A Palestinian boy carries an aid box after storming trucks loaded with humanitarian aid brought in through a new U.S.-built pier, at the beach road of Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, May 18, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Food and medicine for Palestinians in Gaza are piling up in Egypt because the Rafah crossing remains closed and there has been no aid delivered to a U.N. warehouse from a U.S.-built pier for two days, U.N. officials warned on May 20.

Senior U.N. aid official Edem Wosornu said there were insufficient supplies and fuel to provide any meaningful level of support to the people of Gaza as they endure Israel’s military onslaught against Hamas militants.

“We are running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza. We have described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on earth. It is all of these, and worse,” she said.

She told the U.N. Security Council that the closure of Rafah crossing from Egypt had stopped the delivery of at least 82,000 metric tonnes of supplies, while access at Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing was limited due to “hostilities, challenging logistical conditions, and complex coordination procedures.”

Egypt said on Monday that the crossing is closed due to the threat posed to aid work by Israel’s military operation.

Israel is retaliating against Hamas in Gaza – an enclave of 2.3 million people – over a brutal Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militants. Aid access into southern Gaza has been disrupted since Israel stepped up military operations in Rafah, a move that the U.N. says has forced 900,000 people to flee.

Famine is imminent, warns U.N.

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the U.N.S.C. that Israel had no other choice but to go after Hamas in Rafah and that the removal of civilians from an active war zone should be supported and not condemned.

“They have moved to a designated humanitarian zone that is being filled with aid. And our hope is for many more civilians to leave Rafah and move out of harm’s way,” he said. “Temporary evacuation is reversible, but the loss of life is not.”

However, Ms. Wosornu described the situation for Palestinians at the new sites as horrendous.

In northern Gaza, where the U.N. warns a famine is imminent, Ms. Wosornu said the Erez crossing had been closed since May 9 and the newly-opened Erez West crossing “is now being used for limited quantities of aid, but now areas in the vicinity of this crossing are also under evacuation orders” by Israel.

Poor flow of aid

Aid deliveries began arriving at a U.S.-built pier on Friday as Israel comes under growing global pressure to allow more supplies into the besieged coastal enclave. The U.N. agreed to assist in coordinating aid distribution from the floating pier, but has remained adamant that deliveries by land are the best way to combat the crisis.

The U.N. said that 10 truckloads of food aid – transported from the pier site by U.N. contractors – were received on May 17 at a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir El Balah in Gaza.

But on May 20, only five truckloads made it to the warehouse after 11 others were cleaned out by Palestinians during the journey through an area that a U.N. official said has been hard to access with humanitarian aid.

“They’ve not seen trucks for a while,” a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. “They just basically mounted on the trucks and helped themselves to some of the food parcels.”

The U.N. did not receive any aid from the pier on Sunday or Monday. “We need to make sure that the necessary security and logistical arrangements are in place before we proceed,” said the U.N. official.

Aid offloaded at the pier comes via a maritime corridor from Cyprus, where it is first inspected by Israel. The pier operation is estimated to cost $320 million and involve 1,000 U.S. service members.

U.S. officials have said the pier would initially handle 90 trucks a day, but that number could go to 150 trucks. The U.N. has said at least 500 trucks a day are needed to enter Gaza.

The United Nations has also warned of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza. Ms. Wosornu said 6,54,000 litres of fuel had been delivered to Gaza since May 6, one quarter of the fuel allocations it had been receiving.

Frankfurt:

The postponement of a Palestinian author’s award ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair due to the Israel-Hamas war triggered condemnation Monday from high-profile authors, while several Arab publishing groups withdrew.

The annual fair is the world’s biggest publishing trade event, bringing together thousands of book industry players and authors.

After the Palestinian group launched the deadliest assault in Israel’s history on October 7, organisers condemned the “barbaric” attack and said Israeli voices would be given prominence at the book fair.

But it was also announced that Palestinian author Adania Shibli would not be honoured with the LiBeraturpreis, a German award, at the fair, as had been originally planned.

She was due to receive the honour for her book “A Minor Detail,” a work based on the real events of a 1949 rape and murder by Israeli soldiers.

It is organised by the group Litprom, which awards it each year at the book fair.

But the group said they had decided not to go ahead with the ceremony “due to the war started by Hamas”.

It said in a statement that it was looking for a “suitable format and setting for the event at a later point,” adding that: “Awarding the prize to Adania Shibli was never in question.”

But the decision was condemned in an open letter with over 600 signatories, including Abdulrazak Gurnah and Olga Tokarczuk, both winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and other writers including Pankaj Mishra, William Dalrymple and Colm Toibin.

The organisers were “closing out the space for a Palestinian voice”, said the letter, published on Monday.

“The Frankfurt Book Fair has a responsibility, as a major international book fair, to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down,” it added.

As well as authors, it was signed by publishers and literary agents.

