Israel releases shipment of Turkiye aid to Gaza after weeks of blocking it

Israel has lifted its blockade on a shipment of humanitarian aid from Turkiye, allowing it to reach the Gaza Strip after being blocked for almost a month.

According to a report by the London-based news outlet Middle East Eye, which cited unnamed diplomatic sources and a United Nations spokesperson, the large Turkish shipment of humanitarian aid left for Gaza earlier this week, enabling it to finally reach the besieged territory and provide a little relief for its starving population.

The aid shipment, which contains 1,049 containers of supplies including flour, chickpeas, sugar and cooking oil – enough to cover the needs of 1.1 million people for a month – had been stuck at Israel’s Ashdod port for almost a month due to Israeli contractors stopping work with the United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as part of Tel Aviv’s effort to shut the aid agency down.

As the Turkish aid shipment had initially been donated to UNRWA, Turkiye eventually came to an agreement with Israeli authorities to end the hold-up by allowing the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to deliver the shipment to Gaza in collaboration with UNRWA.

“What we can say for now is that the first batch of the wheat flour that has been stuck in the Israeli port for weeks on end has now reached Gaza,” a spokesperson for UNRWA told the news site. “We are working with WFP on releasing the rest.”

Israel has repeatedly equated UNRWA staff with Hamas members in efforts to discredit them, providing no proof of the claims, while lobbying hard to have UNRWA closed as it is the only UN agency to have a specific mandate to look after the basic needs of Palestinian refugees. If the agency no longer exists, argues Israel, then the refugee issue must no longer exist, and the legitimate right for Palestinian refugees to return to their land will be unnecessary. Israel has denied that right of return since the late 1940s, even though its own membership of the UN was made conditional upon Palestinian refugees being allowed to return to their homes and land.

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