JERUSALEM — A shipment of aid that arrived on Gaza’s shore on Friday is expected to bring some respite to starving Palestinians in the enclave’s north — but how and when it will be distributed has yet to be seen.
Tons of flour, rice and canned foods were offloaded from the ship on Saturday, according to World Central Kitchen, the charity that collected the food and organized the maritime aid shipment. The much-needed aid was was transported 200 miles from the Larnaca port of Cyprus to Gaza by the Open Arms, a ship named after the charity.
On Sunday, World Central Kitchen, which was launched by celebrity chef José Andrés and which runs a network of around 60 kitchens across the Gaza Strip, said the aid was in a warehouse and had yet to be distributed.
The statement countered an update from COGAT, Israel’s military liaison with the Palestinians, which said that 12 World Central Kitchen trucks had “distributed the aid” from the maritime delivery in northern Gaza.
World Central Kitchen emphasized that the aid was still awaiting distribution. COGAT did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.
The location of the warehouse where the aid was being held and the plan to distribute the food was not immediately clear.
John Spencer, a retired Army infantry officer who now serves as chair of urban warfare studies at the U.S. Military Academy’s Modern War Institute, told NBC News in a phone interview Sunday he wasn’t surprised by the lack of public information around the plans for the distribution of the aid shipment.
Noting a recent string of deadly incidents in which Palestinians have been killed while waiting for or trying to access much-needed aid, he said: “It makes a lot of sense to me that details of the distribution of the aid are being very close-held.”
He also noted that organizers would be unlikely to distribute aid from the same point more than once due to safety concerns. “They’ll probably move points around,”…
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