After long dismissing global alarm about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israeli officials have shifted in recent days to acknowledging that a degree of hunger is afflicting civilians in the Strip.

But while certain areas of the war-town enclave are lacking food, this is because the United Nations has failed to distribute large quantities of aid that are sitting on the Gaza side of the border, Israel claims.

A senior officer from Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories brought journalists to the Gazan side of the Strip’s Kerem Shalom crossing on Friday, where he declared that aid piling up there was “due to a lack of cooperation from the international community and international organizations.”

David Satterfield, who served as the US humanitarian envoy during the early months of the Gaza war, hit back at the Israeli claim in a recent interview.

“It is disingenuous — knowingly false — for any party to assert that it is failure, lack of courage, or deliberate conspiratorial withholding of aid by the UN or international organizations that is responsible for the humanitarian suffering in Gaza,” Satterfield told The Times of Israel.

When aid transport roads become too badly damaged by Israeli military operations, when there are insufficient deconfliction mechanisms in place to ensure that aid workers don’t accidentally get hit by IDF fire, when authorizations aren’t given by the army for aid to be picked up and delivered, and when looting becomes increasingly widespread due to food insecurity, an environment is created where the UN is physically prevented from doing its job, the former US envoy elaborated.

While still blaming the UN, Israel appeared to tacitly recognize its own complicity in the humanitarian crisis on Saturday, by announcing a series of steps to alleviate the situation, including establishing new corridors for the UN to safely deliver aid, instituting humanitarian pauses to its military operations in densely populated areas, reconnecting the power line to Gaza’s only desalination plant, and launching its own airdrops of food and medicine for the first time.

Although those steps are critical, Satterfield maintained that if they are not accompanied by a broader surge of aid into the Strip from as many crossings as possible, the hunger crisis will not be fully mitigated.

Since Israel lifted its aid blockade in late May after 78 days, assistance has primarily been delivered through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and existing mechanisms operated by the UN and international organizations.

Both mechanisms have been prone to violence, with UN trucks repeatedly looted, including by thousands of desperate Palestinians, unsure when they and their families will receive their next meal.

GHF boasts that it manages to transport aid to........

© The Times of Israel