International protests and rising reports against images of weakened children Hunger-related death It put pressure on Israel to help the Gaza Strip more. This week, Israel suspended its fight between parts of Gaza and some of the food that was sprayed through the air.
But aid groups and Palestinians say changes are progressive and not enough to reverse what food experts say. The worst case scenario Hungerness” unfolds in war-torn territory.
New measures It has brought an increase in the number of aid trucks entering Gaza. However, none of them reaches the United Nations warehouse for distribution.
Instead, almost every truck is stripped of cargo by crowds who overwhelm the road as they drive from the border. The crowd is a mixture of food armed with knives, shafts or pistols and Palestinians desperate to gangs, looting and selling goods.
Many people have also been killed trying to get help. Witnesses say Israeli forces often fired at crowds around aid trucks, with hospitals reporting hundreds of people dead or injured. The Israeli army says it simply fired warning shots to control the crowd or at people approaching that force. The alternative food distribution system run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is also undermining violence.
The international air force of aid has resumed. But the aid group says the airdrops will only provide a small portion of what the trucks can supply. Many also landed in areas that were now inaccessible when Palestinians were told to evacuate, while others plunged into the Mediterranean, kicking people out to retrieve their soaked bags of flour.
Below is why assistance has not been distributed:
This satellite image provided by Planet Labs PBC shows a crowd of Gaza people surrounding the aid convoy of Khan Younis on the Gaza Strip on July 26, 2025 (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
Lack of trust
The UN says long-standing restrictions on aid invasion create an unpredictable environment, and while a suspension in combat may allow more aid, Palestinians say aid will not reach them.
“This has led to many convoys being directly offloaded as they continue to face deep levels of hunger and struggle to feed their families.
“The only way to reach a level of confidence is to have a sustained flow of aid over a period of time,” she said.
Israel has completely prevented it from entering Gaza for 25 months starting in March. Official Israeli figures show that the lockdown was eased in late May, allowing on average around 70 UN aid truck trickle a day. This is well below the 500-600 tracks per day required by UN agencies.
Much of the aid is stacked just inside the Gaza border as the UN trucks were unable to pick it up. The United Nations says it is due to military restrictions on Israeli movements and Gaza’s lawlessness.
Israel claims it is allowing sufficient amounts of goods in Gaza, and “we will try to reach aid that will help more consistent collection and distribution by UN and international organizations to reach more aid that will reach those most needed in Gaza,” Kogat said in a statement this week.
New measures this week have led Cogat to say 220-270 trucks per day were put into Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, allowing the UN to pick up more trucks and reduce some of the backlog at the border.
Palestinians are holding aid truck back to Gaza city on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
The aid mission is still facing “constraints”
Cherevko said there have been “minor improvements” in Israeli forces’ movements and “reduced waiting times” for trucks along the road.
However, she said the aid mission “still faces constraints.” Delays in military approval mean that trucks will remain idle for a long time, and the military still limits the routes that trucks can take to a single road, making it easy for people to know where the trucks are heading, UN officials say.
Antoine Leonard, who leads the World Food Program business in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said it took nearly 12 hours to bring 52 trucks onto the 10-kilometer (6-mile) route on Wednesday.
“While we are doing everything we can to actually respond to the current wave of hunger vs. Gaza, the conditions we have are not enough to actually make sure we can break that wave,” he said.
Aid workers say the recent changes Israel has made are primarily cosmetics. “These are the token gestures dressed to theatre, progress,” said Bushila Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead for Israeli and Palestinian territories.
“Of course, some tracks, a few hours of tactical pauses, and energy bars of rain from the sky will not resolve the irreversible harm that has been done to an entire generation of starvation and malnutrition for months,” she said.
Palestinians were transporting humanitarian assistance from the World Food Program convoy heading to Gaza City on June 16, 2025.
Law and Order Breakdown
As despair grows, Palestinians risk their lives to get food, and violence is on the rise, aid workers say.
Muhammad Shehada, a political analyst in Gaza who is a visiting fellow of the European Council of Foreign Relations, said the recovery of aid has been transformed into the survival of the fittest. “It’s Darwin’s dystopia and the strongest survivor,” he said.
The truck driver said he drove food four times from the Jikim intersection on Gaza’s northern border on Wednesday. He passed a checkpoint at the edge of Israel’s military-controlled border zone, and the crowd surrounded his truck, surrounded him, wrapping everything in it.
He said some were hopeless people and others were armed. He said for the first time on Tuesday, some of the crowd threatened him with knives and small arms. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing his safety.
Another truck driver, Ali Al Darbashi, said that during one trip in July, an armed man shot his tires, stole everything, including diesel and batteries, and beat him. “If people aren’t starving, they won’t rely on this,” he said.
Israel said it provided UN armed escorts. The UN refused, saying it was not seen as working with parties to the conflict, pointing to the shootings reported when Israeli forces were present.
Palestinian youth carry bags of aid that landed in the Mediterranean after being flew around to central Gaza on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, July 29, 2025.
Uncertainty and humiliation
Israel has not given a timeline on how long the measures it implemented this week will last. The uncertainty and urgency among the Palestinians led them to grab aid before it was over.
Palestinians say the way it is distributed is inhumane, such as being dropped from the sky.
“This approach is inappropriate for Palestinians and we are humiliated,” said Rida, a displaced woman.
Momen Abu Etayya said he almost owned as his son asked to get help that fell into the sea among the aids.
“I threw it into the sea just to bring something to him,” he said. “I was able to bring him three biscuit packets.”
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Associated Press reporter contributed Wafaa Shurafa of DEIR AL-BALAH GAZA strip, Fatmacaredo of Michael Bee Zecker of Cairo, Egypt and Washington, DC.
