LONDON: Israel’s war in Gaza has been “a slow motion, mass murder of children, five months in the making,” Jordan’s Queen Rania said on Monday in a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour.
Speaking about the ongoing crisis in the region, the queen said: “Since the beginning of this war, Israel has cut off everything that is required to sustain a human life — food, fuel, shelter, medicine, water — and it has been going on now for four or five months, and allowed the people of Gaza to completely rely on outside assistance.
“And actually it has systematically denied and delayed a lot of that assistance, occasionally bombing some of the convoys that bring this assistance and bombing some of the people, shooting some of the people who are trying to get whatever scarce resources they can get.”
Queen Rania reflected on the meaning of Ramadan in the midst of Israel’s war in Gaza, in which innocent civilians are struggling to survive with a lack of basic necessities.
She added: “Ramadan for us is a month of worship, charity and compassion for our fellow human beings. And I think this year we're welcoming these holidays with very heavy hearts.”
The queen cited UN reports of a widespread food crisis in Gaza, in which every resident is facing hunger and with more than 550,000 people on the brink of famine.
She said: “I'm hearing of people just eating whatever they can get their hands on, including grass, or they’re having to grind bird feed or animal feed just to make bread.
“And in the north of Gaza, people are not on the verge of starvation but are actually dying of starvation.
“It is absolutely shameful, outrageous, and entirely predictable, what’s happening in Gaza today, because it was deliberate.”
Pointing out the tonnes of food in trucks just miles away from people who are starving, Queen Rania said the widespread hunger in Gaza is “not a natural disaster,” but rather “deprivation by design.”
Explaining the reason for Jordan’s humanitarian airdrops, the queen said: “We found that after trying so hard in vain to persuade Israel to open the land access points, that we had to do something. We couldn’t just sit idle and watch people starving.”
She added that airdrops were “desperate measures” to address a “desperate situation,” describing them as “drops in an ocean of unmet needs.”
Queen Rania, echoing King Abdullah’s comments, said that these efforts were far from sufficient and could not replace large-scale humanitarian access to deal with the issue.
She called for an immediate and sustained ceasefire, the opening of all access points into Gaza, the streamlining of inspection processes, and the safe distribution of aid within the region.
However, she said: “I think now we’re past the stage of trying to talk Israel into doing those things. We need to actually start using measures and political leverage to get them to do those things.”
