A little over a month into the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the humanitarian response is in a state of chaotic flux amid intense international political jockeying over the enclave’s future and extreme uncertainty about what will happen next.
A US plan approved by the UN Security Council on 17 November hands oversight of humanitarian aid – and Gaza’s governance overall – to a newly established Board of Peace headed by US President Donald Trump.
But Israeli authorities have so far resisted relinquishing their grip on humanitarian efforts, and have continued to restrict the entry of aid and sideline established organisations – including by using new NGO registration rules to deny nearly all requests from established international NGOs to bring goods and personnel into Gaza.
Inside Gaza, Palestinians say slightly more food is available, but the situation has not improved nearly as much as they had hoped since the 10 October truce.
Zohoor Abu Kalloub, a 25-year-old mother of three living in a small tent in a displacement camp in Gaza City, told The New Humanitarian that the limited amounts of aid being allowed in by Israel are still not reaching her family.
“We wait in the morning for one pack of bread,” Zohoor said. “We spread it with za’atar. That’s our breakfast and lunch.” For dinner, the family opens a can of beans or chickpeas that they have stockpiled.
Meanwhile, there is still no clarity on what form constantly shifting US and Israeli plans for the future of Gaza will eventually take. Numerous plans have been floated in the past month, with two consistent themes – the idea of partitioning Gaza and some type of scheme to move or forcibly displace Palestinians to newly constructed communities.
Both visions would violate international law and further complicate already immensely difficult humanitarian efforts, according to aid workers and legal experts.
As the political jockeying over Gaza’s future plays out, Israeli forces have also not stopped killing people in Gaza. The number of daily attacks has significantly decreased, but since the ceasefire came into effect Israel forces have killed at least 312 Palestinians and wounded 760 others, as of 20 November, according to local health officials.
Several aid workers said they worried that the repeated ceasefire violations will become the status quo – a “ceasefire in name only”, as one put it – like in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have continued to routinely carry out attacks despite a truce agreement that came into effect nearly a year ago.
The New Humanitarian spoke to seven senior aid workers for this story, almost all of whom requested anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive information and because of concerns that Israeli authorities would retaliate against their organisations.
Other than the reduction of attacks, the aid workers reported that little has changed over the past month since the ceasefire came into effect. Israeli obstruction continues, making it impossible to do much more than the bare minimum of keeping people alive.
“There are a few more trucks going in, the looting has reduced – but people are still displaced, they’re still living outside… There are a few less strikes, but not none,” one senior aid worker said. “For [aid groups] it has not changed much, and on the ground, also not really.”
A new aid structure
According to US plans, a new Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), led by the American military, is supposed to take over coordinating with aid groups from COGAT, the Israeli military body currently in that role.
The CMCC was set up after the ceasefire came into effect to coordinate and monitor its implementation. It is operating out of a large warehouse in southern Israel about 20 kilometres from the border with Gaza. Military, intelligence, and political personnel from the US, Israel, Arab and European countries, and elsewhere are crafting post-war plans for Gaza and overseeing humanitarian aid efforts. An official Palestinian presence at the CMCC is notably absent.
US officials told aid groups that a transition to the CMCC leading aid efforts was supposed to take place on 7 November, but so far there has been no practical change on the ground, several aid workers told The New Humanitarian. Israeli officials have also publicly insisted that they will maintain final authority over aid distribution.
Some aid workers initially expressed cautious optimism to The New Humanitarian that, if implemented as intended, the CMCC could have some useful elements – mainly because it has added US and other foreign military and civilian staff to their conversations with Israeli authorities, where they can directly witness how those authorities are obstructing aid delivery.
Although that has happened, it has so far made no practical difference: Israeli officials continue to call the shots at the CMCC and have not meaningfully reduced any of the barriers to humanitarian work in Gaza, several aid workers said.
“There has been no shift in terms of engagement at all. The last ceasefire [from January to March 2025] came with many relaxations on restrictions – now we have to negotiate aggressively for every tiny thing,” the senior aid worker said. Israeli authorities are “treating humanitarian agencies basically like criminal entities,” they added.
The same authorities seem to have no problem allowing private sector goods into Gaza “with literally zero monitoring or accountability”, the same aid worker noted.
On the ground, aid workers described initial meetings between COGAT and US officials as awkward, with Israeli officials determined not to allow their American counterparts to take charge.
The US soldiers running the CMCC’s efforts arrived believing narratives promoted by the Israeli government blaming the UN, established NGOs, and Hamas for problems delivering aid in Gaza over the past two years, according to aid workers.
