Israel reportedly bars items like crutches, croissants from entering Gaza

Israel has rejected or restricted access to aid items ranging from life-saving medical supplies to toys to chocolate croissants from entering the besieged Gaza, the Washington Post reported.

The US news outlet contacted 25 aid groups, UN agencies and donor countries to ask about aid delivery to Gaza.

Food, water and blankets do not require approvals, but agencies submit requests for items they think have a chance of being rejected, such as communications equipment and sanitation or shelter items.

"I think it’s unprecedented," said Shaina Low, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Palestinian territories. "It’s just nothing that aid agencies have ever had to deal with."

Some items that Israel blocked include anesthetics, chocolate croissants, crutches, generators for hospitals, maternity kits, power supply equipment and solar panels.

Limited scanning machines and operational hours at inspection sites on the Israel-Gaza fence slow the delivery of aid, according to Jamie McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory.

"You'd think after five and a half months of a crisis of this kind, the systems in place would be a bit more predictable and settled. In fact, they are not. And that's why we’re struggling," said McGoldrick.

Israeli military, which is also responsible for coordinating relief in Gaza where its invasion is under way since October last year, said allegations that it restricts aid are "false" and it largely permits the entry of humanitarian supplies, subject to a security inspection.

The UN and other aid agencies said Israel controls when they can retrieve the goods from the Gaza side of the crossings and Tel Aviv also must approve routes aid trucks take within the enclave.

Genocide in Gaza

Palestine's Hamas resistance group says its October 7 blitz on Israel that surprised its arch-enemy was orchestrated in response to Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, illegal settler violence in occupied West Bank and to put Palestine question "back on the table."

The hours-long raid and Israeli military's haphazard reaction resulted in the killing of more than 1,130 people, Israeli officials and local media say.

Palestinian fighters took more than 250 hostages and presently 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli army says are dead, some of them killed in indiscriminate Israeli strikes.

Israel has since then killed more than 35,500 Palestinians — 70 percent of them babies, women and children — and wounded over 76,000 amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, starving.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 percent of Gaza's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 percent of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to do more to prevent starvation crisis in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said recently there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.