Security Council urges Tel Aviv to allow Gaza relief amid famine fears

The United Nations Security Council has called on Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza, where food supplies are dwindling and the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.

Israel, while causing more civilian deaths in Palestine with bombings and strikes, has fully cut off Gaza’s access to food, water, fuel, and humanitarian aid since March 2.

Addressing an emergency meeting held on May 13 on Gaza’s worsening humanitarian crisis, Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council that the situation in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly amid an Israeli blockade that has prevented the entry of food, medicine, water, and shelter materials for more than 10 weeks.

“We have life-saving supplies ready, now, at the borders … We have rigorous mechanisms to ensure our aid gets to civilians, and not to Hamas. But Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians,” he said.

“Every single one of the 2.1 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face the risk of famine. One in five face starvation,” he said, quoting a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO).

Israeli attacks on May 14 killed at least 84 people in Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera, with over 2,720 Palestinians killed since March 18.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel was carrying out a “systematic and intensifying military aerial campaign”.

The Israeli attacks were “primarily targeting residential homes in order to force families to leave these areas and to move to live in makeshift tents, which will facilitate any plans to displace them out of northern Gaza,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on May 13 that Israel would not end its military campaign in Gaza even if a ceasefire deal were reached. Indirect ceasefire talks continue in Qatar.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society that is leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, called for mass global mobilizations and civil disobedience on May 15, the 77th Nakba Day.

May 15 is the day of commemoration for the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, which comprised the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people.

As early as December 1948, the UN General Assembly called for refugee return, property restitution, and compensation in Resolution 194 (II). Today, the crisis of the Palestinians has only worsened.

Concerns over Gaza’s humanitarian crisis have deepened following Israel’s recent declaration that it plans to intensify its ongoing military campaign.

Fu Cong, China’s permanent representative to the UN, noted that nearly half a million Gazans are facing catastrophic levels of hunger.

He urged Israel to uphold international humanitarian law and lift the blockade to allow unhindered access to food, medicine, and other critical supplies.

“China urges Israel to immediately cease its military attacks on Gaza,” Fu said, noting that military action cannot resolve the conflict and only prolongs the humanitarian crisis.

While welcoming the recent release of a hostage, Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander, Fu called on the United States to play a fair and constructive role in bringing about a ceasefire.

Riyad Mansour, the permanent observer for the State of Palestine to the UN, said: “Israel has been openly and brazenly blocking humanitarian aid for over two months now. This is engineered starvation.”

Barbara Woodward, UK permanent representative to the UN, said the United Kingdom calls on Israel to “urgently engage with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles”.

“International law requires Israel to allow the rapid and unimpeded provision of humanitarian aid to all civilians,” she said.

“Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool or a military tactic,” Woodward noted.

In an interview with the US news outlet CNN on May 14, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said that a series of recent Israeli attacks on Gaza show that Israel is not interested in ending the war.

He also stated that a US-backed plan for distributing aid in Gaza through a newly created group is unnecessary.

Humanitarian and UN aid groups have said that they already have the means of delivering aid to Gaza but are being blocked from doing so by Israel.