The Secretary General of the United Nations has returned to demand that the people of the Gaza Strip get the help they need to survive. “The way Israel is carrying out this offensive is creating enormous obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid within Gaza,” António Guterres said, a day after a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate acceleration of the distribution of aid to civilians of the enclave . without the call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas that was in the original document.
According to Guterres, “an effective relief operation in Gaza requires security; personnel who can work safely; logistics capacity; and the resumption of commercial activities” and none of these conditions are met. According to the interim director of the NGO Oxfam, Aleema Shivji, it will be “too late” to save the people of Gaza if the United Nations resolution is not amended to include an immediate ceasefire. Without this pause, Oxfam “doesn’t see how it’s possible” to get enough aid to the area’s population, he said, quoted by Sky News.
The latest report from a UN food security platform concludes that more than one in four households in Gaza face extreme food shortages and there is a risk of famine in the next six months unless access to food is restored. and sanitary facilities.
The report, which combines information from the World Food Program (WFP) and other UN agencies, estimates that 26% of Gazans, more than half a million, have exhausted their food supplies and are facing “catastrophic hunger.” “It’s not just about numbers. There are actual children, women and men behind these alarming statistics. The complexity, scale and speed at which this crisis has developed are unprecedented,” said Arif Husain, WFP Chief Economist.
On the ground, the Palestinian Aid Agency (UNRWA) deplores the Israeli authorities’ new orders for around 150,000 people to move from the center of Gaza to the south, Deir-al-Balah, where bombings have taken place. “There are no safe places, there are no places you can go. The people of Gaza are not pawns and some have been displaced several times,” said the UNRWA Director. Moreover, the UN agency says, it is not possible to distribute aid under these circumstances.
Regarding military operations, the Israeli army said it had arrested more than 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants during the week and killed dozens of fighters in northern Gaza in recent hours, while five soldiers were killed. On the Hamas side, a statement said contact had been lost with a group responsible for holding five hostages, assuming all had been killed in an airstrike.
In Tel Aviv, thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, while in a phone call with President Joe Biden he thanked the US for its decisive role in avoiding a stronger resolution in the Security Council, after several days of negotiations and postponements, which resulted in the absence of the aforementioned call to stop fighting, as well as blocking the establishment of a monitoring mechanism by the UN, which ensured that Israel continues to play a role in inspecting humanitarian aid.
Source: DN
