ROME: The UN’s food agency on Thursday said it was pressing Israel to allow it to use the Ashdod port north of Gaza to make it easier to reach starving Palestinians.
“We have several requests with the Israelis,” World Food Programme (WFP) Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told AFP in Rome, after its latest failed attempt to get food to northern Gaza.
“We want to use the Ashdod port, which would be much more efficient than going through Jordan or even Egypt,” Skau said.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Gaza has been plunged into a food crisis, with outside aid severely restricted.
The UN estimates that 2.2 million people — most of Gaza’s population — are on the brink of famine, particularly in the north.
“There is catastrophic hunger situation. People are desperate and the tensions are high. And there is a complete breakdown also of civil order,” Skau said.
“In order to avert a famine, we need huge volumes of assistance. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Airdrops are not an option for averting famine,” he added.
Israeli forces have previously blocked UN aid at the Port of Ashdod, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Gaza.
“We want to get more goods over the border to Gaza. We are now using Kerem Shalom (border crossing), but we would like to have a crossing also directly into the north,” Skau said.
WFP’s last aid convoy was turned away by Israeli forces at a checkpoint to northern Gaza, after which it was looted by “desperate people,” the agency said Tuesday.
It was the first convoy attempted since the agency halted deliveries to the north of Gaza on February 20, after its convoy of trucks faced gunfire and looting.
UN urges Israel to allow aid to Gaza through port
https://arab.news/mwsfe
UN urges Israel to allow aid to Gaza through port
- WFP Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau said “We want to use the Ashdod port, which would be much more efficient than going through Jordan or even Egypt”
- “There is catastrophic hunger situation”
Israeli settlers burn tents, vehicles in West Bank village
- Videos show masked men rampaging into the Palestinian village of Susiya near Hebron and burning vehicles and property
- Similar attacks have become common as settlers seek to control large swathes of land in the West Bank
SUSIYA, West Bank: Israeli settlers set fire to vehicles and tents in the Palestinian village of Susiya on Tuesday night, residents said, in the latest incident of settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Videos verified by Reuters showed a masked group of men, who residents said were Israeli settlers, approaching the village near the city of Hebron, and later burning vehicles and Palestinian property.
“They attack us almost every day, repeatedly, because we live near the main road...Last night they burned everywhere,” Halima Abu Eid, a Susiya resident told Reuters on Wednesday.
The Israeli military said they had dispatched soldiers to deal with reports of “deliberate burnings of Palestinian property” and had opened an investigation into the incident.
Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has increased sharply since the beginning of the war in Gaza in October 2023, with over 800 Palestinians displaced due to settler attacks in 2026 according to United Nations data.
Attacks where masked settlers arrive at night to destroy Palestinian property or attack residents have become common, as Israeli settlers seek to control large swathes of land in the West Bank.
An Israeli official previously blamed settler violence on a “fringe minority,” although Reuters reporting has shown well-organized plans to take Palestinian land in public settler social media channels.
The United Nations has documented at least 86 instances of settler violence from February 3 to 16, leading to the displacement of 146 Palestinians and the injury of 64.
Israeli indictments of settler violence are rare. At the end of 2025, Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din said of the hundreds of cases of settler violence it had documented since October 7, 2023, only 2 percent resulted in indictments. Israel’s far-right governing coalition has enabled the rapid spread of settlements, with some ministers openly stating they want to “bury” a Palestinian state.
Most world powers deem Israel’s settlements, on land it captured in a 1967 war, illegal, and numerous UN Security Council resolutions have called on Israel to halt all settlement activity.
Israel disputes the view that its settlements are unlawful and it cites biblical and historical ties to the land.
