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Israel’s defence forces will open a second checkpoint for the screening of humanitarian aid into Gaza, a move they said would speed security checks and could double the volume of material currently being delivered into the enclave.
Israel has come under increasing international pressure over the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the new scheme is due to start on Tuesday, hours before the UN general assembly is expected to vote on a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
“This [scheme] will allow aid to be routed to two different locations for security checks, enabling us to double the amount of aid being checked every day,” a spokesperson for Cogat, the Israeli government body in charge of liaising on Palestinian affairs, wrote on social media platform X.
“We will continue to improve the aid mechanism in co-ordination with Egypt, the US administration and the UN,” she added.
Under the new scheme, aid trucks will now also be checked at the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza, but they will still need to enter Gaza through the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah, the only non-Israeli controlled entry point to Gaza.
Israel currently allows for inspections only at the smaller Nitzana crossing, and no aid will enter Gaza directly from Israel under the new scheme. Rafah will remain the sole entry point for humanitarian supplies into the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The immense destruction caused by the fighting in Gaza has driven most of the strip’s 2.3mn people out of their homes in just two months, and left residents desperately short of water, food and shelter.
Israel has said it is prepared to fight for months more to defeat Gaza’s Hamas rulers, despite growing international outrage over a military offensive that has killed more than 18,200 Palestinians and left almost 50,000 wounded, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
The Jewish state launched its offensive after Hamas militants carried out the deadliest-ever attack on Israeli territory on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, and taking a further 240 hostage.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday that serious progress had been made in Israel’s military campaign, particularly in northern Gaza, where things were nearing a “breaking point.” But, he added, “we will maintain our freedom to act, to operate militarily against any threat”.
Asked about US government concerns about reports that Israel had used white phosphorous in Lebanon, Gallant said that Israel’s security forces acted “according to international law. That is how we have acted and how we will act”.
Aid agencies have meanwhile warned of a breakdown in the social order in Gaza. The World Health Organisation has said the medical system is on the verge of total collapse and that more people could eventually die from disease than from bombings.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, on Monday described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic, apocalyptic”. Videos posted on social media showed desperate Gaza residents looting aid trucks as they drove through shattered streets.
Currently, about 100 trucks are carrying humanitarian supplies into Gaza from Egypt daily, compared with the average of 500 truckloads, including fuel, that entered every working day prior to October 7, according to the UN.