CAIRO  -  In mid-March, a line of trucks stretched for 3 kilometers along a desert road near a crossing point from Israel into the Gaza Strip. On the same day, another line of trucks, some 1.5 kilo­meters long, sometimes two or three across, was backed up near a crossing from Egypt into Gaza.

The trucks were filled with aid, much of it food, for the more than 2 million Palestinians in the war-ravaged enclave. About 50 kilometers from Gaza, more aid trucks – some 2,400 in total were sitting idle this month in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, ac­cording to an Egyptian Red Cres­cent official. These motionless food-filled trucks, the main life­line for Gazans, are at the heart of the escalating humanitarian crisis gripping the enclave. More than five months into Israel’s war with Hamas, a report by a global authority on food security has warned that famine is im­minent in parts of Gaza, as more than three-quarters of the popu­lation have been forced from their homes and swathes of the territory are in ruins.

Galvanized by reports and im­ages of starving children, the in­ternational community, led by the United States, has been pressur­ing Israel to facilitate the transfer of more aid into Gaza. Washington has airdropped food into the Med­iterranean enclave and recently announced it would build a pier off the Gaza coast to help ferry in more aid. UN officials have ac­cused Israel of blocking humani­tarian supplies to Gaza. The Euro­pean Union’s foreign policy chief alleged Israel was using starva­tion as a “weapon of war.” And aid agency officials say Israeli red tape is slowing the flow of trucks carrying food supplies.

Israeli officials reject these ac­cusations and say they have in­creased aid access to Gaza. Israel isn’t responsible for delays in aid getting into Gaza, they say, and the delivery of aid once inside the territory is the responsibil­ity of the UN, and humanitarian agencies. Israel has also accused Hamas of stealing aid.

Reuters interviewed more than two dozen people, includ­ing humanitarian workers, Is­raeli military officials and truck drivers, in tracing the tortuous route that aid takes into Gaza in an effort to identify the choke­points and reasons for delays of supplies. Reuters also reviewed UN and Israeli military statistics on aid shipments, as well as sat­ellite images of the border cross­ing areas, which revealed the long lines of trucks.

Before the aid shipments en­ter Gaza, they undergo a series of Israeli checks, and a shipment approved at one stage of the pro­cess can later be rejected, accord­ing to 18 aid workers and U.N. of­ficials involved in the aid effort. At one crossing from Israel into Gaza, goods are twice loaded off trucks and then reloaded onto other trucks that then carry the aid to warehouses in Gaza.