Fury as 1000’s of tonnes of meals for ravenous Palestinians caught in warehouse
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper voiced her anger and frustration after visiting a depot in Amman, Jordan, where 5,000 pallets intended for Gaza are languishing due to Israeli restrictions
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper expressed fury at the sight of thousands of tonnes of aid to feed starving Palestinians that is stuck in a warehouse.
Around 5,000 pallets – 4,000 metric tonnes – of necessities like wheat flour, tinned goods, yeast and sugar are languishing in a World Food Programme (WFP) depot outside Amman, in Jordan, due to Israeli restrictions. There is enough aid in Jordan to get 150 trucks into Gaza every day, five days a week, for three months, according to officials.
But the key crossing from Jordan into the West Bank has been closed to goods vehicles by Israel. Speaking to the Mirror, Ms Cooper said: “We’ve got UK funded aid that needs to go to Gaza and it’s being held up here in Jordan.
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“The wheat alone in this warehouse could feed 700,000 people for a month and yet we’ve got children in Gaza who are still going hungry. That is wrong and it has to be fixed. That’s why I’m calling for the Jordanian route into Gaza to be reopened.
“I’m calling for the reopening of all the crossings and to make sure that we can get this aid flooded back into Gaza, because frankly the people of Gaza can’t wait.” She went on: “It just feels so deeply wrong.
“You just feel so frustrated and angry to see that we’ve got food that could be reaching families but currently isn’t.” The amount of aid getting into the war-ravaged strip has increased since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was agreed last month.
But it falls well below the levels agreed in Donald Trump’s peace plan. NGOs have accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government of blocking aid shipments and restricting access for charities to deliver aid into the enclave.
Ms Cooper is mounting a diplomatic push to flood Gaza with aid, alongside the UN, other allies, and a US-led coordinating committee, which is drawing up plans to increase aid further.
“We’re trying to work swiftly with everyone on practical plans to keep the peace process moving and get aid in,” she said. She urged Israel to lift restrictions and open the crossings as part of the peace process, which included letting aid in.
Ms Cooper said progress “has to be” made before winter, with more than a million people in Gaza in need of shelter. Supplies of warm clothes and shelter kits are also stuck in warehouses run by charities like Unicef.
She said: “This is why it’s so important to get this Jordanian route moving, because the aid is ready, the teams are ready to get it in and get it to people as well.
“There is a bigger reconstruction programme to make sure you can rebuild proper homes for people, not just temporary shelter.
“But most immediately we need the temporary shelter and aid kits in.” Musonda Kasonde, deputy representative of operations at Unicef, said the situation in Gaza is “desperate” and people need help urgently before the winter takes hold.
Speaking to the Mirror in Jordan, she said: “We communicate with our colleagues in Gaza regularly and it is actually desperate. All of them are seasoned emergency professionals and describe it as an emergency like they’ve never witnessed in their careers.”
She added: “Winter is coming. Children need shoes, they need warm coats. You just can’t imagine. A hungry child, without warmth – these are things we take for granted.
“Just open the access and let us get things going.”
