LEILA FADEL, HOST:
As Daniel just mentioned, this is still the early stages of the Gaza ceasefire deal. One part of that involved a commitment from Israel to let in 600 trucks per day of humanitarian aid. But Israel today kept a key border crossing from Egypt to Gaza closed and cut in half the amount of aid it's allowing in, in retaliation for what it says are delays in the handover of hostage remains from Hamas. To talk about this, we're joined now by Jonathan Fowler. He's with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, and he joins us from Amman, Jordan. Good morning.
JONATHAN FOWLER: Good morning.
FADEL: Jonathan, is any aid flowing into Gaza right now?
FOWLER: There is some aid going in. But clearly, the amount is falling far, far short of what is necessary for the survival of the population. I mean, this is a territory of more than 2 million people that's basically been in a man-made famine and starved through lack of aid for many, many months. And then when aid was finally resumed partially in May, the flow of aid was incredibly insufficient. What's coming in now is - it's - I mean, something is better than nothing, but it's close to nothing.
FADEL: I mean, you - your organization - where is the aid right now? Are you getting what you need in?
FOWLER: This is a big problem because the ban that was imposed on aid supplies coming in in March has not been lifted for us. And the reason this is such a problem is we have around half of the United Nations' stocks in the proximity of the Gaza Strip that could start going in immediately if we were given a green light. I mean, for example, we have enough food for the whole population for around three months. We've got - most of our stuff is stored in Egypt, so it's right next to the Gaza Strip, or it's here in Jordan, where I'm speaking from, which is, you know, a couple of hours' drive away. So it's achingly close, but it's just not allowed in. And this has to change. It has to change overnight because lives depend on this.
FADEL: How much is your ability to operate hampered by Israel's broad accusations that UNRWA staff members were involved in the October 7 attack? I mean, for context here, it's an allegation Israel has made with scant evidence. The U.N. carried out its own investigation and found that nine of thousands of staff members could have been involved and fired them. And how much is it just the broad ban, or how much is it hampering your particular staff?
FOWLER: Yes. So regarding just - regarding the allegations, of course, they've never been independently corroborated. And in fact, even in the nine cases, it was not possible to substantiate them. So it was a...
FADEL: Yeah.
FOWLER: It was highly conditional. Put it that way. But indeed, I mean, this was then used by the Israeli authorities as an argument for pushing through Parliament - the Israeli Parliament - a law to outright ban our activities in what Israel considers its sovereign territory. In that case, that's East Jerusalem. But then, to prevent any contact with UNRWA by Israeli officials, which is problematic in any situation, but particularly problematic in a situation of a humanitarian disaster.
Having said that, we have continued to operate on the ground in the Gaza Strip. We have 12,000 staff in the Gaza Strip who have been working flat out during this war, doing, for example, medical care for thousands of people, water supply, sanitation, psychological support for people with trauma, all of these kind of things, and indeed, an element of schooling. I mean, it's more like informal learning because, of course, the kids are not in school.
So we've been able to continue doing that inside the Gaza Strip, but we've of course faced this problem that we cannot get the aid in. But, you know, humanitarian operations are incredibly complex, and different organizations along the chain may do different things. So the key thing here is that whoever and however aid is got into the Gaza Strip, it is going to have to be distributed through UNRWA's network of team members, go through UNRWA's warehousing inside the Gaza Strip. And also, we have an incredibly robust system of registration. So we know if somebody collect - came - comes to collect aid, they've received their aid for their quota for, you know, a week or something like that.
FADEL: Yeah.
FOWLER: So they can't come back tomorrow and get more.
FADEL: Really quickly - even if 600 trucks were allowed in tomorrow, is that enough to meet the needs?
FOWLER: That's a sort of benchmark minimum which was applied during the previous ceasefire, from January to March this year. It's not, you know, people living a glorious life because of that amount. We're talking about that is the minimum required for survival. Anything less than that is just less, and therefore, the consequences on the ground are stark.
FADEL: Jonathan Fowler is a spokesperson with the United Nations relief agency known as UNRWA. Thank you for your time.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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