A U.N. official said a truck carrying aid was turned around in Gaza this week because it contained scissors included in medical kits for children, calling attention to what aid groups have said is a laborious Israeli inspection process that is slowing down crucial humanitarian assistance.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency providing support for Palestinians in Gaza, said the truckload had been refused because medical scissors had been added to a list of items the Israeli authorities consider to be “dual use,” or having both civilian and military purposes.
COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, accused Mr. Lazzarini of lying, saying that it was in constant contact with the United Nations and had not been notified of the denial. The agency said 1.5 percent of aid trucks trying to enter the territory had been turned away.
Mr. Lazzarini is the latest official to say that the Israeli military’s inspections are keeping aid from getting to Gaza’s 2.2 million people. Last week, Britain’s foreign minister, David Cameron, said during a parliamentary debate that “too many” goods were being turned away for being dual use, including items that are medically necessary.
A member of the British Parliament said this month that Israel had turned away 1,350 water filters and 2,560 solar lights provided by the British government because they were considered a threat.
Miriam Marmur, director of public advocacy at Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit that works to protect the free movement of Palestinians, said Israel’s list included broad categories that can encompass thousands of items, making it difficult to know what is prohibited. Many items that have been turned away aren’t explicitly listed, she said.
“This uncertainty follows years of obfuscation on what exactly qualifies as dual use from Israel’s perspective, as well as when and how those items can be brought into Gaza,” she said.
Mr. Lazzarini said it was critical that supplies for Gaza be cleared faster. “The lives of 2 million people depend on that, there is no time to waste,” he wrote on social media.
Israel has maintained a list of dual-use items that require special permission to be brought into Gaza as a part of its blockade of the enclave, which began years before the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 prompted the current war. For many years, the list and approval process were shrouded from public view. The Israeli authorities disclosed the list only after a legal battle, according to Gisha, which petitioned the court to require that it be released.
Aid groups have said that a single item determined to be of dual use can get an entire truck turned away, and that groups are at times not told what the item was or why it was rejected.
COGAT has said that many of the trucks that are turned away are repacked and enter later, and that any bottleneck is a result of the aid groups’ capacity to handle distribution, rather than Israeli limitations.
In January, two U.S. senators who visited a border crossing between Egypt and Gaza said they saw a warehouse near the crossing filled with rejected items, including tents, oxygen concentrators, water-testing kits, water filters, solar-powered refrigerators and medical kits used for delivering babies.
Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, said after the trip that Israel’s inspections were necessary but that the delays they caused had unacceptable consequences.
“If it takes a week when aid is desperately needed, that means people are shorted food, clean water and medical supplies,” he said on the Senate floor at the time.
