“Our plan, detailed and tested, is in place,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN head of humanitarian operations.
“Our supplies, 170,000 metric tons, food, medicine and other supplies, are in place. And our team, courageous and expert and determined, are in place,” Fletcher told a press conference by video link from Saudi Arabia.
Large swathes of the besieged Palestinian territory have been largely reduced to rubble by Israel’s military offensive following Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023, attack.
Israel’s blockade has seen life-saving aid to Gaza slashed, with the UN declaring a famine in parts of Gaza and hundreds of Palestinians dying of malnutrition.
Fletcher said that the UN aimed to surge aid into Gaza so that hundreds of trucks enter the territory every day.
“Famine must be reverted in areas where it has taken hold and prevented in others,” Fletcher said.
Food, water, health care
The plan calls for providing food to 2.1 million people — almost Gaza’s entire population — and specific nutritional aid to 500,000 who are severely malnourished.
The plan will give food to people and also support bakeries, collective kitchens, and provide cash for 200,000 people so they can choose what food they want to buy.
The initiative will also seek to provide 1.4 million people with water and sanitation services.
“We’ll help to restore the water grid,” said Fletcher. “We will repair sewage leaks and pumping stations. We will move solid waste away from residential spaces, and will provide hygiene supplies, soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, sanitary pads.”
The UN will work to restore Gaza’s decimated health care system — crippled by Israel’s military operations — by providing equipment and medicine, among other assistance.
“We’ll help scale up emergency care, primary health, child health, sexual reproductive, maternal and neonatal health, non-communicable diseases, mental health and rehabilitation,” said Fletcher.
With most of the buildings in Gaza destroyed by Israel’s offensive, the plan calls for bringing in thousands of tents per week.
The UN also wants to get temporary schools set up for 700,000 children.
But Fletcher said that for all this to succeed, there were a number of critical things that also needed to happen.
They include sustained entry of at least 1.9 million liters of fuel every week and resumption of the flow of cooking gas.
He said relief supplies need to come in through multiple corridors, and there need to be more scanners in place so aid convoys can move more swiftly, plus security guarantees to prevent looting.
He said aid needs to come in unimpeded and there has to be money to pay for all of this.
At the moment, only 28% of the US$4 billion in a UN appeal for Gaza has been funded, said Fletcher.
And the UN will need to go beyond the 170,000 tonnes of aid it now has pre-positioned in Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Cyprus, which is not enough for the first 60 days after the war ends.
“Let’s be clear, this problem won’t go away in two months,” said Fletcher.