "policies of blockade, famine, displacement, and land seizure" and "the use of aid by Israel as a weapon and a political tool to achieve its illegitimate goals." "External pressures will not divert Israel from its path to defend its existence and security," Israeli Foreign Affairs said Tuesday, estimating that the review of the EU-Israel association agreement reflected "a total misunderstanding of the complex reality Israel" faces and encouraged "Hamas to maintain its positions."
The war was triggered on Oct.7, 2023, by an unprecedented Hamas attack that resulted in the death of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of the 251 people then abducted, 57 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army. The Israeli retaliatory campaign has resulted in at least 53,592 deaths in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry, considered reliable by the UN.
