JEDDAH: Israel is deliberately delaying and blocking more food supplies from entering Gaza in comparison with other forms of humanitarian aid, the UN said on Tuesday.
With famine looming, the claim will fuel allegations that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war, a crime under international law.
The UN’s humanitarian agency said statistics from March showed that it was much more difficult to obtain clearance for delivering food than other aid. “Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70 percent of people face famine conditions, are ... three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian convoys with other kinds of material,” spokesman Jens Laerke said.
Laerke also demolished Israeli claims that aid was being allowed into Gaza in sufficient quantities, but the problem was inefficient distribution. The Israeli defense ministry agency that manages the flow of aid said on Tuesday that 741 humanitarian aid trucks had been inspected and allowed into Gaza in the past two days, but aid from only 267 trucks had been distributed by UN aid agencies, of which 146 carried food. “The aid is available, distribution is what matters,” Israel said.
Laerke said such comparisons were meaningless. He pointed out that the trucks screened by Israel were usually only half-full, an Israeli requirement. Once inside Gaza the trucks were reloaded, filling them up fully, before moving on to the warehouses. “So the numbers will never match up,” Laerke said.
“Counting day to day and comparing makes little sense because it does not take into account the delays that happen at the crossing and the further movement to warehouses.
“The obligation is on the warring parties, and in particular ... on Israel as the occupying power of Gaza, to facilitate and ensure humanitarian access does not stop at the border.”
Meanwhile Hamas said on Tuesday that an Israeli proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza met none of the demands of Palestinian militant factions, but it would study the offer and deliver a response. On the battlefront, an Israeli airstrike on a municipality building in Al-Maghazi camp in central Gaza killed the head of its council, Hatem Al-Ghamri, and four other civilians, the government media office said. The Israeli military claimed Al-Ghamri was a Hamas military operative.
Israel ‘is targeting food aid for Gaza,’ OCHA says
https://arab.news/5q8e3
Israel ‘is targeting food aid for Gaza,’ OCHA says
- UN claim fuels allegations of starvation as a weapon of war
- Laerke also demolished Israeli claims that aid was being allowed into Gaza in sufficient quantities
Israel says Hamas ‘will be disarmed’ after group proposes weapons freeze
- A top Hamas leader said on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons “freeze,” but rejects the demand for disarmament
DOHA: Israel said on Thursday that Hamas “will be disarmed” as part of the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza, after a top leader from the Islamist movement suggested a weapons freeze.
“There will be no future for Hamas under the 20-point plan. The terror group will be disarmed and Gaza will be demilitarised,” the Israeli official told AFP.
Hamas’s Khaled Meshaal told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons “freeze,” but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza.
A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons “freeze,” but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.
“The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance (Hamas). What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage (of weapons)... to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,” said Khaled Meshaal in an interview aired Wednesday.
“This is the idea we’re discussing with the mediators, and I believe that with pragmatic American thinking... such a vision could be agreed upon with the US administration,” he said.
The US-sponsored ceasefire deal, in effect since October 10, halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But it remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of breaches.
The agreement is composed of three phases. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated that it was about to enter the second phase.
Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilization force (ISF), while Hamas would lay down its weapons.
Netanyahu is expected to meet with US President Donald Trump in the US later this month to discuss the steps forward in the truce.
But the Palestinian militant group has indicated it would not agree to giving up its arsenal.
“Disarmament for a Palestinian means stripping away his very soul. Let’s achieve that goal another way,” Meshaal added.
In the first phase of the deal Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. All of the hostages have so far been released except for one body.
In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians.
As for the international peacekeeping force, Meshaal said the group was open to its deployment along Gaza’s border with Israel, but would not agree to it operating inside the Palestinian territory, calling such a plan an “occupation.”
“We have no objection to international forces or international stabilization forces being deployed along the border, like UNIFIL,” he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.
“They would separate Gaza from the occupation,” he added, referring to Israel.
“As for the presence of international forces inside Gaza, in Palestinian culture and consciousness that means an occupying force.”
Mediators as well as Arab and Islamic nations, he said, could act as “guarantors” that there would be no escalation originating from inside Gaza.
“The danger comes from the Zionist entity, not from Gaza,” he added, referring to Israel.
