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GENEVA —A senior U.N. official warned of a catastrophic outcome for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living precariously in war-torn Gaza if humanitarian aid delivery into the territory is not massively expanded in the coming days.
"We have to have a system that allows us to be safe and protected when we deliver aid, and that is the responsibility of Israel as we operate in the territory that they occupy," said Jamie McGoldrick, outgoing U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories.
Speaking Friday from Jerusalem, McGoldrick told journalists in Geneva that it was difficult and dangerous for aid workers to move around and deliver aid in Gaza, noting that a UNICEF vehicle was hit Tuesday by live ammunition while waiting to enter northern Gaza.
That incident followed the April 1 killing by Israel of seven World Central Kitchen workers who were delivering aid to Gaza, and the attack upon and looting of a 14-truck World Food Program convoy destined for northern Gaza last month.
Such developments illustrate that "the system that we use for our own protection and safety is not working," he said.
Referring to the convoys that were attacked, McGoldrick said, "I think the humanitarian workers there then feared for their own safety. And as far as we know, the deconfliction and notifications system has got flaws.
"We do not have communications equipment inside Gaza to operate properly as you would have in another situation, and secondly, we do not have a hotline or an emergency number to call in case of an emergency incident that arrives, and so it is important that we get that addressed."
McGoldrick said he met with Major General Yaron Finkelman, head of the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), this week and presented him with a list of requests that would enable the delivery of humanitarian aid "safely, effectively and at the necessary scale throughout Gaza."
He said he told the Israeli major general that "we are working in a very hostile area, without the possibility of contacting each other. We do not have radios. We do not have mobile networks.
"If we have a serious security incident, we do not have a hotline. We have no way of communicating with the IDF that we are facing problems at a checkpoint or facing problems en route."
McGoldrick said the major general told him that he would move things forward and that a member of the IDF would be part of a new humanitarian coordination and deconfliction cell to improve the situation of Palestinians in Gaza.
"We have the commitment from the major general, and we are going to keep him to that commitment and make sure we get that set up and running as soon as possible," he said.
McGoldrick noted that not enough aid was entering northern Gaza to satisfy the enormous needs of tens of thousands of people who have been deprived of food, medical care and other lifesaving essentials.
"We can see by the health situation. We can see by the nutritional situation," he said. "Children are showing serious signs of malnutrition, and the fact that the IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] highlights that 70% of the population is in danger of slipping into famine, we need to see a change in that, but that is not happening."
Another area of great concern, one that is uppermost in the minds of humanitarians, is a potential incursion by Israel into Rafah. McGoldrick said people he met on a visit to Gaza a few days ago were extremely worried about a possible offensive, concerns he shared with Finkelman.
"We have been insisting since day one that we would require time to prepare and pre-position supplies to places where people might move," he said. "We cannot do that right now because we do not have enough supplies coming in on a regular basis.
"We are barely able to feed the people and support the people currently. And if we were to add on another dimension of that contingency planning process for a Rafah incursion, we are nowhere ready for that," he said.
To counter a health system that no longer is functioning, he said, WHO is setting up emergency medical field hospitals all the way up north and in the middle part of Gaza, to try to provide services "if Rafah gets locked into some sort of military incursion and we cannot operate from there."
"We face a real dramatic situation ahead of us," he said.
"And if there were to be a Rafah incursion, figures being mentioned are that of evacuating some 800,000 people from Rafah. There is no space as we see it right now where you can accommodate that number of people," he said.
"We are ringing the alarm bells that we are nowhere near ready to address the needs. We will not be part of helping any people move or be part of any evacuation, but we have to be ready to support them if they arrive at another destination," he said. "Some people have been displaced five or six times already."