Israel’s limited steps to allow aid into Gaza are welcome but not enough to reverse the extreme shortages it intentionally “manufactured”, Gaza acting director of UNRWA affairs Sam Rose has said.

“This has clearly been part of an approach of manufactured starvation over several months,” Rose told Al Jazeera.

“First of all, you [Israel] limit the supply of aid coming in, or you completely block it. Second, you criticise the organisations whose job it is to provide that aid, the UN organisations — whose job, of course, is made far more difficult by the controls that Israel imposes.”

“And then the next stage of this is to frame humanitarian aid itself as part of the problem,” he continued.

“And that’s the dynamic we’ve been facing over the past few weeks in which countless children have died of malnutrition.”

Rose added that while “we very much welcome these initial steps to increase the flow of aid,” he said it is “not enough”.

“They need to be expanded, they need to be sustained, and they need to be accompanied by a ceasefire because that’s the only thing that’s going to stabilise things for hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of desperate people in Gaza.”