RABAT, Morocco –Morocco has sent 40 tons of humanitarian supplies for Gaza via an Israeli airport, a diplomatic source said Tuesday, the latest bid to diversify aid routes into the war-battered Palestinian territory.
The food aid arrived at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv before being transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent at the Kerem Shalom Crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the Moroccan diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Rabat’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “Morocco is the first country to transport its humanitarian aid via this unprecedented land route.”
Since Hamas launched its shock terror assault in southern Israel on October 7 and started a war in which Israel has vowed to destroy the Gaza-ruling terror group, aid trucks entering the Strip have generally done so via Egypt, although aid has also passed through Israel’s Kerem Shalom Crossing since it reopened in December.
Israeli officials were unable to immediately confirm whether the Moroccan initiative was the first such land route for foreign aid through Israeli territory.
The diplomatic source said Morocco’s ties with Israel, formalized in a US-brokered normalization pact in 2020 known as the Abraham Accords, helped the operation go ahead.
“Morocco has always said that its relationship with Israel is intended to serve peace in the region and the interests of the Palestinians,” the source said.
The United Nations and other international agencies have repeatedly warned of looming famine in Gaza, which has been facing a mounting humanitarian crisis since the war erupted with Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, which saw thousands of Palestinian terrorists burst into Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping another 253, mostly civilians, amid horrific acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The various relief organizations have said humanitarian aid is slow to enter the Strip and slow to be distributed, particularly in northern Gaza, hampered by Israeli inspections, the location of crossings in the south of the Strip, and desperate Gazans, as well as looters, picking trucks clean before they can reach the north part of the enclave.
The aid that does enter the Strip is only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people, the UN has alleged.
A ship belonging to Spanish aid group Open Arms set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday carrying 200 tons of food aid for Gaza’s civilians in hopes of opening a maritime corridor to alleviate the dire humanitarian crisis.
The ship will dock along the coast of northern Gaza, south of Gaza city, at a landing jetty built by World Central Kitchen out of materials from destroyed buildings and rubble.
Also on Tuesday, four US Army vessels left the United States, carrying equipment to build a temporary port on Gaza’s shores for aid deliveries.