Trucks bringing bodies and detainees into Gaza hold up aid, says UNRWA

Trucks bringing both bodies and detainees from Israel back to Gaza through the main crossing point of Karm Abu Salem regularly hold up aid deliveries, the head of the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

A deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza has raised pressure on Israel to boost supplies into the enclave to curb disease among the 1.7 million people displaced by the Israeli-Palestine conflict and relieve hunger amid famine warnings from the United Nations.

UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, told journalists on Tuesday that aid supplies into Gaza had improved in April but listed a series of ongoing difficulties, including regular crossing closures “because they (Israel) are dumping released detainees or dumping sometimes bodies taken to Israel and back to the Gaza Strip.”

Asked for more details, UNRWA spokesperson, Juliette Touma, said that Israel had sent 225 bodies to Gaza in three containers since December that were then transported by the UN Agency to local health authorities for burial, shutting the crossing temporarily. She did not have details of the circumstances of their deaths and said it was not UNRWA’s mandate to investigate.

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On the detainee transfers, some of which have been previously reported by Reuters, she said that they had been transferred from Israel back to Gaza “dozens of times”.

Israel’s COGAT, a military branch in charge of aid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva referred questions on the transfers to Jerusalem.

On aid deliveries, he said: “Mr. Lazzarini is deflecting from UNRWA’s own failures and responsibilities. Again today, there was a backlog of more than 150 trucks screened by Israel in Karm Abu Salem not picked up by UN agencies.”

Tensions are high between Israel and UNRWA with the former accusing 19 UNRWA staff of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attacks against Israel that killed 1,200 people and prompted the latter’s military campaign in Gaza. Israel’s allegations are being examined by UN investigators although a separate review found Israel has yet to provide evidence for accusations that hundreds of UNRWA staff are members of terrorist groups.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

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.

Karm Abu Salem is one of just two crossings the UN says is currently open between Gaza and its neighbours, Egypt and Israel.

Palestinian authorities have previously said that Israel has returned bodies from the Israeli-Palestine conflict after confirming they were not hostages. They said they were trying to identify them and figure out where they were killed.

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