Oxfam Australia Media Release
Barefoot children forced to search through rubbish for food scraps across Gaza.
Of the meagre 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians. For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours.
Oxfam and other international humanitarian agencies have been continually prevented from delivering lifesaving aid in the North Gaza Governorate since 6 October when Israel escalated its military siege of Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, bar an extremely limited amount of stock already stored there.
Thousands of people are estimated to be still cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked, it’s impossible to know the exact numbers. At the beginning of December, humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water.
From 6 October, Israel has permitted just 34 UN trucks of food and water to enter the North Gaza Governorate. A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians. After the green light to proceed to the destination was received, the trucks were then stopped further on at a military checkpoint. Soldiers forced the drivers to offload the aid in a militarised zone, which desperate civilians had no access to.
The following week, Israel permitted 14 more trucks. Due to the delay in receiving the final authorisation from the Israeli authorities, only three trucks were able to enter. They carried ready-to-eat rations, wheat flour and water and reached the intended destination of Mahdia al-Shawa school in Beit Hanoun where displaced families were sheltering. While the aid was distributed, within hours soldiers and quadcopters fired on the school and people were ordered to leave. The next day the Israeli military returned and shelled the school, burning down the buildings.
On 20 December, Israel finally permitted a further 9 UN trucks to deliver food and water to an aid distribution point in Beit Hanoun, where civilians sheltering in schools were able to collect it. People said that they were barely surviving and had so little to eat, they were eating leaves.
Last month the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned that there is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in the north and the risk of famine persists across the whole of Gaza. People are being pushed to unimaginable, desperate measures to survive. Children and women are searching through piles of rubbish for food scraps, bare-handed and often barefoot, risking disease and injury from sharp metal and exposed to the threat of unexploded bombs. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world with the healthcare system decimated and little critical supplies, including anaesthetic.
Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Director said:
“The situation in Gaza is apocalyptic and people are trapped, unable to find any kind of safety. The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter. It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing.
“Gaza has been widely destroyed and the entire population is suffering. The public sector has collapsed and the humanitarian system is on its knees. We plead with the entire international community – stop this, now. You have the diplomatic and economic levers to make Israel stop. Every day that passes without a ceasefire is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians.”
Constant shelling also continues in the north – the Palestinian Civil Defence (PCD) estimates that more than 2,700 people have been killed in the North Gaza governorate since the siege. The bodies of half of those killed have not been able to be recovered and more than 10,000 have been injured.
Around 130,000 people have now been forcibly displaced from the North Gaza Governorate, 70 per cent – 91,000 – are women and girls, who are trying to survive in abandoned buildings and overcrowded shelters in Gaza City. The mass displacement of people has further strained resources and complicated aid delivery in already dire conditions.
Across Gaza, aid deliveries continue to be blocked, deliberately hampered and targeted by Israel’s military. All crossings are barely functional, with only Erez West (Zikim) operating with any consistency. Oxfam staff said this week that humanitarian access everywhere is at an all-time low. Winter weather conditions are expected to affect more than 1.6 million people living in makeshift shelters, including half a million in flood-prone areas. The UN reported that so far, only 23 per cent of displaced people across the Gaza Strip have received support to help protect them from the rain and cold, leaving over 900,000 people at risk of exposure.
People have told Oxfam about trying to survive with their families amidst crippling hunger. A man who was forced to evacuate with his family from Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza with little notice last week said “Adults tell the kids not to play so they don’t get dizzy. One pack of biscuits is all we have for 15 grandchildren. We need shelter but a simple plastic tarpaulin costs $180 and we would need at least five to make a basic tent. There’s no chance of light or power. We’re doing everything we can, but it’s not enough.”
Soaring food prices and scarcity across Gaza mean that people are no longer able to buy food by the kilogram, for example buying a single tomato or green pepper for their family. An Oxfam staff member described how the entire family searched Deir al-Balah for one egg to try and provide calcium for a relative with a broken bone. The egg cost nearly $6. Only five bakeries out of nineteen are operational, and many people are risking their lives in overcrowded queues, sometimes waiting from as early as 3am just to secure basic supplies.
Oxfam is demanding an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire and the release of all hostages and unlawfully detained Palestinians. The obstruction of humanitarian aid efforts must end, with protection of civilians and unhindered access for all lifesaving aid to the Gaza Strip, including the North Gaza Governorate. Palestinians must be given the freedom to move home, rebuild, and live in peace and dignity, free of occupation or blockade.
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
How is tbis not genocide
How is tbis not genocide
This is planned and coordinated genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through starvation, random killing and violent displacement and dispossession of land, property and belongings.
