Geneva, May 30 (EFE).- The UN on Friday denounced obstructions by Israel to the delivery of aid in Gaza, which it described as “the hungriest place on Earth.”
“It’s the only defined area, a country or defined territory within a country, where you have the entire population at risk of famine. 100 percent of the population at risk of famine,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.
“The aid operation that we have ready to roll is being put in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations, not only in the world today, but in recent history,” he added.
Although Israel claims to have allowed some UN humanitarian aid to enter through the Kerem Shalom crossing in recent days, the spokesperson maintained that in practice this has not led to any improvement in the delivery of humanitarian aid.
“Over the past ten days since Kerem Shalom reopened, out of the nearly 900 trucks that were approved to enter, almost 600 of them have been offloaded on the Gaza side. A lower number has been picked up, from the other side. And there are reasons for that. The routes that we are being assigned to use by the Israeli authorities are very often congested, insecure. And there are significant delays in the approvals,” the UN spokesperson said.
“Many of those were swarmed by desperate people on the way, who picked off the items. It’s a survival reaction, a survival reaction by desperate people who want to feed their families, themselves and their kids. And by the way, the aid that is on those trucks had been paid for by the donors to go to those people. So, I don’t blame them one second for taking the aid that essentially is already theirs, but it’s not distributed in a way we wanted,” he added.
Regarding the contents, Laerke said that virtually everything was flour and there were no mixed or ready-to-eat food packages because that’s what Israel has ordered.
“Our plan is: we have tens of thousands of pallets of food and other life-saving assistance that are poised to enter Gaza…What we need now is a reopening of all crossing points into Gaza. Aid from all corridors, including from Jordan and Egypt. We need to be able to deliver food directly to families, directly to families where they are,” he said.
As hunger increases in Gaza, the UN is trying to urging the international community to pressure Israel to allow more neutral aid.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told British broadcaster BBC that the people of Gaza were being subjected to forced starvation by Israel and did not hesitate to call this action “a war crime.”
“Yeah..It is classified as a war crime. Obviously, these are issues for the courts to take the judgement on, and ultimately for history to take a judgement on,” he said. EFE
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