‘We’re bracing for what comes after’ the truce, MSF Gaza director says
Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remain in desperate need of humanitarian aid. To find out more about the situation, The World’s host Marco Werman spoke with Avril Benoit, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States.
Israel and Hamas reached an agreement on Monday to extend the truce in the Gaza Strip for another two days.
The temporary ceasefire has seen the release of dozens of hostages from Gaza and more than 100 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Palestinian prisoners there, including teenagers, were greeted by a joyful crowd as they stepped off an International Committee of the Red Cross bus in the West Bank. And one group of the hostages set free from Gaza included a dual US-Israeli citizen, age 4, Abigail Edan.
US President Joe Biden expressed relief when he spoke to reporters about her release.
Meanwhile, many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remain in desperate need humanitarian aid — food, water and medical supplies for a health system that’s in tatters.
To find out more about the situation, The World’s host Marco Werman spoke to Avril Benoit, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders (or MSF for the abbreviation of the group’s French name) in the United States.
Marco Werman: Your organization has a large staff in Gaza, Avril, so you have a pretty good idea of how things are working, or not, on the ground. I want the before-and-after view here. Before the ceasefire took hold four days ago, what did daily life look like for Palestinians?
Avril Benoit: Well, we are weeks and weeks into a siege where they require absolutely everything. And the hospitals themselves, working at 200% bed occupancy rates, shelves bare of medicines, machinery not able to function because of a lack of electricity linked to the lack of fuel for the generators, ambulances and hospitals and clinics being attacked. For us, it’s been a devastating time, with repeated violence inflicted upon humanitarian aid workers across the board, but for us specifically, doctors being killed while on duty. So for us, you know, we’re starting from so far behind in order to even be able to take advantage of this pause — which we do not consider a ceasefire, a ceasefire would really be much more long term — but this pause, this truce, it was just so difficult before. Now, at least during these last few days, we haven’t had mass casualty events with hundreds of severely wounded people, including children. We’re bracing ourselves for what comes after when the war goes back to its full scale with the indiscriminate attacks on civilians. And so for us, the the before was certainly a horror show. And despite, as much as I’d like to give you an optimistic view of what’s happened over the last couple of days and what is possible during a brief truce like this, we really are just beside ourselves at the thought that this is going to start all over again.
I mean, in terms of humanitarian deliveries to Gaza right now, what has been happening at the Rafah crossing at Gaza’s southwestern border with Egypt, where aid often comes in? What are we seeing there right now?
Well, there are reports, of course, and official confirmation of the couple of hundred trucks. These trucks are, without a doubt, loaded with essential supplies, but just think about it, we have lack of shelter. Yes, OK, there will be some shelter, but when you’ve got 1.7 million people estimated to be displaced now from the conflict, you know that a few trucks carrying tents is not going to cut it. We also lack food, water and we haven’t been able to bring in the supplies necessary for the medical items that we need to stock up the shelves of the hospitals we’re supporting, let alone all the other hospitals that had to close because of a lack of supplies.
Yeah, a couple of hundred trucks. I think some perspective is in order here, because there is no free flow of goods and supplies into Gaza even on a good day, that’s just the way it is due to restrictions. So, everything coming through these border crossings, before this war even began, how many trucks were going into Gaza every day with basic supplies?
Well, during the blockade, it was maybe 500 trucks per day. So, we can applaud the beautiful image of 200 trucks coming in today, but you can you can imagine that it’s not nearly enough.
Avril, something I want to get a little clarity on, when these trucks loaded with aid roll up to the Rafah border crossing at the border of Gaza and Egypt, who strictly speaking, is allowing them in and giving them permission or telling them, “No, you can’t go in.”
Well, you need all parties, but the trucks are inspected by the Israeli authorities. But you do need all parties. You need the Hamas authorities to say, “Yes, it’s okay,” and of course, you need Egypt to facilitate it all.
So, given the needs right now in Gaza, how many trucks per day should be getting through and who has the power to make that happen?
Well, I would say that if before the conflict, before Oct. 7, in a state of a blockade for years and years, you had 500 trucks estimated to be crossing into Gaza, that you could easily quadruple that number and still not be making a dent on the need. I mean, this is barely a Band-Aid on a gushing wound that is going to take years to recover from.
So, will the amount of aid that’s been getting in during the cease fire make any material difference in the overall amount of civilian suffering in Gaza?
Well, I guess you could say a silver lining is that, for a few days, they got to live to see another day.
That is a terrible silver lining to have to lean on. Avril, as someone in a leadership role of MSF, a key aid organization, what does it feel like to have this clear sense that the fighting is just going to start up again and put humanitarian relief on the back foot for the foreseeable future?
Well, it’s gutting, of course, because we worry about everyone in Gaza. The risk of dying is just so very present. We’ve experienced it ourselves. I mean, we wonder when we hear statements about upholding international humanitarian law, but we don’t see evidence of that being done on the ground, you question everyone. It makes you question what is the political narrative that things are being done in a careful way so as to reduce the suffering of civilians, we just don’t see evidence of that in the numbers, in the scale.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.AP contributed to this report.
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