With UNRWA, the United States and the UN warn Israel against a “policy of starvation”
The United States and UN officials on Wednesday warned Israel of “starvation policy” which would be orchestrated in Gaza to “make a weapon of war”which the Hebrew State has completely rejected.
This is the first time that Washington has so clearly warned its unwavering ally, after having threatened in writing this week to suspend part of its military assistance, without improving humanitarian aid in the devastated and besieged Palestinian territory.
On Wednesday, during a new UN Security Council in New York devoted to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, American Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield raised her voice: “We have made it clear to the Israeli government, at the highest levels, that it must do more to resolve the intolerable and catastrophic humanitarian crisis. »
“The United States will continue to make it clear: Food and supplies must flow into Gaza, immediately, and there must be humanitarian pauses to allow for vaccinations and the delivery and distribution of aid.”insisted the diplomat, who has for some time been making a more critical voice heard towards Israel. “A, quote, ‘starvation policy’ in northern Gaza would be atrocious and unacceptable and would have implications for international law and US law.”threatened Ms. Thomas-Greenfield.
Before the same Council, the interim head of the UN for humanitarian aid, Joyce Msuya, had just judged “unacceptable is the fact that humanitarian access hardly exists, given the abject conditions and intolerable suffering in northern Gaza.”
In Berlin, his colleague head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini, in Israel’s crosshairs, warned the press that “starvation or extreme malnutrition [étaient] unfortunately again probable » in this territory. He said he noticed a “drastic fall” of the number of food aid convoys in the south “on average 50 to 60 per two million inhabitants”. As for the north, nearly 400,000 people are trapped in the fighting and “it has become extremely complicated” to get humanitarian aid there. Worse, Mr. Lazzarini accused, “hunger in the Gaza Strip is artificially created” and Israel “actively prevents convoys from crossing the border”when they are not “certain members of the Israeli government [qui] make famine a weapon of war.
Before entering the Security Council, Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon brushed aside these accusations, assuring that “more than a million tonnes of aid” had been transported to the Palestinian enclave. “The problem is Hamas diverting aid […] and sells it to fuel his machine of terror, while the civilian population suffers”he thundered in front of journalists.
Its foreign minister, Israel Katz, also affirmed that Israel would “everything to enable the international community to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza” by assuring the German newspaper Bild that his country at war had “is doing, and doing, more than any other country has ever done for its enemies”.
But the French ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Rivière asked him that “the war in Gaza ends without delay” car “this is the only way to respond to the humanitarian disaster”.
The harsh US warning follows a letter dated Sunday from Foreign and Defense Ministers Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin to the Israeli government deploring the low level of humanitarian aid for Gaza .
The two American ministers even threaten their military and diplomatic ally to suspend part of their vital military assistance if there is no significant improvement within thirty days for the civilian populations.
On Wednesday, Mr. Austin spoke again to his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant to “encourage the government of Israel to continue taking steps to address the dire humanitarian situation”according to the Pentagon. And the State Department called “incredibly disturbing information from New York Times according to which the Israeli army used Palestinians as human shields in its war in Gaza.
