Hopes that humanitarian aid would begin to trickle into Gaza from Egypt on Friday were fading as Egyptian, Israeli, US and United Nations officials were still hammering out thorny issues, including who will inspect the shipments for weapons, several UN and European officials and diplomats familiar with the talks said.

Israel, for instance, wants to be involved in those inspections and is against shipping in fuel, those people said. Other officials say that fuel is needed to keep generators on at hospitals and to provide clean water to desperate Palestinians stuck in Gaza.

Talks in Cairo on Thursday had yielded a step forward, with an agreement to set up a UN-operated system at the Rafah border crossing in northeastern Egypt. US President Joe Biden had said on Tuesday that he had secured agreement from the Israeli government to open up the aid corridor.

Speaking on Friday to a crowd at Arish, a town near the Rafah border crossing where Egypt and the international community have set up a logistics base for incoming aid, UN secretary-general António Guterres said that it was crucial for trucks to move as quickly as possible. The trucks are loaded with food, medicine and water.

“These trucks are not just trucks. They are a lifeline. They are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza. And to see them stuck here…. What we need is to make them move, to make them move to the other side of this wall, to make them move as quickly as possible and as many as possible,” Guterres said.

“And so we are now actively engaging with all the parties, actively engaging with Egypt, with Israel, with the US, in order to make sure that we are able to clarify those conditions, that we are able to limit those restrictions in order to have, as soon as possible, these trucks moving to where they are needed.”

Guterres said that Israel and Egypt had agreed to make the aid deliveries possible, but “this announcement was made with some conditions and some restrictions”.

He said the UN was working with Egypt, Israel and the US to clarify those conditions and try to soften those restrictions.

Here are the most fraught sticking points, according to the officials and diplomats directly involved in or briefed on the talks. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the evolving discussions.

Quantity, flow of aid

Israel would like 20 trucks to pass into Gaza but won’t commit on future aid flows. The international community wants the number to grow to 100 or more trucks a day.

“What is certainly undoubtedly needed is a steady flow of much bigger quantities of humanitarian assistance,” the EU humanitarian aid commissioner, Janez Lenarcic, said in an interview on Friday.

The EU is the biggest international aid donor to the Palestinians and has dozens of tonnes of aid on the Egyptian side of the border waiting to be delivered.

Palestinians, who fled their houses amid Israeli strikes, take shelter in a tent camp at a United Nations-run centre, after Israel's call for more than 1 million civilians in northern Gaza to move south, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 20, 2023. Sourced by The Telegraph

Aid destination

Israel wants aid to be delivered to southern Gaza, not northern Gaza where it had demanded last week that civilians leave, in an apparent run-up to a ground invasion. But hundreds of thousands of people remain in northern Gaza, facing dire humanitarian needs.

“Humanitarian aid should go to all places where there are people who need it,” Lenarcic said.

Type of aid

Israel wants food, medicine and water to be distributed, but international donors are pushing to expand the list of permitted items to include fuel, among other items.

Fuel is particularly contentious, as Israel worries it could get diverted to Hamas to be used for weapons or its vehicles.

The UN and other international donors say that fuel is essential — a matter of life or death, especially for Gaza’s hospitals that are relying on backup generators with Israel having cut off electricity in the territory. Fuel is also needed to restart desalination facilities for potable water, as Israel has also stopped Gaza’s water supply.

Inspections

Israel wants some direct involvement in scrutinising the cargo that enters Gaza, to ensure that the trucks are not carrying weapons. The international community is pressing instead to give trained UN staff this task, replicating the model used for aid delivery in Syria.

The UN generally prefers that any inspection be in the hands of neutral parties so that it cannot be politicised.

New York Times News Service