The ‘Open Arms’ arrived this Friday off the coast of the Gaza Strip with 200 tons of aid after three days on the route from Cyprus, becoming the first ship to use the humanitarian corridor recently opened from the island to deliver assistance to the Gazan population, after more than five months of military offensive by Israel.
“The ‘Open Arms’, in its joint mission with World Central Kitchen, is already off the coast of Gaza, after 72 hours of navigation from Larnaca, Cyprus,” the organization said in a message on its account on the social network
Thus, he highlighted that the ship is carrying a load of 200 tons of “flour, rice, lentils, chickpeas, tuna and other basic foods that will become a million meals.” “We will never forget this moment. It is history,” he said, before thanking chef José Andrés and the “great team” of World Central Kitchen for their collaboration in this delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The ‘Open Arms’ voyage is the first of the so-called ‘Operation Amalthea’ which aims to establish a maritime humanitarian corridor between Cyprus and the Palestinian enclave. However, important logistical and security challenges now lie ahead for the disembarkation and distribution of aid in the Strip, which will be previously subject to inspections by the Israeli authorities.
In this sense, the authorities of the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), have asked the international community to “rethink” the “viability” of the maritime corridor and have expressed their doubts about this mechanism due to the amount of help and the slowness of the process. For this reason, they have demanded to “pressure” Israel for the entry of convoys by land.
The United Nations and various non-governmental organizations have denounced the extensive restrictions imposed by Israel on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, plunged into a very serious humanitarian crisis due to the military offensive – launched after the attacks carried out on October 7 by Hamas – – which has raised alarm bells about the risk of large-scale famine, especially given the collapse of the Gazan health system.
