Aid is on the way to Gaza with truck drivers

Through his windshield and rearview mirror, Mustafa al-Qadri could see the rest of the long convoy heading toward the Jordan Valley. We pass through the sand-colored, rocky terrain that descends toward the Dead Sea, into Israel and finally Gaza.

First, the convoy must pass through Israeli customs at the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge border crossing. Then on to the Erez crossing into Gaza, the aid will be handed over from the World Food Program to local drivers.

Mustafa is heading to places where Israeli settlers have blocked roads and where criminal gangs have hijacked aid trucks in the war zone itself. But on this sunny winter morning, the driver is happy.

“We are taking food and medicine for our brothers in Gaza,” he said.

The word “brothers” appears frequently in the answers. It refers not only to common humanity or Arab brotherhood, but to the fact that many Jordanians have Palestinian roots.

“Delivering this aid is a good deed. It makes me happy,” says Mustafa.

The drivers waved to the spectators and blew their horns. Gaza is a popular cause in Jordan. The noise competes with the sirens of a police escort, two cars equipped with machine guns. Of course these escorts do not cross into Israel, much less Gaza.

This latest mission involves 120 trucks – the largest since the war began in October 2023. Jordanian leader King Abdullah II has personally pushed the government’s efforts to get food, medicine and fuel to Gaza.

The international community has pledged to increase aid after the ceasefire is ratified. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “This ceasefire is essential to remove significant security and political obstacles to the delivery of aid in Gaza.” “The humanitarian situation is at a critical level.” 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced. Up to two million are in aid.

This follows a 15-month conflict in which the United Nations and aid agencies have repeatedly blocked or delayed the distribution of vital food, medicine and fuel to Israel. Israel denies blocking aid. But at one point, the United States threatened to cut military aid to Israel because of the low levels reached in Gaza.

In Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a BBC reporter witnessed heartbreaking scenes of emaciated children fighting each other as they lined up for food. A weary rage rages among the youth who come every day to collect rice or bread to bring home to their families.

Ten-year-old Farah Khaled Basal, from Al Zaitoun, came to feed her nine siblings. A small, smiling girl was waiting at a center run by World Food Kitchens, seven of whose aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike last April. Farah’s family has been separated from their father in northern Gaza. She told our reporter that she had been constantly dreaming about the ceasefire agreement.

“I want to go back to our house and have my father come back to us and have flour.”

There were children of all ages waiting in line for a handful of rice.

Lames Mohammed Al Mizari is 16 years old and originally from Gaza City. She now lives in a tent with eight family members. Lammes looks back on her pre-war attitude towards food with conviction.

I used to be a picky eater, I used to complain when my mother prepared cabbage, saying ‘we are eating cabbage every day, I need different food than meat or chicken’, but now I eat everything, well and good animals don’t eat the food we eat.

She explains how hunger causes family discord.

“When I told my mother that I wouldn’t queue today, she said, “What are we going to eat then? Let’s keep looking at the sky?” she said to me. I was thinking that if I didn’t come, we wouldn’t get anything to eat. I used to think about where I would play, what I would study, what I would learn, when I would go to bed. I had my own room, there was a kitchen and I used to receive guests.

After collecting her pot of rice, Lamas walks home past the line of adults and children who have reached the kitchen. She mutters to herself as she disappears into the morning crowd.

Back in Amman, they are preparing more aid for delivery to Gaza. Jordan’s Hashemite charity says it can load 150 cars a day for Gaza. There is no lack of willingness. Aid agencies, the United Nations and other groups are ready. They – all of them – are waiting for the full opening of Gaza for aid and peace.

Additional reporting by Alice Doyard, Suha Kawar and Moses Campbell