Just twelve aid trucks of food and water into the North Gaza Governorate in 2.5 months 

The following week, Israel permitted 14 more trucks. Due to the delay in receiving the final authorisation from the Israeli authorities, only three trucks were able to enter. They carried ready-to-eat rations, wheat flour and water and reached the intended destination of Mahdia al-Shawa school in Beit Hanoun where displaced families were sheltering. While the aid was distributed, within hours soldiers and quadcopters fired on the school and people were ordered to leave. The next day the Israeli military returned and shelled the school, burning down the buildings. 

On 20 December, Israel finally permitted a further 9 UN trucks to deliver food and water to an aid distribution point in Beit Hanoun, where civilians sheltering in schools were able to collect it. People said that they were barely surviving and had so little to eat, they were eating leaves. 

Last month the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned that there is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in the north and the risk of famine persists across the whole of Gaza. People are being pushed to unimaginable, desperate measures to survive. Children and women are searching through piles of rubbish for food scraps, bare-handed and often barefoot, risking disease and injury from sharp metal and exposed to the threat of unexploded bombs. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world with the healthcare system decimated and little critical supplies, including anaesthetic. 

Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Director said: 

“The situation in Gaza is apocalyptic and people are trapped, unable to find any kind of safety. The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter. It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing.  

“Gaza has been widely destroyed and the entire population is suffering. The public sector has collapsed and the humanitarian system is on its knees. We plead with the entire international community – stop this, now. You have the diplomatic and economic levers to make Israel stop. Every day that passes without a ceasefire is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians.” 

Constant shelling also continues in the north - the Palestinian Civil Defence (PCD) estimates that more than 2,700 people have been killed in the North Gaza governorate since the siege. The bodies of half of those killed have not been able to be recovered and more than 10,000 have been injured. 

Around 130,000 people have now been forcibly displaced from the North Gaza Governorate, 70 per cent - 91,000 - are women and girls, who are trying to survive in abandoned buildings and overcrowded shelters in Gaza City. The mass displacement of people has further strained resources and complicated aid delivery in already dire conditions.