HAIFA, Israel — World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, has resumed operations in the Gaza Strip almost seven weeks after pausing cooking and distributing meals because of Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

The charity said in a statement that it cooked nearly 10,000 meals Saturday, its first day of operations after it was able to deliver aid to its teams in Gaza for the first time in more than 12 weeks.

World Central Kitchen suspended its work in Gaza on May 7, saying that it had run out of supplies to cook meals or make bread after Israel imposed a near total shutdown of aid deliveries, starting in March, that lasted almost three months.

Israeli officials defended the blockade, saying it was intended to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons or diverting aid supplies. But the United Nations and other international aid agencies criticized some of the measures as a form of collective punishment and warned of a growing hunger crisis because of the restrictions. They also said that Israel had not provided evidence that Hamas had systematically diverted aid.

“This pause marked a devastating moment in our response, cutting off a vital source of daily nourishment for families already facing extreme hardship,” World Central Kitchen said in its statement, adding that it had prepared and served more than 133 million meals in Gaza since October 2023.

Israel’s Deadly World Central Kitchen Attack

Last year, the group halted operations for nearly a month after Israel hit a convoy and killed seven of its workers, a strike that prompted widespread international condemnation. The Israeli military said that a number of failures, including a breakdown in communications and violations of the military’s rules of engagement, had led to the attacks, and it dismissed two officers.

Many families in Gaza have relied heavily on charities such as World Central Kitchen for meals as staple foods have become scarce and fuel for cooking has become nearly impossible to obtain.

But much of the wider aid infrastructure in Gaza remains nonoperational since Israel began to allow some supplies to be delivered in mid-May, mostly under a new distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The beginning of the Israeli and U.S.-backed system has been chaotic, with scores of Palestinians killed as they tried to get food packages.

“Far too many people have died while trying to access the trickle of food aid coming in,” the U.N. World Food Program said in a statement this past week. “Only a massive scale-up in food distributions can stabilize the situation, calm anxieties, and rebuild the trust within communities that more food is coming.”

Abdel Nasser al-Ajrami, head of Gaza’s bakers union, said the U.N.-supported kitchens across the territory remained out of service.

“We are unable to operate the bakeries because people are too desperate, making it nearly impossible to manage the constant chaos,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Rawan Sheikh Ahmad

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