Six months of continuous news reports from Gaza show the catastrophic humanitarian crisis engulfing the enclave since Oct. 7, when Hamas’s massacre triggered retaliatory attacks by Israel, which have killed approximately 33,000 people and demolished major infrastructure in the area.

Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations’ interim deputy special coordinator and humanitarian coordinator for the UN Middle East Peace Process office (Untso), in Jerusalem, told PassBlue in a one-on-one interview that diseases are spreading in Gaza because of poor sanitation and crude living conditions.

McGoldrick stepped into the job in December 2023, after the Israeli government forced out Lynn Hastings, who had the same role, concentrating on the Palestinian territories — specifically Gaza. Israel accused Hastings, a Canadian, of being prejudiced in her views after the Oct. 7 attack.

McGoldrick, who is Irish-born but raised in Scotland, is returning there this weekend. In a one-on-one interview with PassBlue, he said that he has avoided criticizing the Israeli government in his interim role to better concentrate on his work — providing lifesaving needs to Gazans. (Muhannad Hadi is succeeding McGoldrick.)

“I haven’t been as critical of Israel as people would want me to be,” McGoldrick said in the interview, on April 12. “I don’t feel the need to get into fights with people over various things. So my relationship with the Israelis is operational, and it’s solid, transparent.”

In a press briefing also held on the same day, McGoldrick spoke at length from Jerusalem to correspondents at the UN in Geneva, detailing the endless hurdles of getting aid into Gaza, where he’d been for the last time a few days earlier. “And it was quite a sad thing for me to leave after only being here for a short period of time. And obviously not getting all that I wanted done,” he said.

With PassBlue he talked about, among many problems, a “very hot” issue: Gazans not having enough water. As a result of lack of potable water and the destruction of the sanitation systems, waterborne diseases and other physical maladies are soaring, such as hepatitis C, dehydration, infections and diarrhea.

On the relentless challenges of getting aid through the two main border crossings in Gaza, Kerem Shalom (from Israel) and Rafah (from Egypt), McGoldrick said: “Israel believes that their responsibility ends when they deliver trucks from Kerem Shalom and to the Palestinian side, and I would say that that’s certainly not the case.”

Israel’s responsibility ends, he added, “when the aid reaches the civilians in Gaza.” That means “allowing more facilitation, a lot more routes in and . . . obviously to provide security for us as we move. At the moment, we don’t have security.”

In the PassBlue interview, conducted by Zoom, McGoldrick painted details of the ever-worrisome state of affairs in the Palestinian enclave. He also had advice for his successor. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. –– DAMILOLA BANJO

PassBlue: What was the situation in Gaza when you stepped into the brink in December 2023, and what’s the situation now?

McGoldrick: When I went there, it was a time when people were still moving to Rafah [the southernmost city in Gaza]. There was a lot of displacement happening throughout the Gaza strip. So you had a situation in Rafah where many people had arrived, and we as humanitarians were not able to assist them because the numbers were so overwhelming. People were just arriving and trying to set up shelters, set up tents, trying to use any material available to establish a place where they could be safe. Some of the people have moved four or five times. Many people have been traumatized by what they had left behind — broken houses, dead and injured relatives. At the time, we as humanitarians were not able to get the supplies that were needed. We still face that problem, but it is getting better slowly. So we found ourselves with the overwhelming challenge of delivering health support services and shelter materials for people who had arrived with nothing other than the clothes they had on their backs.

Now, it is still very desperate. People are facing squalid overcrowded conditions, we don’t have enough food supplies and enough materials to support the health needs of water and sanitation. We have many illnesses and diseases broken out because of the conditions. You know, hepatitis A is a direct result of overcrowding; there are also diarrheal diseases, respiratory infections and even head lice. Now, many people are starting to move away from Rafah, the actual town, and to the beach area, which is where people are being told to go for safety, although there have been a lot of airstrikes there. People are setting up temporary shelters to try and stay away from the incursion that might happen in Rafah.

PassBlue: Israel has allowed more trucks of aid into Gaza since US President Joe Biden’s recent call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That doesn’t mean aid is being distributed inside Gaza. Israel blames the UN for the problem. What’s your opinion on this?

McGoldrick: Before the war, there were 500 plus trucks a day coming into Gaza and a third were UN humanitarian assistance. The rest were from the private sector and others. The trucks coming in now, on a good day, are 200 to 250. So there’s always a gap in our ability to address the needs. It has not been easy to get the private sector in because of the obstructions. Some days, we get no trucks because there’s military activity, or because it’’ a Saturday [Israeli Sabbath]. There’s been an increase in trucks being sent from the Kerem Shalom side, which is Israel into Gaza. But that doesn’t mean we can collect them. They are kept there. We have to wait until the gates open, so we can bring them into our area. Once they’re in our area, we can’t use those trucks, we have to send those trucks back and we have to offload the trucks and put [the goods] in a warehouse and then reload them onto another set of trucks. That doesn’t happen easily. It’s a difficult environment that is very insecure. There are often attacks on the trucks while they’re waiting to load and unload.

Then, when you go into Rafah, you have to go in daylight because the night is too dangerous. People are so desperate inside Gaza itself and also Rafah. There are a lot of attacks on our trucks. There’s a lot of smuggling that goes on because of cigarettes and other goods of high value.

