The Assistant Secretary General of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations, Martin Griffiths, rejected this Thursday that the organization helps “push Palestinians into southern Gaza”in reference to temporary evacuation corridors created by Israel.
Griffiths stated that the UN “did not participate in the arrival of displaced people to any of the so-called safe areas of Gaza,” when speaking at the Peace Forum taking place in France on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
The Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, on Wednesday he accused the UN of collusion with Israel in the forced displacement of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Since the offensive against the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, the Israeli army has asked the population in the north of the enclave to head south.
The objective is to attack Hamas structures.which according to Israel are concentrated in the north, including Gaza City.
Hamas has accused Israel of also bombing the southern Gaza Strip, where people in the north are supposed to be safe.
The UN Deputy Secretary General warned about the public safety concerns displaced.
“On behalf of the humanitarian community that I represent, I can tell you that there are concerns about the safety of civilians in the so-called safe zones if there is no agreement between all parties on their creation,” he said.
Griffiths said that There are no satisfactory conditions anywhere in Gaza. “to ensure adequate shelter, food, water, sanitation and health.”
Therefore, he defended the need for a humanitarian ceasefire to “guarantee the protection of all civilians in Gaza.”
The director of the organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Isabelle Defourny, warned at the conference that so-called safe zones are “fake safe zones” and declared that 30% of the dead are in the south from the country.
The head of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that the UN had “never recorded so many deaths in such a short time during a conflict.”
“Let’s ask for help to enter Gaza because at the moment few trucks arrive per day,” he stated.
UNRWA provides education, health and social services, microfinance, camp improvements and emergency assistance to millions of refugees living in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The services are aimed at those most in need. among refugees, Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland when the State of Israel was created in 1948.
Together with their descendants, they today constitute around 80% of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
According to UNRWA, 89 of its employees were killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Israeli military offensive that followed the Hamas attack.
The Hamas attack left more than 1,400 dead and more than two hundred hostages, according to Israel.
Israeli bombings against the Gaza Strip killed more than 10,500 peopleaccording to Hamas.
Source: TSF
