“What will come in the next few days [a Gaza] It is a bit of flour for bakeries and for public kitchens that give a daily ration of cooked food. Civilians will receive a pita bread and a plate of food. That’s all. ”Thus described Monday the ultra -rightist Minister of Finance Israeli, Bezalel Smotrich, the food that the population of Gaza will receive in the next few days. What its governing partner, Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu Weeks denying.
That humanitarian aid will be lean and include flour are two of the few things that are known about what will enter the next few days in the Palestinian territory invaded, if Israel fulfills its commitment. Its executive not only has not specified what other foods will be distributed these days, but also who will take care of it, or in what amount. Less is known when that scarce food will arrive regularly, or if the limited relief of the total blocking at aid entry will include medicines and other vital supplies that are cruelly missing in Gaza.
The Israeli government has only assured that on Monday they have been authorized to enter the enclave five trucks with “food and medicines for children.” The UN raised that number to nine. On the 12th, UNICEF warned that, in Gaza, there were already 71,000 children who were going to avoid acute malnutrition. Half of the population of Gaza, 2.1 million, are lower.
These trucks are “a drop of water in a necessity ocean,” says Bushra Khalidi, responsible for incidence of the International Oxfam NGO. But, in addition, the needs are now much greater. “Immense,” describes Khalidi, after 19 months of attacks that have killed at least 53,500 people and injured more than 120,000, and hundreds of thousands of homes, cultivation fields, farms and infrastructure of drinking water and destroyed sanitation.
The humanitarian situation of Gaza, even during the ephemeral high fire with Hamas that Israel broke on March 18, became unsustainable when the Israeli army resumed the bombings that day so as not to have to negotiate the end of the war with Hamas. However, he had already begun to worsen, on March 2, when Netanyahu closed the border at the entrance of food, medicines, fuel and any type of humanitarian aid. That situation lasts eleven weeks.
On nutrition used by the UN that, if Israel did not allow the entry of food in Gaza before September, the entire enclave population could then suffer “acute food insecurity.” Of those, half a million look directly to the famine. That situation will not change now because Israel accepts that some “symbolic convoys” enter the territory with food, criticizes the Oxfam cooperator.
“What Gaza needs is that access to humanitarian aid is completely restored, which we are allowed to work on international organizations and that a fire is reached,” says Khalidi. Then remember that the population of Gaza, “
“A real humanitarian response cannot be reduced to distribute flour. We are not talking about survival, but of dignity. It is about having hospitals working, having medicines and other medical supplies, materials to repair infrastructure, of shelters for displaced people,” adds Khalidi.
The cooperative echoes an accusation defended by numerous humanitarian organizations: that Israel uses hunger as a gun of war. For example, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), whose general commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, reiterated that accusation on April 22. He also assured that this country uses humanitarian aid as “currency.”
A statement signed on Monday by 26 great international humanitarian donors – urges Israel to allow the resumption of the delivery of aid by the United Nations and international NGOs “to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity.”
Also 30 Israeli pacifist organizations have influenced: “Israel must immediately stop their attacks, put an end to their famine policy, open the border crossings for the entry of Gaza aid and allow help organizations in the strip to carry out their work,” says the document.
The UN humanitarian coordinator, Tom Fletcher, used on Monday in a statement the same expression as Bushra Khalidi: “A drop in an ocean of necessity.” In his text, confirmed another of the few aspects that are known about the resumption of food entry in Gaza: which will last a few days. Those that the Netanyahu government take to launch Israeli responsible attribute to the United States, but they support. This was confirmed on Monday at a press conference in Jerusalem Eden Bar Tal, director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
A “surplus” of food
This plan consists in attributing to an opaque organization based in Geneva (Switzerland) -the Humanitarian Foundation for Gaza (GHF in its acronym in English) -, the responsibility of distributing humanitarian aid in the Strip. The cast will occur in several distribution centers that are already being built in the south and center of the territory, they showed revealed satellite images. There the food will be delivered in June, according to the calculations of the Israeli government.
Israel’s decision to allow among now a small amount of food in the strip also aim to gain time to finish and open those facilities while the international pressure is reduced. Since the beginning of the Israeli block in Gaza, at least 57 children have died from malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization.
To do this, Israel will cross the territory to “dozen of trucks,” said Bar Tal. Without specifying its number or its content, he said they will be “enough” to meet the needs of the Gazatí population.
The UN agencies and international NGOs have already communicated to Israel that they will not participate in that project. Only the previous step that provides for the mass displacement by order of the Army of the population of Gaza to the south, could constitute a war crime.
The preparations for this alleged American and Israeli humanitarian project run in parallel and, according to some humanitarian organizations, serve the purposes of the military operation cars of Gideon, which Israel unleashed last weekend. For example, when anticipating that the displaced people are concentrated in surrounding areas to the distribution points whose “perimeter” – the director of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was confirmed – will be guarded by the country’s troops. Inside these areas, American private security companies will be; That is, mercenaries, who will “guarantee security,” said the Israeli official.
Eden Bar would elude Monday to answer the questions about what these private companies will be. Nor did he want to respond to how the GHF is financed. For Bushra Khalidi, what is getting running are not help distribution sites, “but military control areas, where beneficiaries will become prisoners.”
While Netanyahu and his ultra -right -wing Allied Smotrich recognized on Monday that they have given green light to the entry of food in Gaza for, the director of the Foreign Ministry recovered the official discourse of their country until this Sunday: to deny hunger. Bar Tal said that, thanks to the “25,000 trucks with help” that, according to Israel, entered Gaza in just over 40 days during the top fire, their population enjoyed a “surplus” of food.
