Aid organizations are raising the alarm about the rapidly deteriorating food situation in the Gaza Strip, where food is becoming increasingly scarce. The United Nations reports that almost everyone in the Gaza Strip is now suffering from extreme hunger.
The Gaza Strip is now the “hungriest place on earth,” a spokesman for the UN emergency aid organization OCHA said Friday. According to him, six to nine hundred trucks are ready, but they cannot cross the border due to complicated bureaucracy of the Israeli authorities.
“Only flour can now be allowed in,” the spokesperson said at a press conference. “You can’t eat that like that, can you? It has to be baked. 100 percent of the population in Gaza risks famine.”
UNICEF says the situation for children in the Gaza Strip has “deteriorated extremely” in recent weeks. This is due to the continuing attacks by the Israeli army and the minimal aid that is allowed in.
Malnutrition is therefore now one of the biggest direct threats to children in Gaza. More than 90 percent of children face severe food poverty. “Many are emaciated,” says UNICEF Netherlands director Suzanne Laszlo. “They try to scream, but no sound comes out. They are too weak to cry. They are finished. Their bodies are giving up.”
Israel is forcibly starving Gazans according to the UN
On March 2, the Israeli government imposed a blockade on aid organizations to bring food, medicine and other necessities to Gaza. After more than eleven weeks, aid was allowed into the area again little by little. In practice, most aid ends up at the border.
UNICEF has been able to bring 21 trucks with relief supplies into the Gaza Strip in recent weeks. The organization calls that “good news, but not enough”. According to UNICEF, six hundred trucks with aid are needed per day. Laszlo: “Our relief goods are a few kilometers away, but simply cannot enter Gaza. This is a political blockade of humanitarian principles. And children are paying the price with their lives.”
Tom Fletcher, UN chief for humanitarian aid, says in an interview with BBC News that Israel is “forcibly starving” residents of Gaza. According to him, that is a war crime, although “judges and history” will ultimately have to judge that.
The enormous lack of food means that UN food depots are being stormed.
Criticism of Israeli aid initiative: ‘Too little and unfair’
In addition, aid organizations are critical of the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a plan by Israel and the United States to distribute food in the Gaza Strip. The GHF distributes food at three points in the southern Gaza. But because too few resources are being spent, chaos arose.
At a distribution in the city of Rafah earlier this week, things got so out of hand that Israel opened fire on people who came to get food. “This dangerous and reckless approach means that food does not reach the places where it is most needed, but only in places where the Israeli army decides to bring citizens together,” Doctors Without Borders said.
UNICEF is also very critical of the GHF. “They do not work according to the humanitarian principles for which we stand,” says Laszlo. In addition to the inadequate quantities, this leads to an unfair distribution. Because the GHF only has a few distribution points in the south, many people fall by the wayside.
Laszlo: “For many people, the elderly, the sick and children, those places are unreachable. This approach increases inequality. That should never be the result of aid.” UNICEF urges the international community to “do everything possible now” to stop the violence and allow aid in.
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