The humanitarian emergency in Gaza is not only a test of conscience. It is a stress test for contemporary humanitarian logistics, international law and the mechanics of sanctions policy. The lethal combination of mass displacement, collapsed services and constrained access has turned aid delivery into a high stakes operational and political challenge. Any meaningful response must reckon with three linked realities: constrained physical access across a handful of crossings, security driven inspections and hold ups, and the regulatory and financial environment that shapes what donors and implementers can actually do on the ground.
Operational bottlenecks are immediate and measurable. After weeks of a near total blockade, the partial opening of Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing in mid December created a second channel for humanitarian consignments, but the flow remains far below prewar norms and distribution capacity inside Gaza is thin. The Kerem Shalom process created a transshipment model where manifested trucks are scanned and goods are reloaded into local haulers in order to prevent diversion of dual use items. That model reduces some security risk but it multiplies handling steps, increases delays and requires warehousing and transport capacity that the humanitarian system no longer has in sufficient numbers.
Security screening and ad hoc inspection practices have compounded delays and created large backlogs. U.S. congressional visitors and humanitarian personnel reported miles of truck queues, warehouses full of rejected consignments, and rejection of items that aid workers consider lifesaving, including parts for water testing and certain medical kits. These procedural frictions are not neutral. Every additional day a shipment is held upstream or every item that is refused for vaguely specified security reasons translates into less effective health, water and food assistance for people in need.
The humanitarian indicators that matter for survival are dire. United Nations and humanitarian partners warned in December of rapidly expanding hunger, with hundreds of thousands at risk and the risk of famine increasing. Health actors documented widespread infectious disease outbreaks, collapsing hospital capacity and severe shortages of medicines and fuel for generators and desalination. In that environment even modest delays in the entry, imaging and onward delivery of food, water and medical items create cascading human consequences.
Sanctions policy and counterterrorism controls sit in the background of these operational problems. Modern sanctions regimes increasingly include humanitarian carve outs and general licences intended to protect aid transactions. The U.S. Treasury took steps in December 2022 to streamline humanitarian general licences across multiple sanctions programs in order to facilitate NGO operations and the provision of food and medical goods. Those legal exemptions are important. But they do not by themselves remove the practical problem of private sector risk aversion. Banks, insurers and logistics providers often treat high risk jurisdictions with extreme caution. The resulting phenomenon, known as de risking, means that even when legal pathways exist, implementing partners may struggle to effect timely payments, buy spare parts, insure shipments or pay local staff. The cumulative effect narrows the set of actors who can operate effectively and raises the transaction cost of every delivery.
We should therefore separate two policy questions. The first is the short term question of how to get basic supplies in and distributed safely today. The second is the longer term question of how to institutionalize corridors and financial channels so that reconstruction and routine public services can resume once hostilities subside. Short term fixes are operational and political. They include predictable, multi modal transshipment arrangements; agreed time windows for inspections; and pre cleared convoys with clear manifests and independent monitoring that can reduce ad hoc rejections at the crossing. Creating multiple entry points is not a technical nicety. It is a resilience measure. Relying on a single crossing creates single point failure risk when security incidents or political disputes force closures.
Operational fixes also require explicit, practical implementation of humanitarian exemptions. Legal carve outs only matter if they are reflected in banking behavior, insurance coverage and carrier willingness to load and move cargo. A practical package would include an expedited licensing desk at major donor capitals and at OFAC or equivalent authorities, standing agreements with correspondent banks for humanitarian transactions, and donor funded guarantees or escrow facilities that underwrite commercial risk for suppliers and carriers. Those arrangements reduce the incentive for private actors to overcomply by refusing transactions out of fear rather than legal necessity.
Technology and the private sector must be harnessed without substituting for impartial humanitarian control. Satellite imagery, digital cargo tracking, biometric-free beneficiary registries and tamper evident seals are tools that can strengthen transparency and accountability. They can provide mutual reassurance to security authorities and humanitarian organisations that consignments are reaching intended locations and are not being siphoned into military supply chains. But technology is only an enabler. It must be paired with trusted human verification and independent monitoring by neutral actors accepted by all parties to the conflict. Excessive reliance on remote monitoring as a substitute for physical protection and civil space will not prevent looting, violent interdiction or the collapse of local distribution nodes.
Finally, these are not purely humanitarian matters. How states choose to apply sanctions, to operationalize exemptions and to press for open corridors is strategic policy. Narrowly conceived security measures that do not account for the humanitarian system generate greater political blowback and longer term instability. Conversely, robust, verifiable and well resourced humanitarian channels can reduce pressure for forced displacement, limit local lawlessness that breeds violent actors, and provide a platform for reconstruction and stabilization once hostilities pause. This is the long view. If principle and pragmatism are in tension, policymakers should err on the side of preserving the humanitarian system’s ability to operate while building safeguards against diversion.
Recommendations for immediate action
- Formalize multi point entry. Convert tested transshipment sites into predictable, well resourced hubs with agreed standard operating procedures for scanning, storage and onward distribution. This reduces rehandling time and increases throughput.
- Operationalize humanitarian licences. Donors should fund emergency licensing desks and short term escrow guarantees to remove commercial risk and compel banks and insurers to process humanitarian transactions.
- Insist on clear inspection protocols. Parties controlling crossings must publish clear lists of prohibited dual use items and establish an appeals mechanism for contested consignments to avoid arbitrary rejections. Independent third party monitors should be embedded in transit hubs.
- Deploy verification technology wisely. Use satellite imaging and digital manifests to increase transparency while maintaining neutral human oversight for distribution.
Failing to address both the physical bottlenecks and the financial constraints will prolong the suffering and amplify regional instability. If the international community is serious about preventing mass starvation and preserving basic human services, it must move beyond declaratory statements and underwrite the systems that allow aid to move predictably and accountably. In a conflict where daily survival depends on the timely arrival of fuel, water, medicine and food, logistics and sanctions policy are not separate silos. They are two sides of the same operational equation. The choices made now will shape not only who survives the emergency but also the political landscape of Gaza for years to come.