UAE sends 370 tonnes of aid, first land convoy reaches Jabalya in northern Gaza

The United Arab Emirates sent a convoy via land that brought 370 tons of humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, Emirati state media Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported this week.

“The Joint Operations Command of the Ministry of Defense announced the arrival of the first UAE aid convoy, comprising 17 trucks, bound for the northern Gaza Strip, as part of Operation ‘Chivalrous Knight 3,’” the report said.

This is an important development, as many countries are trying to move more aid to northern Gaza. In the wake of an airstrike on World Central Kitchen (WCK) humanitarian aid workers on April 1, Israel opened the Erez crossing to Gaza. The expectation is that this will enable more aid to reach northern Gaza, and it also could come through Ashdod and via other corridors, such as from Jordan.

The WAM report, which was republished at Emirati newspaper Khaleej Times, said the convoy to northern Gaza “is the first aid convoy by a country to arrive in the northern Gaza Strip, entering through the Rafah border crossing before arriving through the Karam Abu Salem border crossing to deliver aid to the Palestinians.”

Al-Ain media in the UAE appeared to have firsthand accounts from the aid convoy’s arrival in Jabalya, a town and refugee camp that borders Gaza City and was the scene of fighting in December.

“In a narrow alley in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, a group of children lined up with smiles on their faces as they shouted the Eid takbirat,” the report said.

Eid takbirat refers to a common Arabic expression that is said during the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

“In the seventh month of the war in Gaza, this scene of children re-frames the image in the devastated Strip,” the report said. “The destroyed buildings appear as fortresses in the face of the infernal war machine, while the language loses its validity.”

UAE’s humanitarian aid efforts

According to the Khaleej report, the convoy had food and medical supplies, “food supplements, clothing, shelter materials and other necessities. With this new batch, the total amount of aid that the UAE provided to northern Gaza by air and land during Ramadan has reached 2,102 tons. This includes aid shipped by land through the Kerem Shalom crossing and by air through the operation.”

The report notes that the aid is delivered under the “framework of the directives of President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to intensify humanitarian aid efforts to support the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip during Ramadan.”

Jabalya was targeted by airstrikes and IDF operations during the war, and it “witnessed many massacres, and like most of the north in the Strip, it suffered the lion’s share of destruction, siege, and hunger,” the report said.

It was not clear which “massacres” the report was referring to, but it appears to mean that the area suffered civilian casualties.

The convoy that reached northern Gaza consisted of 17 trucks. It is the first time UAE aid reached northern Gaza via truck. In the past, UAE aid had reached the north through airdrops coordinated with Jordan and also via sea in a mission with the WCK. After the WCK humanitarian workers were killed, the WCK and the UAE paused the support for the maritime aid corridor via Cyprus.

“The children who grabbed eating utensils chanted, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ for Eid, which falls today, Wednesday, without any indication of a truce, despite continued American and Arab efforts to establish it,” Al-Ain reported, adding that the “children of Gaza imposed their peace by snatching this moment of holiday joy.”

Israel has withdrawn from Gaza except for the forces controlling the Netzarim corridor that separates northern Gaza from central Gaza.

The movement of aid on trucks backed by the UAE to northern Gaza is an important development, and reports from Jabalya are also important. It illustrates that civilian life is returning to Jabalya, and the reports contrast the lack of a ceasefire deal with the “peace” that the people are able to have, at least temporarily. This sheds light on the larger trends in northern Gaza.

Seth Frantzman is the author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machine, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future (Bombardier 2021) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.