“We’re bringing in the aid people need to survive.”
That’s what Sarah Funkhouser, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) representative for Jordan, Palestine and Israel, said about the organization’s second shipment of food to Gaza, which arrived in mid-July.
The 2,000 boxes of aid — which included chickpeas, lentils, canned vegetables, tuna, pasta, salt, sugar, tea and other items — are being distributed by local partners in Gaza, said Funkhouser, who directs MCC programs in that region together with her husband, Seth Malone.
Mennonite Central Committee is the relief, development and peace organization of Mennonite churches in Canada and the US. Its Canadian headquarters are in Winnipeg. Its first shipment of aid to Gaza arrived in March.
Getting the second shipment of aid from a warehouse in Jordan to Gaza took about seven weeks due to fighting in Gaza and Israeli inspection and approval processes. “It sat in a warehouse in Jordan, ready to go,” said Malone.
In order to ensure food is not turned away during inspections — which are conducted to search for restricted items — all the food is pre-packaged. Even so, it can take up to a month to get clearance. And there is a chance an entire shipment will be denied if it does not meet the specifications set by Israeli officials, Malone said.
“We have to be meticulous about it,” he said. “The stakes are very high for getting something wrong.”
When the aid arrives at the border with Gaza, it is inspected again — a process that can result in damage since boxes are often ripped open.
“Over 80 boxes of food damaged in the inspection of this shipment and couldn’t be sent in,” Malone said. The damage resulted in a loss of about $10,000 of food from a shipment valued at $134,000.
Israeli officials have the right to turn away any shipment for any reason, Malone said. “We have to be on top of everything.”
The delays and uncertainty over inspections are challenging, says Funkhouser. “This is our job, we know how to respond safely in difficult situations like this,” she said. “We know how to provide this kind of assistance for people in need. It’s incredibly frustrating.”
She noted there was lots of food insecurity in Gaza before Oct. 7. “It was already not a good situation. But now it’s much worse. Our partners are seeing malnutrition in children and adults.”
What is needed now is a ceasefire so aid organizations can safely respond to the needs in Gaza, the couple said. “We just need someone to stop the carnage,” said Funkhouser.
“We need people to pray for peace, and to pray for the people in Gaza and our partners, and for everyone affected by the violence in the region,” she said.
‘Only so much we can do’
The shipment was made possible with assistance from Canadian Foodgrains Bank, a partnership of 15 church-related aid organizations, including MCC, that provides matching funds from the Canadian government for food shipments like the one in Gaza.
For Stefan Koop, senior manager of humanitarian programming at the Foodgrains Bank, the situation in Gaza is “one of greatest humanitarian crises the world has ever seen.”
About one-quarter of the population of 2.3 million people is experiencing catastrophic food insecurity, while half of the population is in the midst of acute food insecurity, he says.
Although a country like Sudan has more hungry people today, Koop says “we’ve never seen an entire population like this in this dire situation. It’s beyond what we’ve seen anywhere else in the world. Rates of malnutrition are through the roof.”
Koop joined Malone and Funkhouser in calling for a ceasefire and prayers for long-term peace so aid groups can safely distribute food and other needed assistance.
“Peace is critical,” he said. “There’s only so much we can do in this environment of conflict.”
Even after an end to the war, aid groups will need to respond to needs in Gaza for a long time due to destruction of buildings, infrastructure and livelihoods, he said.
In addition to the two shipments of aid sent so far to Gaza by MCC, the organization is planning to send at least four more. “Planning for the third one is underway,” said Malone.
Just over $2 million was donated to MCC by Canadian and American donors, with $767,000 of that total coming from Canada.
People who want to donate to MCC’s Gaza response can do so at https://mcc.org/what-we-do/initiatives/disaster-response/palestine-and-israel
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