UN says Israel could cut aid to Gaza as war tactic
United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk on Tuesday blamed Israel for what he said was the entirely avoidable catastrophe of hunger and famine unfolding in Gaza, and urged international pressure on the country to ensure unfettered access of humanitarian aid.
International alarm over the hunger crisis in Gaza is growing, drawing the attention of food experts predicting an impending famine in the north of the enclave and foreign leaders and diplomats are becoming increasingly blunt in pointing the finger at Israel.
“The situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the access and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, the displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure,” said Mr. Turk. in a statement.
Mr Türk said that Israel’s restrictions on aid, together with its behavior in its campaign to destroy Hamas, including the displacement of people and the destruction of infrastructure, could amount to the use of starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime .
Israel has pushed back on criticism that it is restricting access to Gaza. noting his support for several recent initiativesincluding attempts to provide air and sea supplies, which aid agencies say are far less efficient than road transport.
It has accused Hamas of diverting aid and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The country’s mission in Geneva said on Tuesday that Mr Türk “is once again trying to blame Israel for the situation and completely absolve the responsibility of the UN and Hamas.”
A report released Monday by the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said 1.1 million people, half of Gaza’s population, were likely to face catastrophic food insecurity and predicted an impending rise in the number of hunger-related deaths.
“The coping mechanisms we have seen in recent weeks, even months, are people eating bird seeds, livestock feed, wild grass and weeds,” Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. aid agency in Geneva, told reporters on Tuesday as he addressed the report discussed. . “We are further than that. There is literally nothing left.”
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it had set up a center to try to stabilize malnutrition levels in southern Gaza and planned to set up a new center in the north, but it said delivering supplies at the scale needed require a ceasefire. Talks continue in Qatar amid another intense diplomatic effort to broker a lull in the fighting.