The death of more than 100 people on Gaza’s al Rashid Street, where crowds surrounded an aid convoy last Thursday, has led to pressure on the international community to address the growing hunger crisis in the Palestinian territory. Journalist Fergal Keane reports from Jerusalem.
Palestinians have died in all kinds of places and ways. Crushed under the rubble of their homes, victims of explosives, pierced by bullets or cut by metal fragments.
And now, as the war enters its fifth month, death by hunger has arrived in Gaza.
It is essential to know the when, what and how of the al Rashid Street tragedy.
While the precise facts call for an independent investigation that is unlikely to be carried out in Gaza under current conditions, this should not distract from attempting to answer why people risked their lives to congregate before dawn in the middle of a war zone.
The refugees were there because they were desperate to feed their families. They died riddled and trampled – we still don’t know in what proportion – simply because they wanted to live. It’s a cruel irony.
85% of Gaza’s population is displaced. The war has dismantled all normal economic activity and the food supply. The water and electricity have been cut off. Hospitals are trying to function without medicine or enough electricity.
Over the past week, the UN, citing security concerns, has declared that it cannot provide aid to northern Gaza. These are fundamental facts that must be taken into account to understand the tragedy.
From the beginning, the international community – expressed in public statements – has considered Israel primarily responsible for ensuring that aid can be delivered safely.
But after months of war, there is no sign of what the UN calls “an enabling environment” in which large volumes of aid can be delivered to those who need it.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he “will insist that Israel provide more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need.”
As a first action, US military aircraft They released about 38,000 food rations who parachuted into Gaza.
“These airdrops are part of a sustained effort to deliver more aid to Gaza, including expanding the flow of aid through corridors and land routes,” US Central Command said in a statement on Saturday.
Washington officials said Thursday’s “tragic incident” had highlighted “the importance of expanding and maintaining the flow of aid to Gaza in response to the dire humanitarian situation.”
Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Egypt and Jordan, have already sent aid to Gaza, but this It’s the first time the United States has done it..
A chain collapse
It’s not that there isn’t evidence of a growing humanitarian crisis. Witness to this are the statements made by the UN over several months.
“We are already seeing a cascading collapse of water, sewage and sanitation services, telecommunications, food shortages and healthcare,” the UN Human Rights office reported on November 15.
On December 2, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported: “UN humanitarian staff stated that aid teams had only ‘extremely limited’ movement and that access to the north was now ‘totally blocked’.”
Twelve days later, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2720, in which it called on “the parties to the conflict to enable, facilitate and make possible the immediate, safe and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid at scale directly to Palestinian civilians throughout that territory.”
On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanded that Israel “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”
On February 9, the director of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Phillipe Lazzarini, accused Israel of blocking food supplies to 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza.
No guarantees
According to the UN, 500 aid trucks are needed per day. The daily average has been 90.
The aid dropped by parachute from the sky in recent days is welcome on the ground, but it is also a symbol of the failure of the aid effort.
There are roads leading to Gaza from Israel and Egypt that could accommodate trucks loaded with huge amounts of aid, if those roads were safe.
The continuation of the war and the chaotic conditions it has generated mean that many truck drivers don’t risk your lives.
Civilians looting aid and criminal gangs stealing it to sell are part of what one U.N. official called “Mogadishu-like” conditions that may be developing, referring to the chaos that engulfed the Somali capital. during the civil conflict of the early 1990s.
Gaza police, led by Hamasis unwilling to escort aid convoys because its members are apparently afraid that the Israelis will shoot at them.
As for the Hamas leaders, after provoking this war they have disappeared and are now fighting to survive in the tunnels and ruins of Gaza.
Israel claims that it is facilitating the arrival of aid and that, for example, there were three escorted deliveries in the nights before the tragedy on al Rashid Street.
He has blamed the UN, saying that aid is piled up inside the northern border and that the UN has not “shown up” to distribute the supplies.
Also deeply distrusts UNRWAwhich he accuses of being infiltrated by Hamas.
As a result of the accusations, UNRWA fired 12 employees accused of having participated in the October 7 attacks in Israel or having collaborated in the detention of hostages.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that the Israel Defense Forces would not deal with the agency again. “UNRWA has lost legitimacy,” he said, “and can no longer function as a UN body.”
At the beginning of the conflict, days after Hamas will kill about 1,200 people in Israel and kidnap another 250Gallant ordered the complete blockade of the Gaza Strip.
“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting against human animals and we act accordingly,” he declared.
This position changed under pressure from the United States, as on October 19 President Joe Biden announced an agreement in which Israel and Egypt allowed aid into Gaza.
Some supplies began to arrive, but there continued to be reports of increasing hunger.
Western politicians, including British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, made repeated calls.
On January 9, Cameron stated that he was concerned that Israel had “taken actions that may contravene international law,” adding that he wanted Israel to restore water supplies to Gaza.
A month later, on February 12, the minister declared before the British House of Lords that Israel had to ensure that the people of Gaza had food, water and shelter, “because if it does not do so, it would be in breach of international law.” humanitarian”.
After what happened on al Rashid Street, he called for an urgent investigation: “This must not happen again,” he stated.
But many civilians in Gaza live in constant fear of violent death and, increasingly, starvation.
Over time, The world will wonder why the UN Security Council, made up of the most powerful nations on the planet, did not guarantee the delivery of vital aid to hundreds of thousands of desperate people in Gaza.
And this after almost eight decades of UN humanitarian operations around the world. There is no shortage of experience or resources.
Addressing the Security Council a week before the al Rashid Street incident, the secretary general of the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, Christopher Lockyear, spoke of a situation in which “the laws and principles on which we collectively depend to do possible humanitarian aid have been eroded to the point of meaninglessness… the humanitarian response in Gaza is today an illusion.”
It is still too early to speak of the tragic events of February 29 as a turning point.
However, the death of so many people in such terrible circumstances has increased the growing pressure for a ceasefire agreement that allows food to reach the hungry.
The coming days will tell if those hopes can become reality.
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