Three aid workers said that American soldiers seem to have come around to understanding that Israeli obstruction is the main issue after sitting in on meetings with intransigent COGAT officials. “I’m as surprised as anyone to be saying this: the US military… have been very quickly sympathetic to what we have been saying,” the senior aid worker said. “They’ve really understood very quickly that the problem is not logistical; it is policy.”
But US personnel at the CMCC are still “trying to implement common sense solutions to address ‘logistical’ barriers and coming up again and again against the fact these are policy decisions that are not based on common sense or enabling assistance,” the senior aid worker said.
“They’ve been here for a month and nothing has changed,” a second aid worker said. “Aid is still being deliberately obstructed, items randomly denied through a system that uses uncertainty to prevent sustainable solutions.”
Any improvement depends on whether there is sufficient political will and pressure to force Israeli officials to relinquish their grip on aid access and coordination, aid workers said. “As horrifying as this is, it just completely depends on how much Trump is willing to keep pushing on this,” the first aid worker added.
Another aid worker questioned how the US could be trusted as a mediator on aid, or anything else in the region, given its relationship with Israel. The US has backed Israel’s war effort – which has been labelled a genocide by a UN commission of inquiry and numerous experts – over the past two years with both political support and more than $21.7 billion in military assistance.
“How can a genocide-enabler state actually be the one that is going to promote peace?” the second aid worker asked.
Cappuccino mix and chocolate, but few fresh foods
As the jostling for control continues, the amount of aid Israeli authorities are allowing into Gaza falls far short of what was agreed to in the October ceasefire.
The deal called for 600 trucks carrying humanitarian assistance per day to enter Gaza. The US government has claimed that 700 trucks per day are entering, but UN data puts that number at just over 100 per day. The vast majority of cargo entering is food, while essential goods like tents and medical equipment are still denied or face significant delays.
In November, about half of households in Gaza reported better access to food, and on average, people reported eating two meals per day, compared to only one in July. Overall food access, however, has stayed about the same for many and remains insufficient throughout the territory, according to the World Food Programme.
Rather than aid, Israeli authorities are privileging commercial trucks. But the uneven supply is heavy on carbs, packaged foods, and sweets, and light on nutrition. Markets that have re-emerged amidst the rubble of destroyed homes and between tents are stocked with products like beans, pasta, sweet carbonated drinks, instant coffee, and chocolate bars.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are rare and expensive. Legumes are available, but dairy, eggs, or other sources of protein are scarce. Israeli authorities continue to prevent aid groups from bringing in meat – which they have said “falls outside the scope of humanitarian aid”, the UN’s emergency aid coordinating body reports – so it is only available through commercial imports. A kilo of frozen chicken is about 80 shekels, or $25 – far beyond the means of most in Gaza’s devastated economy.
As a result, those in Gaza with money can buy chocolate more easily than eggs and powdered cappuccino mix more easily than milk.
For many, communal soup kitchens remain a primary source of food and water. Meals consist mostly of rice, lentils, and pasta, with some kitchens now adding small quantities of vegetables like cauliflower and green beans.
Trying to survive
Families who spoke with The New Humanitarian described days that still revolve around securing food and water.
When residents of Gaza City who were displaced by Israel’s August-October offensive began returning after the ceasefire, many described a sense of shock. The city they left no longer existed. Already severely damaged, much of what had remained standing before the latest offensive had been flattened.
Those whose houses were still partially intact returned and set up tents inside damaged rooms or in the courtyards. Others went back to the south because they have nowhere to stay or because access to water is extremely limited.
In Sheikh Radwan, northwest of Gaza City’s centre, Alaa, 28, and Zainab Shakshak, 27, and their three children – aged four, two, and seven months – have packed their family into a tent pitched outside their damaged home, a single room of which remains intact. Their meals are mostly the same every day, they said: breakfast is bread with processed cheese or a little za’atar. Lunch is pasta. There is no meat, no eggs, and almost no vegetables.
Alaa walks half an hour across rubble to reach a makeshift well near a roundabout where residents dug until they hit groundwater. He used to take his children on these walks or to go to the market for food, but has started leaving them at home. “I cannot take my son outside,” he explained. “He sees food in the stalls and asks for it. I cannot buy it for him. It breaks me.”
Their seven-month-old daughter, Safaa, who was named after her aunt who was killed in the war, has stopped breastfeeding, and Zainab cannot afford formula, which Israeli authorities have blocked from entering Gaza for much of the past two years. So Zainab has been feeding the baby semolina mixed with sugar. Safaa was diagnosed with moderate acute malnutrition last month and hasn’t gained weight in months.
