Morocco announced that it had sent 40 tons of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip by land from Tel Aviv airport on Tuesday March 12, at a time when the international community is pushing to diversify transport routes to the territory on the verge of famine.
The food aid arrived at Ben-Gurion airport before being transferred to the Kerem Shalom crossing point, between Israel and Gaza, where it was taken care of by the Palestinian Red Crescent, a diplomatic source said Moroccan to AFP. “Morocco is the first country to transport its humanitarian aid via this unprecedented land route,” the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release.
Israeli authorities did not immediately confirm whether this was the first use of the route. The normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel, initiated at the end of 2020 as part of a process with several Arab countries and supported by Washington, made it possible to facilitate this operation, according to the Moroccan diplomatic source. “Morocco has always said that its relationship with Israel is intended to serve peace in the region and the interests of the Palestinians,” she told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
Fear of widespread famine
Controlled by Israel, international aid only enters the Gaza Strip, a territory of 2.4 million inhabitants where the UN fears widespread famine, after more than five months of war between the Islamist movement Hamas and Israel. It enters mainly via Rafah, a town on the closed border with Egypt where Israeli bombings take place.
On Tuesday, a first boat loaded with food took a maritime corridor between Cyprus and Gaza, according to the NGO that owns the ship. An American military ship also left the United States on Saturday with the equipment necessary for the construction, which could take up to sixty days, of a pier in the Palestinian territory to unload other aid cargoes.
The war was sparked by a bloody Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, which left at least 1,160 dead, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures. The Israeli military retaliatory operation left nearly 31,200 dead in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas health ministry.