Aid groups call for unimpeded assistance to Gaza as displaced Palestinians turn to local community kitchens for help.
Hamas has returned another body of a deceased captive to Israel as Palestinians across the Gaza Strip brace for cold winter months amid a lack of adequate shelter, food and other critical supplies.
The Palestinian group announced on Wednesday that it was returning the remains of an Israeli captive via the International Committee of the Red Cross.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later confirmed the transfer, which now leaves six captives’ remains still in Gaza.
The return of the bodies has been a major sticking point in the United States-brokered ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, with the latter accusing the Palestinian group of violating the deal by not releasing all the remains.
But Hamas says retrieval efforts have been complicated by the widespread destruction in Gaza, as well as by Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery and bulldozers to help with the search.
media’s Nour Odeh reported that the body returned on Wednesday was retrieved after four days of digging through the rubble in the eastern Gaza City neighbourhood of Shujayea.
The area “has been under the control and operation of the Israeli army for months”, said Odeh, explaining that an Egyptian team of experts took part in the effort.
She added that Israel has made clear that “it will not deliver on its commitments in phase one of the ceasefire agreement” – including the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza – until all the bodies are returned.
Separately, the Israeli army killed two Palestinians in central Gaza, claiming that they crossed the ceasefire’s yellow line near Israeli positions.
Gaza health authorities said Israeli fire also killed a Palestinian collecting firewood in central Gaza, the Reuters news agency reported.
‘A sham truce’
The United Nations warned earlier this week that while aid deliveries have increased since the ceasefire came into effect in October, the amount of food and other assistance getting into the territory remains insufficient.
“We need full access. We need everything to be moving fast,” Abeer Etefa, a senior spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters on Tuesday.
“We are in a race against time. The winter months are coming. People are still suffering from hunger, and the needs are overwhelming,” said Etefa, urging more crossings into Gaza to be opened to allow supplies to get to Palestinians in need.
Authorities in Gaza said last week that Israel had allowed an average of 145 aid trucks into Gaza per day between when the ceasefire came into effect and the end of October – just 24 percent of the 600 trucks that are meant to be entering daily as part of the agreement.
The Norwegian Refugee Council also said on Wednesday that the Israeli authorities had rejected 23 requests from aid agencies to bring shelter supplies, including tents and blankets, into Gaza.
“We have a very short chance to protect families from the winter rains and cold,” Angelita Caredda, the group’s Middle East and North Africa regional director, said in a statement.
“More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered. The international community must act now to secure swift and unimpeded access.”
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians – many of whom remain displaced after their homes were destroyed in Israel’s two-year bombardment – have been forced to seek out food at community kitchens across the Strip.
“Life is difficult for us, because we own nothing and we don’t have anything to buy food with. There is no work,” Abdel Majid al-Zaity, a 55-year-old father of nine from the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, told media in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“Without the soup kitchens here, we couldn’t have eaten. These soup kitchens keep us alive and continue living,” he said.
Another displaced Palestinian, 43-year-old Hind Hijazy, also said she struggles to feed her family despite the ceasefire. “Every day I come to the soup kitchen here to be able to provide food for my children,” the mother of six said.
“They say there is a truce, but it is a sham truce because the siege is still in place.”