Just trying to survive takes up all of Zainab and Alaa’s time. “I go out for water. I go out for bread. If domestic water arrives, someone must stand and fill every bottle,” Zainab says. “This is why I am never free for anything else.”
Continued restrictions
The fact that Israel has only opened two crossings into Gaza for most of the ceasefire is one of the reasons why supplies still remain so limited – but it isn’t the only reason. Both of the crossings are in the south, which means aid convoys have had to travel on circuitous routes over heavily damaged roads to reach people in the north.
On 12 November, Israeli authorities finally agreed to re-open a third crossing into northern Gaza. But in late October, they also closed the main north-south aid corridor along Salah al-Din Road, forcing traffic onto smaller, more crowded routes where trucks have to travel slowly and are more vulnerable to looting, both by armed gangs and desperate people who try to take what they can due to the overall lack of supplies.
At least 17 NGOs, many of which have been working in Gaza for decades, have had aid shipments blocked because they have refused to sign on to new registration rules put forward by Israel earlier this year. Most established NGOs view the rules as a way for Israel to assert its control over aid organisations and to muzzle advocacy.
UNRWA, the largest aid provider in the region and a pillar of the response, has been unable to bring goods into Gaza since it was banned by Israeli authorities in January; it continues to operate inside Gaza.
A parallel aid system that emerged earlier in the war and that circumvents the traditional UN-led response is also apparently being given preference, with food and some tents being delivered to people in Gaza directly from third countries – notably Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Israel has consistently tried to sideline the UN-led system over the past two years in favour of aid delivery methods it can more easily control and that serve its interests.
To receive food and other aid through this system, families provide ID numbers and family details to community leaders, who submit lists to committees working with these countries.
After limiting the entry of tents and shelter supplies into Gaza for months, Israeli authorities have allowed these countries to deliver significantly more tents than organisations working through the UN-coordinated system.
At this point, essentially anything getting into Gaza is helpful, aid workers said. “We’re at a point of desperation, where winter is coming and people need shelter,” a third aid worker said.
But at the same time, some expressed concern about increasing deliveries of aid through a parallel system which, they noted, is largely opaque to the UN and other aid groups and lacks a clear commitment to humanitarian principles.
“To me, it’s a trend that demonstrates the continued marginalisation of the UN and INGOs operating within the UN-coordination system,” the same aid worker said. “The reality is that neither the Egyptians nor the Emirati government are known for being particularly outspoken about Israeli violations.”
More than food parcels and winter clothes
Despite the shortages and obstruction, aid workers say they have been able to make progress increasing access to basic necessities and vital services – including water, healthcare, and bakeries – in some areas.
But finding workarounds can only go so far when basic items like bottles for baby formula, equipment to repair water mains, and pesticides to control rodents are all blocked, according to UNICEF spokesperson Rosalia Bollen.
Syringes and fridges needed for a children’s vaccination campaign are also being blocked, according to UNICEF. COGAT has denied this, but the agency routinely provides misleading information about aid access.
Most goods related to education and mental health efforts are also being blocked. Israeli authorities have labelled these items as “not humanitarian”, Bollen said.
As a result, UNICEF has resorted to turning aid pallets into school desks and chairs – creative answers to entirely manufactured problems. “We have all that material that is ready outside that donors have paid for already. There’s no reason that that can’t enter,” Bollen added.
What is being allowed in – some medical supplies, nutrition items, jerry cans for fetching water, blankets, and winter clothes – favours quick fixes over long-term repairs, aid workers said.
“Families in Gaza need so much more than a bunch of humanitarians handing out food parcels and winter clothes,” Bollen said. The whole system remains extremely tenuous, she added: “It’s like a tap that can be turned off and on.”
Looming over everything is the profound uncertainty and confusion surrounding Gaza’s future between a new form of international custodianship overseen by the US and now backed by a UN resolution, plans for some sort of partition and reconstruction, and Israel’s absolute refusal to accept the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state.
“Everyone is jumping at the chance to determine Gaza’s fate, and missing from the conversation are the actual people who have had their lives destroyed and survived a genocide,” the third aid worker said.
Edited by Eric Reidy.
Ghada Abdulfattah is a Gaza-based journalist, story-teller, and multimedia producer.
Riley Sparks is a Canadian journalist covering migration and human rights.
This article first appeared in The New Humanitarian.
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