RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Aid workers struggled Monday to distribute dwindling food and other supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by what Israel says is a limited military operation in Rafah, as the two main crossings near the southern Gaza city remained. closed.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said 360,000 Palestinians fled Rafah over the past week, out of 1.3 million who were sheltering there before the operation began. Most had already fled fighting elsewhere during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel has portrayed Rafah as the militant group’s last stronghold, ignoring warnings from the United States and other allies that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians. Hamas, meanwhile, has regrouped and is fighting Israeli forces in parts of Gaza that Israel bombed and invaded early in the war.
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Monday that another 100,000 Palestinians have been displaced in northern Gaza following recent Israeli evacuation orders there. That would mean that around a fifth of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been displaced over the past week.
Thirty-eight trucks of flour arrived through the western Erez crossing, a second access point into northern Gaza, said Abeer Etefa, spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program. Israel announced the opening of the crossing on Sunday.
But for the past week no food has entered the two main crossings in southern Gaza.
The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been closed since Israeli troops seized it a week ago. Fighting in the city of Rafah has made it impossible for aid groups to access the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, although Israel says it is allowing supply trucks to enter on its side.
Over the past week, the Israeli military has intensified shelling and other operations in Rafah while ordering the population to evacuate parts of the city. Israel insists this is a limited operation focused on dismantling tunnels and other militant infrastructure along the border with Egypt.
Israeli forces were also fighting Palestinian militants in Zeitoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, areas where the army had launched major operations earlier in the war.
Etefa said the WFP was distributing food from its remaining stocks in the areas of Khan Younis in the south and Deir al-Balah further north, where many of those who fled Rafah have fled.
Within Rafah, only two organizations associated with WFP were still able to distribute food and there were no bakeries in operation.
“Most distributions have stopped due to evacuation orders, displacement and lack of food,” he said.
Israeli protesters stopped an aid convoy bound for Gaza at a checkpoint between the occupied West Bank and Israel. Videos circulating on the Internet show them dumping some of the aid from trucks and destroying it. Police said several arrests were made, without providing further details.
Almost the entire population of Gaza depends on humanitarian aid to survive. Israeli restrictions and ongoing fighting have hampered humanitarian efforts, causing widespread famine and “full-blown famine” in the north, according to the UN.
The director of Kuwait Hospital, one of the last functioning medical centers in Rafah, said medical staff and residents living near the facility had been ordered to evacuate. Sohaib al-Hams warned that any evacuation of the hospital would have “catastrophic consequences.”
Meanwhile, international charity Oxfam warned of disease outbreaks in Gaza following an estimated $210 million worth of damage to water and sanitation infrastructure, mass displacement and the onset of summer.
“Oxfam staff in Gaza have described piles of human waste and rivers of sewage in the streets, through which people have to jump. They also reported that people had to drink dirty water and that children were bitten by insects swarming around the sewage,” he said in a statement.
The war began when Hamas and other militants swept into southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Militants still hold about 100 captives and the remains of more than 30 after most of the rest were freed during a ceasefire last year.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures. Israel says it has killed more than 13,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Israel marked a particularly somber Memorial Day on Monday, with ceremonies commemorating fallen soldiers, including the more than 600 killed since Oct. 7, more than half of them in the initial attack. The sirens announced two minutes of silence at 11 a.m.
In a ceremony at the Mount Herzl cemetery outside Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again vowed to defeat Hamas.
“We demand and will demand a high price from the enemy for their criminal acts. We will achieve the objectives of victory and, at the center of them, the return of all our hostages,” he stated.
Protesters and hecklers disrupted some of the ceremonies, reflecting growing discontent with Israel’s leaders that has brought thousands of protesters to the streets in recent months. Critics blame Netanyahu for the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to occur and for failing to reach an agreement with Hamas to release the hostages.
Months of internationally mediated talks on a ceasefire and the release of hostages reached an apparent stalemate last week after Israel launched its raid on Rafah. Israel has rejected Hamas’ central demands to end the war and withdraw its forces from the territory, saying doing so would allow the militant group to regain control and launch more October 7-style attacks.
US President Joe Biden’s administration, which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support for the overall offensive, has expressed growing impatience with Israel, saying it will not provide offensive weapons for a large-scale attack on Rafah.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Sunday that Israel could face a “long-lasting insurgency” if it does not present a realistic plan for post-war governance in Gaza. Israel has rejected U.S. proposals for the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza with help from Arab states because those plans depend on progress toward establishing a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu opposes.
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Krauss reported from Jerusalem and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press journalists Lee Keath in Cairo, Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
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