I see that the IDF are now blaming Hamas for stealing aid destined for Palestinians but they won’t allow aid workers into Gaza to distribute aid or the media in to report on what’s happening.
Another 58 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours according to a report in The Guardian. A ‘safe’ area was bombed…. but, the the IDF assured the reporter that they do not target civilians, just ‘terrorists’, who are hiding in the civilian population.
And of course we have to take their word for that.
So the message to Hamas, find a clear area, drape your selves in some readily identifiable clothing or flag or something, perhaps a sign on the back that reads “Hamas” so that they can be eliminated without needing to kill others who may be sheltering in a tent in a so called safe area, or perhaps waiting in one of the few remaining medical facilities for treatment, or perhaps sheltering in a school surrounded by children.
So, the message is clear from the most humanitarian of militaries, the IDF, that Hamas fighters should stop hiding among the people, and stop looking like any other Palestinian.
Netanyahu and Likud are without question a mob of FRWNJ liars. They and their mob are the ones that manifest a mindset of enduring hatred, conflict, brutality, theft and lawlessness against all their geographical neighbors. They implement actions drawn from the mindset via the IDF and huge financial and materiel backing from the USA, modern masters of the Israeli suzerain. And notably, the mandated participation in the IDF has always been premised on hostility toward ‘others’ by almost all Israeli leaders – from the beginning it set about forming a military junta state which persists today. Since its beginning it persists with ignoring international law, it has persistently failed to designate its borders, and also failed to adopt a proper constitution, opting instead for creeping against its neighbours, forcing them to enclaves whilst stealing their land and property, building barrages against them, abusing their human rights whilst holding guns to their heads. It assassinated its own leader (Rabin) who was heading for success with a ‘peace plan’ and ‘two-state solution’. All this rinsed through a 1930s (supremacist) Zionist manifesto, modified in the 1960s to capture all Israelis and their corporations anywhere (and Jews whether they agree or not) into a forcible patterned behavior and dialogue prescribed by the manifesto. Thus we continue to hear nonsense about antisemitism whenever Israel’s actions anywhere in the world are criticized by anyone in the world.
History over the millennia is chock full of stories and writs pertaining to those amongst the many from the area of Palestine / Israel and many contain the mythologies of nonsense edicts from those purporting to channel the words of invisible and non-auditory gods – words that appear to have become obsessions. Those so obsessed and reliant have been repeatedly shunned and ousted wherever they have ventured across at least their various antipodes. Yet despite their people’s observable genius in many fields, the modern Israel ‘state’ has been widely proclaimed as carrying out a genocide against its nearest neighbor, and continues to broaden its attacks on its other neighbors. More than 3/4 of the countries of the world have requested it cease, but it ignores them, virtually calling them fools and liars.
“Why?”, one is brought to ask. It would seem that the most recent masters of the modern ‘state’ of Israel, and the contemporary Zionist manifesto would see it obliterate itself, were it not for the USA, and the ‘assuaging of concealed guilt’ of its previous ousters in western Europe (the olde imperialists).
Then again, to increase a ‘cooperative’ hegemon, it all could be just convenience in the West’s war against the Shia et al and desire to control and steal resources from all territories bounded by Israel, Kazakhstan and the Black Sea to Pakistan?
Netanyahu and his rabid nationalist thugs still rely on cowing any dissent from the world community by the use of the now debased cries of “Antisemitism” and “Holocaust.” to continue their almost fanatical destruction of Gaza and the Palestinians.
And the media and press say barely a word.
Apart from the massacre itself and the cruelty, I’ll keep an abiduing memory of the utter gutlessness of politicians and politics; press and meeja, with this atrocity.
Scales have fallen away.
Paul
One of the reasons the press and media outlets generally seem so constrained with reporting on Israeli aggression in Gaza and beyond is that as of December 20: 141 journalists and media workers were confirmed killed in Gaza and overnight a further five Palestinian journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in central Gaza – a targeted assassination it seems.
In war, control of the media is an essential strategy, one that Israel have taken to heart.
Ah, Terry. Could you kindly send me your email address? Many thanks.
The israeli will one day have to live by their laws…. an eye for an eye.
Look I understand their terror of the Holocaust, but they have now created their own version. I am sure their god is so pleased with them. They have created a whole new generation of Jew haters, cause lets not mince words, they will be filled with so much hate, they wont care about the pedantics. All i can say is be careful what you wish for, you may just get it……
The israeli will one day have to live by their laws…. an eye for an eye.
Look I understand their terror of the Holocaust, but they have now created their own version. I am sure their god is so pleased with them. They have created a whole new generation of Jew haters, cause lets not mince words, they will be filled with so much hate, they wont care about the pedantics. All i can say is be careful what you wish for, you may just get it……