With UNRWA, the United States and the UN warn Israel against a “policy of famine”
The United States and UN officials on Wednesday warned Israel against “hunger politics” that would be orchestrated in Gaza to “make a weapon of war”which the Hebrew State has completely rejected.
It is the first time that Washington has warned its unwavering ally so clearly, 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 dedicated to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke up: “We have made 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 clear: food and supplies must flow to Gaza immediately, and there must be humanitarian pauses to allow for vaccination and aid delivery and distribution.”insisted the diplomat, who has been making his most critical voice towards Israel heard for some time. “A, quote, ‘famine policy’ in northern Gaza would be egregious and unacceptable and would have implications for international law and American law.”threatened Ms. Thomas-Greenfield.
Before the same Council, the acting head of the UN for humanitarian aid, Joyce Msuya, had just judged “The fact that there is hardly any humanitarian access is unacceptable, given the abject conditions and intolerable suffering in northern Gaza.”
In Berlin, his fellow head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, in Israel’s sights, warned the press that “Extreme hunger or malnutrition [étaient] unfortunately again probable » in this territory. He said he noticed a “drastic drop” of the number of food aid convoys in the south “an average of 50 to 60 per two million inhabitants”. As for the north, almost 400,000 people are trapped in the fighting and “It has become extremely complicated” to bring humanitarian aid there. Worse still, 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 hunger a weapon of war.
Before entering the Security Council, Israeli ambassador Danny Danon dismissed these accusations, ensuring that “more than a million tons of aid” had been transported to the Palestinian enclave. “The problem is that Hamas diverts aid […] and sells it to feed his terror machine, while the civilian population suffers.”he thundered before journalists.
His Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, also stated that Israel “everything possible so that the international community can provide humanitarian aid to Gaza” assuring the German newspaper image 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 what “The war in Gaza ends without delay” because “This is the only way to respond to the humanitarian disaster”.
The harsh warning from the United States follows a letter dated Sunday from Foreign and Defense Ministers Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin to the Israeli government in which they deplored the low level of humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The two American ministers even threaten their military and diplomatic ally to suspend some of their vital military assistance if there is no significant improvement within thirty days for the civilian population.
On Wednesday, Austin spoke again with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, to “encourage the government of Israel to continue taking measures to address the dire humanitarian situation”according to the Pentagon. And the State Department called it “incredibly disturbing information from New York Times according to which the Israeli army used Palestinians as human shields in its war in Gaza.
