The UN severely underreports the amount of aid entering Gaza

The UN figures have a questionable track record. “Last year in the spring, when the IDF operated in Rafah, the UN claimed that aid dropped by around 70 per cent,” said Danny Orbach, a Hebrew University military historian who is working on a major study of calculations surrounding Gaza aid. “In time the UN retroactively corrected the data, but the political damage was already done.”

Indeed, in May 2024 after the start of the operation in Rafah – which was much criticised internationally but described as essential by Israel – the UN reported very few aid trucks were entering Gaza. Then on May 24, the UN said that there had been 906 trucks since the operation started – a substantial number.

The Bar Ilan University political scientist Gerald Steinberg said that internationally there is a tendency to treat the Israeli figures as propaganda and the UN figures as gospel. “There's a reflex to say: Israel is lying. But COGAT puts their data out in the open. Where is the matching UN breakdown?”

Two other indicators suggest there is more aid than the UN is accounting for.

One is Gazan market data. Prices of food in Gaza are dropping, not rising. As reported earlier this month by JC, flour prices fell from £20 per kilo to under £4, sugar dropped from £60 to below £10, and pasta fell from £20 to £2.50 — indicating improved supply.

The second indicator is the number of deaths. Orbach said that while all deaths are tragic, assessing the situation requires looking at the numbers. “The March report from the IPC predicted a major famine in Gaza by July,” Orbach said. “If that was accurate, we would already be seeing tens of thousands of deaths from starvation. That hasn’t happened.” He referred specifically to projections of larger death counts issued by the IPC, the Palestinian American Medical Association mission, and commented: “The reason these aren’t happening is that more aid entered than the public UN numbers imply.”

So where do the discrepancies come from?

Firstly, there is a divergence in methodology. UN figures include only shipments it directly observes — primarily aid received through two southern crossings. They exclude trucks arriving via the northern Erez crossing, airdrops, and private-sector deliveries not coordinated by UN agencies. COGAT counts all of those.

Orbach pointed out that even the definition of a “truck” does not match. UN officials have admitted they only count trucks once they are fully unloaded into UNRWA warehouses, while COGAT records them when they cross the border. 

A time lag contributes to discrepancies. UN updates often appear weeks or even months after deliveries, so their tallies lag behind reality. By the time corrections are made, the lower figures have already shaped international headlines and political debates.

Some trucks are recorded by Israel as they enter, but never make it to their final destination and therefore do not appear in UN counts. Orbach describes this as the tragedy of food that fails to reach its intended recipients for factors that are beyond Israel’s control – lost amid logistical problems such as driver shortages, looting and the dangers of operating in a war zone.

“It’s a big problem, and there are many reasons for it,” he said. “One is the logistical hurdles and difficulties of the various UN organisations. One is screening. Everything has to be screened. Another is a lack of drivers – sometimes drivers go on strike, and you know, because they think it’s too dangerous.”

Screening affects reporting of aid delivery because, when a truck is delayed and a consignment not immediately handed to UN agencies, it may miss the window for inclusion in their counts.

Orbach added that there was also the bottleneck of active fighting inside Gaza itself, which repeatedly brings convoys to a halt.

Steinberg, who heads the watchdog group NGO Monitor alongside his academic work, said that he believes the phenomenon of an “aid industry” of UN bodies and non-profits that oppose Israel’s approach to aid delivery – and the way in which it sidelines their operations – skews the reporting. “The data system is broken,” he said. “The people on the ground are the ones feeding the data to the UN. They're not neutral. These figures are passed on and cited by UN officials, courts, and media — all without proper verification.”

In the background is a deeper question. Is there an overestimate of the amount of aid needed in Gaza, which therefore overstates the current shortfall? Orbach says yes.

In the process of research for his imminent study, which is in collaboration with fellow researchers Jonathan Boxman, Yagil Henkin and Jonathan Braverman and due to be published by the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, he has reached what he describes as a troubling conclusion. The accusation of hunger was inevitable due to the aid numbers that were in circulation before the war.

He said that the international community has badly overestimated how much aid Gaza actually needs. The UN has suggested repeatedly that more than 500 trucks a day are needed. Just last month, this claim was seen in a UN statement saying that “at least” 500 to 600 trucks are “needed every day to prevent more people from starving.”

Orbach pointed to a core statistical flaw that began early in the war, when UN agencies repeatedly cited 500 trucks per day — 150 of them carrying food — as the pre-war baseline for aid to Gaza. But as he explained, that number was based on working days, not calendar days. During the war, however, aid flows were reported per calendar day, making the comparison misleading, or in Orbach’s words, akin to comparing apples to oranges.

Worse still, under a quarter of the pre-war trucks carried food, while the rest included large volumes of materials like cement — irrelevant to immediate humanitarian needs. In contrast, around 75 per cent of wartime aid trucks have carried food. Orbach says that when the numbers are corrected for consistent methodology, the actual pre-war daily average of food trucks is closer to 73 — not 150 — meaning the benchmark has been significantly inflated.

Orbach stressed that his research is no echo chamber for Israeli government policy. It will criticise Jerusalem’s decision to stop aid deliveries during part of this year. But he said that the baseline calculation that 500-plus trucks are needed, based on supposed pre-war norms, is a miscalculation which ensures Israel will always be seen as the villain.

And while people widely assume that many more trucks are needed now because Gaza was producing a huge share of its own food, he found that pre-war local agriculture accounted for around 12 per cent of caloric consumption. The rest always came from imports or aid.

Orbach commented: “When you work from an inflated baseline it’s very easy to assume that whatever level of aid is coming through looks severely inadequate and anything that Israel does will be interpreted as starving Gaza.”

The United Nations did not reply to detailed questions asked for this article. However, it provided a statement saying: “The data presented on the online dashboard of the UN-2720 Mechanism covers only humanitarian relief consignments processed through that mechanism. This reflects our accountability and transparency for what we and our partners deliver into Gaza, as mandated by Security Council Resolution 2720 of 2023. This is clearly stated on the dashboard itself. In our reporting, we fully acknowledge that other actors bring supplies into Gaza when this is allowed. We more than welcome these contributions, but what enters is far from sufficient, as shown by the daily gatherings of hungry people along convoy routes, and by the surge in malnutrition cases.

“The UN cannot independently verify the volume of supplies brought in outside of its mechanisms, as Israeli authorities have so far mostly denied our requests to deploy monitors at Gaza’s crossings – all of which are under their control. As we have consistently said, larger volumes and a wider variety must be allowed into Gaza, including by humanitarian organizations - UN agencies and NGOs - and by the private sector. These supplies must enter without impediment through all land crossings and routes, including those leading directly to the north and to Gaza city.”