Olga Cherevko, a staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, says that while Israel is now letting slightly more aid into the enclave, its vast bureaucratic restrictions on aid flow have continued to make it impossible to reverse widespread malnutrition.

“The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground,” Cherevko told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza.

She described Palestinians as continuing to suffer “depths of despair, depths of malnutrition and starvation”.

A major reason more aid trucks aren’t entering Gaza, she said, is that the UN must coordinate every step of the delivery process with Israel, which often extensively delays approvals and clearances.

“There are so many factors on the ground that point to the fact that, despite the slight relaxation of [Israel’s] various constraints [on aid entry], we’re still in the same situation,” Cherevko said.

“People are continuing to starve, malnutrition rates continue to go up, people are risking their lives to get food, and there’s no change substantially and operationally, really.”