It’s easy for Israel to say that they send the trucks out, but Israel has to understand that their responsibility doesn’t end once the aid reaches us on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom. Their responsibility ends when it reaches the civilians of Gaza. Israel is not doing enough other than just giving us trucks. We have to have security in place, we have to have the ability to travel and go north, and we have to have openness and facilitation at checkpoints. That’s not happening. We’ve only had eight convoys in the last three weeks. That’s about 80 trucks, in total. We need to be having three to five times that every day.

In the north, Gaza is struggling with food insecurity and imminent famine. We can’t address that by any other means other than food supplies. As Israel said themselves, we have to flood Gaza with food to prevent people from having those serious issues — famine and death.

PassBlue: Can you speak more on the smuggling in Gaza?

McGoldrick: Rafah has always been a smugglers’ place before the war. Things are so difficult to find inside Gaza. So goods like cigarettes are of high value and are being smuggled in from Egypt. People in Gaza get them so they can sell them at high prices. So, because of such desperation, the smugglers themselves often have issues together, and we end up getting caught up in some of these fights. People are also desperate to feed their families and the fact that we don’t get so many trucks into Rafah and beyond means that anybody who sees a truck tries to stop and takes goods off the back because they don’t know when another truck might come. Also, because we get fewer trucks than needed, it impacts those who cannot get food off the trucks or struggle. So, we need to reduce desperation by getting more food in.

PassBlue: What are the conditions in northern Gaza?

McGoldrick: The supply to the north has been irregular and low. Because of that, we’ve already seen serious acute malnutrition issues and some even worse, complicated by hepatitis A, other infections, some people with cystic fibrosis, some with brain tumors. All of that was leading to a very catastrophic situation for those children in [hospital] wards. There are children not in incubators because of no incubators, and the hospitals are struggling with electricity. Some of the incubators have two children in them to make space. A two-day old boy weighs 1.2 kilos [about 2.6 pounds]. So, those low-weight births are a real problem for the future because those children will not have the full capacity to develop their organs or brains.

PassBlue: You’ve described how delivering aid into Gaza is difficult, but how peculiar is the hardship in the north?

McGoldrick: We’re only able to get eight trucks into northern Gaza every other day. We need to get more than 30 trucks a day. The way to scale up is to actually use all the available roads and to have entry points directly into the north, which we don’t have. Israel announced this week that they wish to try and change that. They want to open up a northern corridor. And that allows us to deliver assistance from a northern port directly into Gaza north, rather than having to try and come through the south, which is difficult because of security.

PassBlue: You’re in Gaza often. How do you negotiate your own safety, given that many zones get bombed?

McGoldrick: Working in that environment or living in that environment is tough, and the humanitarian community knows those risks and takes those risks. We have a system in place, the [UN] Department of Safety and Security provides guidance. You notify your routes to the Israelis, you deconflict and you get where you’re going. However, that doesn’t always work, as we’ve seen recently with the World Central Kitchen. Even yesterday, a Unicef car was shot three times. Luckily, nobody was injured.

PassBlue: What will it take to rebuild Gaza when the war is over?

McGoldrick: There was an interim disaster assessment done based on desktop studies and drone footage. The basic amount of money was $18 billion, which is not a great deal in real terms. I think it’d be a lot more than that, to be honest. But who’s going to pay for it? How’s it going to happen? Who’s going to manage it? Will the Palestinians themselves be allowed to be part of that building process or will it be imposed on them? What would Israelis’ accommodation be? Will they allow it to happen? Or will they be more restrictive on where it happens? A lot of the land has been taken away. So there’s less land for more people. Israel has to allow Gaza to exist side by side. They have to allow it to have the ability to be free and to have their economy or their government. Reconstruction is one thing, there needs to be a reconstruction of civil society, reconstructing communities. It’s going to take a long time because the place is completely shattered.

PassBlue: How have you managed your relationship with the Israeli government?

McGoldrick: I tried to let the Israeli authorities know we were not the enemy. We’re here to support the population. It created the conditions and they have responsibilities and obligations, which they don’t always honor or understand. But I’ve been able to work with them in close quarters and develop a relationship that understands our positions. Where we might not agree in our positions, we understand them. I have a job to do on behalf of the humanitarian community and I tried to do that. I’ve done it in a very transparent way, I haven’t done it trying to play games. I haven’t been as critical of Israel as people would want me to be. I don’t feel the need to get into fights with people over various things. So my relationship with the Israelis is operational, and it’s solid, transparent.

PassBlue: What do you recommend to your successor, Hadi Muhannad?

McGoldrick: You’ve got a crisis on your doorstep of massive proportions. And we can’t address all the needs that are emerging. So, you have to be aware that you’re going to get frustrated, annoyed and maybe overwhelmed, but you have to be active, stay focused and try to not get diverted over politics; give yourself things that you try to achieve in that time. And not get waylaid by things that you have no control over. Try to build trust with all the parties and be seen as an honorable, transparent and objective player as best as you can. Have accountability for the actions you take and the failures you have. You have a good sense of judgment.

We welcome your comments on this article.  What are your thoughts on Gaza's destruction?

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Damilola Banjo

Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.