Palestinians in Gaza are on the verge of starvation and are desperate for aid.

But, despite Israel officially relenting and publicly stating that it will now allow trucks to enter Gaza after a more-than-two-month blockade, only five aid trucks have actually entered the territory as of Tuesday night.

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And, even with those trucks inside Gaza, humanitarian workers have been prevented from distributing the aid inside them, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke.

The population of the Gaza Strip, more than two million people before Israel’s war on Gaza, is on the brink of famine, numerous aid agencies have said, with up to 14,000 babies at risk of dying from malnutrition if aid does not reach them. Despite the immense humanitarian cost, Israel’s siege of the Strip continues. Israel says 93 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday, but even if that were true and the aid distributed, it still amounts to approximately 20 percent of the territory’s daily pre-war needs.

How desperate is Gaza’s humanitarian crisis?

After 11 weeks of unrelenting siege, the situation within Gaza is reported by numerous agencies to be desperate.

Half a million people, or one in five Palestinians, are facing starvation. The rest of the population is, according to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity.

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“The risk of famine in the Gaza Strip is not just possible – it is increasingly likely,”  the IPC said, warning that an official famine could be declared as a direct result of Israeli action at any point between now and September.

Officially, a famine occurs when at least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages; more than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and at least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.

The term famine refers to more than simply hunger. It refers to one of the worst humanitarian emergencies possible, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary to support life.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported last week that at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2.

How has the international community reacted to the Israeli siege?

Emergency coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders – known by its French initials, MSF – Pascale Coissard, described the aid allowed into Gaza as “ridiculously inadequate”. The organisation said that Israel was only permitting food and medicine into Gaza as “a smokescreen to pretend the siege is over”.

“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while, in fact, keeping them barely surviving,” Coissard said.

Israel faces intense international pressure to lift its siege on Gaza. Twenty-three nations, including many of Israel’s traditional allies, have condemned Israel’s action in Gaza, with the United Kingdom, France and Canada threatening sanctions if aid is not allowed to reach those trapped within the enclave.

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Even the United States, typically Israel’s closest ally, has conceded that aid is not entering Gaza in “sufficient amounts” to avert the threat of famine.

Has Israel eased its attacks on Gaza?

Not particularly.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in indiscriminate Israeli attacks over the last week, taking the overall death toll to more than 53,500.

Of those, more than 3,500 have been killed since the Israeli government decided to unilaterally break a ceasefire on March 18 and resume its offensive on the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, the Israeli military confirmed that it had expanded ground operations in the northern and southern stretches of the Gaza Strip as part of what it said was an intensified campaign to gain the concessions from Hamas that had eluded it through nineteen months of intense warfare, the destruction of nearly all of Gaza’s buildings and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the majority women and children.

Despite the humanitarian cost, the decision to allow what critics say is a performative and insufficient amount of food and medicine into Gaza has proven controversial within Israel.

Israel’s ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir condemned the decision to allow the small amount of aid into Gaza, calling it “a serious and grave mistake”.

However, Ben-Gvir’s fellow traveller on the hard right, Finance Minister Beezalel Smotrich, defended the decision, saying in a televised statement that Israel would permit the “minimum necessary” so “that the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes”.

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