A UN team inspects an unexploded 1,000-pound bomb on the main road in Khan Younis, Gaza.
Despite Israel's recent pledge to allow increased assistance, the situation of Gazans remains dire.
McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator responsible for mitigating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, refuted Israel's claim that more than 1,000 trucks have entered Gaza in the past few days, and that the Palestinian side has only counted about 800 trucks.
The veteran aid official also stressed that humanitarian personnel share coordinates with the warring parties, but that the system designed to defuse the conflict "has always been inaccurate," and he expressed concern about this and other operational issues at his first meeting with the Israeli military earlier this week.
"Israel can easily say that we have released 1,000 trucks and it is your business to deliver distributions within Gaza," he said. He reiterated his call on the Israeli authorities to recognize that their responsibility as an occupying Power "can only be achieved in ...... The aid will not end until it reaches the civilian population in Gaza".
Safe vacuum
The UN official said long delays at checkpoints and the "security vacuum" that existed within the enclave continued to hamper the delivery of assistance to the most urgent needs. He said the UNICEF aid team's vehicle was detained "for hours" at a checkpoint on Salah Ardeen Road on Thursday.
McGoldric stressed that so far this month, about 60 hours have been wasted in this way. "Sometimes, [the release] is too late and the delivery is sometimes canceled because you can only travel north during the day. Then Israel will accuse us of canceling the convoy to the north. ”
Currently, there are only three roads in the Gaza Strip accessible to humanitarian convoys: the middle route through the Salah Al-Radine Road, the coastal Al Rashid Road and the military road on the eastern side of Gaza. "We've never been able to run on all three, or even both, roads at the same time in the last month or more," McGoldrick noted. In addition, all these roads are in "very bad condition."
He said the consequences of the "very limited" delivery of aid to northern Gaza were already evident, as exemplified by low birth weight babies.
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Life-threatening hunger
In his remarks in Jerusalem, McGoldric described his visit to Kamal Adwan Hospital two weeks ago. "Every patient" in the children's ward there faced life-threatening hunger.
"The last child I saw was in an incubator, he was a two-day-old boy, but he wasn't born prematurely – he was born nine months later – but he weighed 1.2 kilograms. This will have long-term consequences, which will affect the child's development. ”
McGoldrick insisted on the need for a direct telephone line with the Israeli military "and to be able to speak to them." He noted that the attack on the convoy of the non-governmental organization World Central Kitchen two weeks ago was just the latest example of the frequent dangers faced by aid teams operating in Gaza.
"We have to have handheld radios, VHF radios, and everything that we have in any ordinary crisis," he said. But we don't have those devices. The Israeli authorities did not allow the use of these devices on the grounds that they could be used by Hamas fighters.
Medical evacuation is urgently needed
The World Health Organization has also expressed concern about the dire health situation in Gaza and has called for a structured medical evacuation system to treat patients, rather than relying on the current "temporary" arrangements.
Thanos Gargavanis, a trauma surgeon and emergency officer at WHO, said the largest hospital in Gaza, the al-Shifa Hospital, had been subjected to a two-week Israeli military attack that had left the specialized surgical area a "huge crater".
Speaking in Gaza, Gagawanis said the hospital had been completely destroyed, including oxygen concentrators, lab equipment and other critical equipment such as CT scanners and other machines needed to provide life-saving care.
"The hospital building itself was burned, the walls were gone, there were shrapnel and shell holes everywhere. The WHO official also said that a survey of the hospital last week found makeshift graves or bodies scattered across the clearing, either with nothing to cover up or covered with plastic sheeting.
WHO and other UN agencies are working to identify the dead found at Shifa Hospital, or in the future through DNA testing, so that they can be buried with dignity.
"After this destruction, we feel like we're back 60 years ago, when there was no medical imaging technology and no lab tests," Gargavanis said. We would like to emphasize once again that hospitals should never be militarized. ”