Israel rejects aid items including crutches, chocolate croissants from entering Gaza: Report

By Gozde Bayar

Israel has rejected or restricted access to items ranging from life-saving medical supplies to toys to chocolate croissants from entering the Gaza Strip, a media report said Friday.

The Washington Post contacted 25 aid groups, UN agencies and donor countries to ask about aid delivery to Gaza. Food, water and blankets do not require approvals, but agencies submit requests for items they think have a chance of being rejected, such as communications equipment and sanitation or shelter items.

“I think it’s unprecedented,” said Shaina Low, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Palestinian territories. “It’s just nothing that aid agencies have ever had to deal with.”

Some items that Israel blocked include anesthetics, chocolate croissants, crutches, generators for hospitals, maternity kits, power supply equipment and solar panels.

Limited scanning machines and operational hours at border inspection sites slow the delivery of aid, according to Jamie McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory.

“You’d think after five and a half months of a crisis of this kind, the systems in place would be a bit more predictable and settled. In fact, they are not. And that’s why we’re struggling,” said McGoldrick.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating relief in Gaza, said allegations that it restricts aid are “false” and it largely permits the entry of humanitarian supplies, subject to a security inspection.

The UN and other aid agencies said Israel controls when they can retrieve the goods from the Gaza side of the crossings and Tel Aviv also must approve routes aid trucks take within the enclave.

Israel has waged a military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, which killed less than 1,200 people.

More than 33,600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the seaside enclave, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while much of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has urged it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.