Some Arab publishing industry groups announced at the weekend they were pulling out of the fair, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday.

Announcing their withdrawal, Sharjah Book Authority, in the United Arab Emirates, said in a statement that “we champion the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people.

“We believe that this role is more important than ever.”

The Emirates Publishers Association released a similar statement, while the UAE-based National newspaper reported the Arab Publishers’ Association in Egypt had also pulled out.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated on October 13 across the Middle East in support of the Palestinians and against the intensifying Israeli bombardment of Gaza, underscoring the risk of a wider regional conflict as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, day 7 LIVE updates here

From the typically sedate streets of downtown Amman in Jordan, to Yemen’s war-scarred capital of Sanaa, crowds of Muslim worshippers poured into the streets after weekly Friday prayers, angered by devastating Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that began after the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel last Saturday.

At the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli police were permitting only certain older men, women and children to enter the sprawling hilltop compound for prayers, trying to limit the potential for violence. Only 5,000 worshippers made it into the site, the Islamic endowment that manages the mosque said. On a typical Friday, some 50,000 perform the prayers.

An Associated Press reporter watched police allow just a Palestinian teenage girl and her mother into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried to get in, some of them even over the age of 50. Young Palestinian men who were refused entry gathered at the steps near Lion’s Gate, eyes downcast, until police shouted at them and shepherded them outside the Old City ramparts altogether.

“We can’t live, we can’t breathe, they are killing everything that is good within us,” said Ahmad Barbour, a 57 year-old cleaner, red-faced and seething after police blocked him from entering for prayers.

“Everything that is forbidden to us is allowed to them,” he added, referring to the Israelis.

The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before. Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

Also read | Palestinians rush to buy food, struggle under strikes as Israel readies possible ground operation

Hundreds of young Palestinian worshippers who had been turned away from the Old City threw down small prayer rugs on the street in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz and prayed in the open. When some of the men started shouting, Israeli police charged into the crowd with batons and fired rounds of tear gas at the worshippers, wounding at least six people, said the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Thousands demonstrated in Amman in neighboring Jordan, some crying out: “We are going to Jerusalem as millions of martyrs!”

“What do they want from Palestine? Do they expect them to leave?” asked protester Omar Abu-Sundos. “For what remains of Palestine to leave? They won’t leave.”

In Beirut, thousands of supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group waved Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, chanting slogans in support of Gaza and calling for “death to Israel.” The Iranian-backed militant group in neighboring Lebanon has launched sporadic attacks since the Hamas assault, but largely stayed on the sidelines of the war.

However, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general warned that it would be “on the lookout” for the United States and British naval vessels heading to the Mediterranean Sea. U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly warned Iran and the regional militias Tehran backs to stay out of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“Your battleships do not interest us, nor do your statements frighten us,” Naim Kassim said at a rally in a southern suburb of Beirut. “When the time is right to take action, we will do so.”

In Baghdad, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square — the protest hub of Iraq’s capital — for rallies called by the influential Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

“We, as Iraqis, know the pain of having an occupier on our land,” said protester Alaa al-Arabyia, referring to the U.S. occupation of Iraq following its 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. “Palestinian women have husbands, loved ones and sons fighting the occupation. We stand with them in their struggle.”

Across Iran, a supporter of Hamas and Israel’s regional archenemy, demonstrators also streamed into the streets after prayers. In Tehran, they burned Israeli and American flags, chanting: “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” “Israel will be doomed,” and “Palestine will be the conqueror.”

“The Palestinian people are fed up, now your idea is to destroy Gaza, the houses of the people,” Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi said in a speech in the country’s southern Fars province. “The people of the world and Palestine will cause trouble for you.”

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, protesters — including Palestinians from the Yarmouk refugee camp formed after the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — also rallied.

“I tell the people not to leave their homes otherwise they will be like our grandparents who left Palestine and came to Syria but never returned,” Ahmad Saeed, a 23-year-old Palestinian living in Syria, said, referring to the 1948 war.

In Yemen’s Sanaa, held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels still at war with a Saudi-led coalition, demonstrators crowded the streets waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The rebels’ slogan long has been: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse of the Jews; victory to Islam.”

“We are ready to participate actively and send hundreds of thousands of mujahedeen … .to defend Palestine, the Palestinian people and the holy sites,” the Houthi government said in a statement Friday.

After Friday prayers, Egyptian demonstrators ringed the historic Al-Azhar Mosque in downtown Cairo, the Sunni Muslim world’s foremost religious institution, chanting that Israel remained their enemy “generation after generation.” They repeated the traditionally nationalistic slogan, “We give our souls and blood to Al-Aqsa.”

In Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, some worshippers trampled on American and Israeli flags.

“International media and international courts turn a blind eye to the injustices with the Palestinians. But they only notice the actions that the Palestinians take to defend themselves,” said Faheem Ahmed, a worshipper in Karachi. “They call it terrorism.”