Delivering aid in a war zone is always difficult. In Gaza, it’s proving even harder

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip arrive in the Mawasi area on Thursday. TEL AVIV, Israel — International aid groups are periodically called upon to provide food, water, medicine and other vital supplies to people caught in war zones. But getting that critical aid to a population on the run and under fire presents enormous challenges, humanitarian groups say, and the situation in Gaza is proving particularly difficult.

“We are being slammed left, right and center,” says Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency that aids Palestinians.

“This is very different than any other conflict or war we’ve had to manage,” Touma says, adding that it is the largest humanitarian response operation in UNRWA’s nearly 75-year history .

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 17,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 46,000 wounded in Israel’s air and ground campaign. It came in response to the surprise Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people, Israel says.

U.N. agencies and organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Doctors Without Borders say they are struggling to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, 85% of whom have been displaced by the fighting.

Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is a physician and epidemiologist who spent decades working in such war-torn countries as Afghanistan and Ukraine. He says that in Gaza, “there […]

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