What are Ashdod port and Erez crossing, how will they operate?
Ashdod port, 32km (20 miles) north of Gaza, is one of Israel’s three main cargo ports and can handle more than 1.5 million containers a year.
Until now, Israel has restricted its use for the delivery of aid. In February, the head of the UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinians, said Israel was blocking a Turkish shipment containing a month’s supply of food for a million Palestinians there.
The Erez crossing in between Israel and northern Gaza is the closest to Ashdod. Before the war, it was the only crossing point for people between Israel and Gaza.
It was used by Palestinians with permits to work in Israel, those who were approved to travel in exceptional humanitarian cases and some students and sportspeople. It was also used by staff from international aid organisations. It was attacked by Hamas on 7 October and has been closed since then.
However, so far, no details have been given of timings, quantities or the types of aid that will be permitted to enter Gaza, nor of how it will be distributed. As conditions have deteriorated, the delivery of aid has been accompanied by deadly violence.
There have been regular reports of shooting at Palestinians gathering to receive the little aid that has arrived in northern Gaza. The Hamas-run ministry of health in Gaza and local Palestinians have accused Israeli forces of firing on desperate people.
Israel has denied involvement, saying Palestinians have died in crushes, been run over by trucks and been shot by armed Palestinians, and that when Israeli troops have opened fire, it has been at people they have deemed “suspects”.
Blame game over food shortages
The UN says children in northern Gaza are starving to death and famine is looming. The quickest, most effective way to get aid into the territory is overland - but the entry of trucks via two crossings in southern Gaza has so far not met the need for food.
Humanitarian agencies, Israel’s allies and other countries have accused Israel of not doing enough to ensure that food gets to those who need it. Some have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
All aid for Gaza is subject to strict Israeli security checks aimed at preventing anything that could be used by Hamas from entering. But aid groups say these are complex and arbitrary, causing major delays.
Israel has denied impeding the entry of aid to Gaza and accuses aid organisations of failing to distribute it.
Cogat, the Israeli body that co-ordinates humanitarian aid to Gaza, said on 1 April that an average of 140 trucks a day carrying food entered Gaza. It said this was more than the 70 trucks carrying food specifically that entered Gaza before the war (500 trucks in total entered Gaza each day before the war).
But military operations and the breakdown of social order have severely hampered aid distribution, while Gaza’s food production has also been reduced to almost nothing, with farms, bakeries and factories destroyed or inaccessible.
Israel has also banned the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, from delivering aid to northern Gaza over allegations it made that some UNRWA staff took part in the 7 October Hamas attack that sparked the current war. Cogat said Israel would work with organisations that “are not involved in terror”.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Israel had “no more excuses” to delay aid getting into Gaza after Israel agreed to open new routes.
“We expect the Israeli government to implement its announcements quickly,” she said.