International Desk, Bangladesh Global: 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.
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