Half of Gaza’s population is starving and 9 out of 10 people cannot eat every day, the World Food Program (WFP) has warned.
Carl Skau, deputy director of this UN agency, assured that only a fraction of the necessary supplies have been able to enter the Strip, since conditions in Gaza have made deliveries “almost impossible.”
This lack of food adds to the overcrowded conditions in which hundreds of thousands of refugees find themselves.which is favoring the spread of diseases, and the terrible state of the Strip’s health system.
“The impact of the conflict on health is catastrophic,” denounced the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who assured that “Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing.”
The situation has become unsustainable in the city of Khan Younis, which is surrounded on two sides by Israeli tanks, according to witnesses, and where a fierce fight is taking place between Hamas militiamen and Israeli forces, with the population completely terrified.
Israel says it must continue airstrikes on Gaza to eliminate Hamas and free hostages, and that “any death and suffering of civilians is painful, but we have no alternative,” the army spokesman told the BBC. Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht.
The Israeli army has tightened its operation in the Strip. Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi was filmed telling soldiers that the army has to “press harder” because “we are seeing terrorists surrender… a sign that their network is collapsing.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have asked the population to leave the center of Khan Younis towards safe areas, but residents say there are no longer any areas that can be considered safe.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini described the situation in Gaza as “hell on earth”and reiterated his call for a ceasefire in the Strip, since the “dehumanization of Palestinians has led the international community to endure continued Israeli attacks on Gaza.”
“It is the worst situation I have seen in my life,” said the official.
Lazzarini warned that UNRWA, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East, is on the brink of collapse: “People come to the UN for protection, but not even the blue flag is protected anymore.”. In any case, the situation has reached a catastrophic character.”
Movement in and out of Gaza has been heavily restricted since Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters breached the perimeter fence and launched an attack that killed 1,200 people, according to Israel, and took 245 hostages.
In response, Israel closed its borders with Gaza and began an aerial bombardment of the territory, restricting aid deliveries that Gazans heavily depended on.
More than 17,700 people have died in Gaza as a result of the Israeli operation, including more than 7,000 childrenaccording to the Strip’s Health Ministry, administered by Hamas.
Insufficient help
Only the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt has been opened to a very limited extent, allowing limited amounts of aid to reach Gaza. This week Israel also agreed to open the Kerem Shalom crossing, in the south of the border between Israel and Gaza, but only for the inspection of aid trucks. These vehicles will then have to head to Rafah to cross from there to Gaza.
The aid that is being allowed in is insufficient, denounce international humanitarian assistance agencies. The meticulous Israeli controls also slow down the passage of products and the constant bombings make it very difficult for aid to reach the places from where it is distributed.
Carl Skau said that nothing had prepared him for the “fear, chaos and despair” that he and his WFP team encountered during their trip to Gaza this week.
They witnessed “confusion in the warehouses, distribution points with thousands of desperate and hungry people, supermarkets with empty shelves and overcrowded shelters with overcrowded bathrooms”, said.
International pressure and a temporary seven-day ceasefire last month allowed some much-needed aid to enter the Gaza Strip, but the WFP insists a second border crossing is now needed to meet demand.
Nine out of ten families in some areas They spend “an entire day and night without eating anything”according to Skau.
The population of Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of people from northern Gaza took refuge last month, say the situation there is terrible.
Dr Ahmed Moghrabi, head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the city’s only operating medical centre, Nasser Hospital, had to fight back tears as he spoke to the BBC about the lack of food.
“I have a three-year-old daughter, she always asks me for sweets, an apple, some fruit. I cannot provide them to you. I feel helpless,” she lamented.
“There is not enough food, only rice, can you believe it? “We eat only once a day,” the doctor added.
Collapsed healthcare system
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has denounced that the Israeli operation has forced Palestinians to live in an increasingly smaller area, creating the “ideal conditions for diseases to spread.”
According to the head of the WHO, there is only one shower for every 750 people and one toilet for every 150. Furthermore, “only 14 hospitals of the original 36 (in the Gaza Strip) function partially”, two in the north and 12 in the south.
Conditions for healthcare workers, which were already very difficult in 2018, are “impossible and they are directly in the line of fire,” Ghebreyesus said.
Since the start of the conflict on October 7, the WHO has recorded 449 attacks on health centers or teams in Gaza and the West Bank, and 60 in Israel.
Khan Yunis has been the focus of intense airstrikes in recent days. The situation has reached such a point that the head of the Nasser hospital has assured that his team had “lost control” over the number of dead and injured arriving at the facilities.
Israel says Hamas leaders are hiding in Khan Younis, possibly in an underground network of tunnels, and that They are fighting house by house and “hole by hole” to destroy the group’s military capabilities.
But the advance of Israeli troops and bombardments are pushing people further south into the Strip, where they are crowding in desperate conditions, prompting the head of UNRWA to accuse Israel of laying the groundwork for the mass expulsion of Gazans to Egypt, Lazzarini wrote in an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times.
“The first stage of such a scenario,” the UN official said, was the widespread destruction in northern Gaza and the resulting displacement, while forcing civilians to leave the southern city of Khan Younis, closer to the border. with Egypt, was the next.
“If this path continues, leading to what many are already calling a second Nakba, Gaza will no longer be a land for Palestinians“Lazzarini said, referring to the forced displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes during the war that coincided with the proclamation of the State of Israel.
Israel denies this is its intention. “There is not, there never was and there will never be an Israeli plan to move Gaza residents to Egypt. This is simply not true,” a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Ministry office responsible for Palestinian civil affairs told AFP.
Resolution vetoed
On Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused the United States of being complicit in war crimes after it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Of the 15 members of the Security Council, 13 countries voted in favor of the resolution calling for a ceasefire. The United Kingdom abstained from the vote and The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution.
Joe Biden’s administration has also used an emergency law to authorize the sale of some 14,000 tank ammunition worth more than US$106 million to Israel.
Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, has blamed Washington for “the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and the elderly in Gaza at the hands of the occupation forces.” [israelíes]”.
US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood defended the veto, saying the resolution called for an “unsustainable ceasefire” that would “leave Hamas capable of repeating what it did on October 7.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that he appreciated the “correct stance” that the United States had adopted in the Security Council.
A temporary seven-day ceasefire ended just over a week ago. During the truce, Hamas released 78 hostages in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
There are still more than 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
On Saturday it was confirmed that one of them, Israeli Sahar Baruch, 25, had died, his kibbutz and a support group for the hostages said in a statement.
It emerged after Hamas’s armed wing released a video on Friday that it said showed the bloody aftermath of a botched IDF operation to free an Israeli hostage.
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