Friday's U.S. Security Council veto of a possible ceasefire in Gaza is the latest blow to an extreme situation that is deteriorating by the minute. The humanitarian crisis that NGOs, almost incapable of dealing with due to the Israeli blockade, are trying to deal with, is deepening. The landscape is hellish: hundreds of Gazans queuing at a latrine, trucks and aid warehouses stormed, children amputated without anesthesia, tens of thousands of people abandoned. This is the scenario for 1.8 million displaced people to the south, which has become a huge mousetrap at war. The local authorities, in the hands of the Palestinian militia Hamas, have already put the death toll at 17,500.
In the south, people are increasingly imprisoned in fewer square kilometres, while the Israeli army intensifies its attacks and continues to close the door to the entry of aid. "Those who survive the bombings face the imminent risk of starvation or disease," warns Alexandra Saieh of the NGO Save the Children. Despite this, the Israeli army continues its policy of forcibly displacing civilians and ordered them on Saturday to leave six areas of the city of Khan Younis, a southern Hamas stronghold and the scene of intense fighting. Health authorities showed images that they say belong to the Nasser hospital in which numerous victims of all ages are seen receiving assistance among pools of blood on the floor.
With its veto at the UN, Washington has put the brakes on the claims and aspirations of countries such as Spain, which are in favour of a ceasefire and respect for international humanitarian law. The U.S. aligns itself with the harder path advocated by Israel, which confronts Hamas with its military steamroller without taking into account the hundreds of thousands of civilians outside the conflict. Of the current 15 members of the Security Council, 13 backed the resolution seeking a ceasefire. The United Kingdom abstained. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blamed the U.S. veto "for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and the elderly." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed what he called the "correct stance" because "it is impossible, on the one hand, to support the elimination of Hamas and, on the other, to call for an end to the war." That is why "Israel will continue its just war," he continued. Criticism of the UN ceasefire blockade is multiplying around the world.
In addition, important human rights organizations launched harsh reproaches of Washington's decision. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said President Joe Biden's administration is providing "diplomatic cover for the atrocities in Gaza." "The USA has shown callous disregard for the suffering of civilians in the face of the unbelievable death toll, widespread destruction and unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe," Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's Secretary General, said in a statement. "The U.S. risks being complicit in war crimes" with its arms and diplomatic coverage of Israel's "atrocities," said Louis Charbonneau, head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) at the UN.
There is a very low level of ambition from the UN to national governments. And in the meantime, people continue to suffer, says Jesús Núñez Villaverde, co-director of the Institute for Conflict Studies and Humanitarian Action (IECAH), reflecting the failure of the international community. He believes that Israel is looking for a "swift and brutal" operation, although its army "certainly does not lack technology and means to be able to discriminate if they wanted" civilians from combatants.
Leading humanitarian NGOs with decades of experience in conflicts and teams deployed in the Gaza Strip denounced on Thursday, in a telematic appearance, the use of hunger, access to health care and forced displacement as "weapons of war" by the occupation troops in Gaza. They demand not only a ceasefire, but also that an "independent" international body such as the United Nations take the reins of the entry of aid into the Palestinian enclave, where only a small percentage of what is necessary due to the Israeli blockade arrives.
In some areas, 9 out of 10 people have gone a whole day and a night without anything to eat, according to data from the World Food Programme (WFP). The situation has continued to worsen since the end of the week-long truce on 1 December, when the ground military operation spread to the centre and south of the Strip, the scene of intense fighting with militiamen from the Palestinian armed factions these days. That does not prevent the violence between the two sides from continuing to be intense in areas of the north, such as the Jabalia refugee camp or the Shujayia neighbourhood in Gaza City, from which the vast majority of the population has fled.
The reality is that civilians can no longer flee much further south, because they are at the border with Egypt. In Rafah, the southernmost town, more and more people are improvising huts and tents out of plastic, tarpaulins or blankets to live in. The result is that hundreds of thousands of people are increasingly concentrating in the south of the territory in an "alarming" way, when even before the war the enclave was one of the most densely populated places on the planet, according to Shaina Low of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
Lack of help leads to desperate situations such as the mass assault of trucks or warehouses in search of food. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) experienced one case on Tuesday, but "unfortunately, it wasn't food. They were just medicines," says the organization's president, Isabelle Defourni, to illustrate the level of need. Also this week, the NRC lost contact with the office team they had to improvise in Rafah "because the internet cable had been cut to be used for a tent," Low explains.
The parceled out map that Israel presented last week to supposedly warn residents of where it was going to attack has turned out to be a fiasco, despite the order to evacuate those six areas of Khan Younis on Saturday. Humanitarian organizations say it has not prevented deaths and has only multiplied the number of internally displaced people in a territory where 60 percent of buildings are destroyed or damaged.
"It's a cruel system," said MSF's Defourni, who lamented that they don't even allow the wounded to be taken to Egypt. In the face of this, the so-called safe zones to which the army refers are a "smokescreen", according to Saieh of Save the Children. For Bushra Khalidi, of the NGO Oxfam, it is nothing more than a "mirage" because these are places that, in reality, "offer no protection, are not provisioned and are inaccessible".
They refer to tracts of land such as Al Mawasi, a desert area in southwestern Gaza, where tens of thousands of people are being forcibly sent. "There are no services there. There are no schools. There are no health centres. There's nothing," confirms Danila Zizi of Handicap International. These representatives took part in a meeting of NGOs last Thursday, open to journalists, in which MSF, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Refugees International, Save The Children, Doctors of the World, Action Against Hunger (ACH) and Handicap International participated.
"People raid houses looking for bathrooms. The population is very angry, depressed and desperate because of what they are experiencing. He's scared," sums up Chiara Saccardi (ACH), who warns of the lack of basic products such as diapers, wipes and detergent. "Water is sold on the market at a high price. That's about $20 a day for a family," he adds. The lack of hygiene and the consumption of spoiled water have led to some 18,5 patients with diarrhoea, a disease that is especially dangerous at an early age due to the ease with which children become dehydrated. Children make up about half of Gaza's 80.000 million people.
There are Israeli officials who refer to Gazans as "human animals" and "from then on, there is no reason to feed them, or drink them, or anything like that," denounces Núñez Villaverde. For this analyst specializing in security, "we are facing a theatrical farce in which the United States pretends to pressure, but in reality it is providing diplomatic and military cover for Israel to fulfill its objectives at the pace and in the way it deems appropriate." But he sees one problem that will come up in the coming weeks or months, and that is that Israel "is never going to eliminate Hamas because it's militarily impossible."
Retired Israeli General Giora Eiland advocates that his country use the blockade on humanitarian aid to achieve its goals. He believes that "any supplies to Gaza, especially fuel" must be prevented from reaching because that ends up benefiting Hamas. He does not understand why Israel continues to allow some trucks carrying humanitarian aid without obtaining the release of more hostages in return. On Friday, it was announced that one of them had died after a failed rescue attempt by troops deployed in the Gaza Strip. There are still 138 abductees since 7 October, of whom 16 have died. On that day, Hamas opened the war by killing some 1,200 people, according to Israel, in the largest attack recorded in the country's 75-year history.
Follow all the international news on Facebook and X, or in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber
_
