For the first time in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, a shipment of humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip set sail by sea from the island of Cyprus on Tuesday morning. At 7:18 a.m. in Cyprus (6:18 a.m. in mainland Spain), some 200 tons of food from the humanitarian organization World Central Kitchen (WCK), founded by the Spanish chef José Andrés, left the port of Larnaca aboard the ship of the Spanish NGO Open Arms. With this joint mission, the maritime corridor supported in the last week by the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom is officially inaugurated, with which it is hoped that it will be able to partially alleviate the humanitarian crisis that is affecting hundreds of thousands of Gazan victims of the war. and the blockade imposed by Israel on the entry of aid into the Palestinian enclave by land.
Ahead they have 210 nautical miles (about 380 kilometers) to the Palestinian coast, where the infrastructure for disembarkation and distribution among the population will be the next challenge. The joint mission of World Central Kitchen and Open Arms has been named Operation Safeena (Safeena means boat in Arabic). The Spanish chef has assured that, at the same time that the tugboat is heading towards Gaza, the construction of a pier that will be used to receive the cargo is still underway there. From that point, the staff of your NGO will transfer it to trucks and these will go to the 60 kitchens that WCK has deployed in the Strip, with which they have already distributed 35 million menus. “We can fail, but the biggest failure will be not trying!” He celebrated on his social networks.
However, the details about the route that the ship will follow, the time and place it will arrive at and the way in which the merchandise will be transported from the platform to the mainland will not be disclosed for security reasons, indicated Laura Lanuza. , spokesperson for Open Arms. “We cannot give details, the operation has been sealed from this moment until they return to Cyprus,” Lanuza confirmed.
The growing famine after more than five months of war makes the work of distributing the little food that reaches Gaza chaotic because many people come desperate to collect it. The main example of the prevailing situation is what happened during what is known as flour slaughter last February 29. That day, more than a hundred people were killed around a convoy south of Gaza City in an incident in which Israeli occupation troops shot at people who, in the chaos, were trying to grab the bags.
It is “a highly complex mission and we trust it will be the first of many that will manage to alleviate the humanitarian emergency situation that the population is experiencing,” Open Arms highlights when announcing and celebrating this Tuesday morning on social networks the departure of the port. The images show the ship with a floating platform added to the port side of the ship to increase its carrying capacity, a circumstance that makes navigation very slow.
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The cargo contains rice, flour, beans, lentils, cans of tuna and other non-perishable, high-protein foods. It is packed in black bales that bear the WCK logo and the flag of the United Arab Emirates, which diplomatically and financially supports this mission, created and promoted for weeks by the two NGOs.
The Open Arms was scheduled to start last Saturday, but it was delayed due to weather conditions. On Monday night, a spokesperson for the Cyprus Foreign Ministry told EL PAÍS that the departure was imminent. “On our part, everything is ready and all the procedures have been carried out. It is a first shipment, so there are many issues that affect the final delivery time. We hope it comes out as soon as possible,” he added.
The maritime corridor has been applauded by the Israeli authorities themselves, but they are the ones who, at the same time, prevent aid from reaching Gaza by the most accessible and cheapest route, land. Israel controls everything that enters the Strip, under its rule by land, more and air.
In fact, Gaza has up to seven border crossings; six of them separate the enclave from Israel and one from Egypt. Since the beginning of the war, only two of these points have been partially enabled. On the one hand, Rafah, which separates Gaza from Egyptian territory. On the other, Kerem Shalom, Israeli territory, but located next to the vertex where the Strip, Israel and Egypt meet.
There are five other crossings (Erez, Karni, Nahal Oz, Sufa and Kissufim) that are not being used to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazan citizens. The Erez port is located about thirty kilometers from the port of Ashdod, whose facilities receive part of the aid destined for Gaza, but which is blocked, as in Kerem Shalom, by Israeli ultra groups that defend the humanitarian suffocation of the Palestinians as tool to win the war.
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