The resistance movement of Palestinians in Gaza was said to be holding about 100 hostages. According to some accounts, some of these hostages were killed by Israeli bombardment.
Israel as an occupying power is illegally holding more than 8000 Palestinians. As a peace activist, I fully stand for the release of all such hostages, both by the resistance movement and the occupying power.
It can happen when Israel stops its genocidal war and ethnic cleansing, orders a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, withdraws its army from Gaza (and also from the West Bank) and adheres to the UN resolutions to end its occupation of the Palestinian land it captured in 1967.
That is the only sane way to peace. But will Israel and its main sponsor and abettor of wars and ethnic cleansing, the United Sates, give peace a chance? Because of their record, I am reluctant to make any prediction.
The Biden administration continues to act contrary to logic and humane values in response to Israel’s war policies. Despite overwhelming evidence of Israel’s war crimes and acts that constitute genocide, the administration plies the right-wing Israeli government with more weapons. The latest arms package being prepared by the administration will reportedly be the largest since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Valued at around $18 billion, it will include 50 F-15 fighter jets and precision-guided munitions kits as well as more 2000- and 500-pound bombs.
Many critics, including some within the administration itself, have pointed with alarm to the obvious contradiction in US policy between supporting negotiations on a cease-fire and hostage release on one hand, and continuing to ship non-defensive weapons to Israel on the other. The contradiction applies not just to the immediate situation in Israel but also to overall US policy on the abuse of military aid—NSM 20—which specifies that arms recipients must adhere to international and American law. Israel, while giving assurances about its use of US weapons, has violated US policy guidelines in numerous ways—for instance, bombing hospitals and other civilian targets with US bombs, and using US-supplied white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of Gaza.
Such violations make the US complicit in Israel’s war crimes and genocide, which Oxfam and Human Rights Watch documented in a joint letter submitted to the administration March 13. Just recently, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian rights condemned Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza and proposed an arms embargo on Israel. If the Biden administration wants to be taken seriously when it demands Israel’s restraint in its Gaza operations, calls for a “sustainable” cease-fire, and insists on Israel’s removal of obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian aid, it must stop delivery of non-defensive weapons to Israel. Otherwise, such calls lack credibility, undercut any leverage the US might have on Israeli policy, and spotlight the US role in prolonging the war and contributing to the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Mel Gurtov is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, an international affairs quarterly and blogs at In the Human Interest.
Joe Biden has long had a problem with PEACE – as in “ceasefires,” “serious peace negotiations,” and conditioning the transfer or sale of major weapons systems as required by five U.S. criminal statutes. From one side of his mouth, Biden urges futilely Israeli compliance with international law while on the other side he supports the daily shipment of weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli government. These weapons are being used in the genocidal killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
A majority in Congress is even more hawkish and lets Biden do whatever he wants in making war abroad. The cornerstone of our Constitution – the separation of powers – has been demolished in area after area. (See, our open letter of November 28, 2023, to the members of the U.S. Congress).
By contrast, American public opinion has turned against U.S. arms shipments to Israel and the annihilation of Palestinian civilians from infants to the elderly. Whole extended families are being wiped out by American-made bombs and missiles. The homeless survivors are injured, starving and suffering from untold illnesses.
The Israeli state terror is producing a Palestinian Holocaust. Netanyahu’s violent anti-semitism against the Arabs of Palestine is out of control. Many courageous Israeli human rights groups protest, to no avail, (See, the December 13, 2023, open letter to Biden that appeared in the New York Times) as Netanyahu and his extremist coalition reveal their long-time objective of driving millions of Palestinians out of what is left of their Palestine.
As for the Hamas raid on October 7th, and the total collapse of the highly touted Israeli border security, a World War II Holocaust survivor told the New York Times, “It should never have happened…” Yet, Netanyahu has blocked an official investigation of this unexplained multi-tiered technological and human intelligence debacle.
Meanwhile, public dissatisfaction with the dictatorial decision-making by the White House and the absence of Congressional action is growing rapidly. More and more labor unions are now opposing Biden’s bombings, Jewish Americans working with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now are brilliantly organizing demonstrations. Veterans for Peace’s 27 chapters around the country are in the streets peacefully demanding a ceasefire, cessation of weapons shipments and major increases in humanitarian aid. They are mostly ignored by the corporate media, NPR and PBS.
Religious groups are beseechingly calling for peace. This week in the latest public letter, 140 Global Christian Leaders, organized by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) called on President Biden “…to have the moral courage to end U.S. complicity in the ongoing violence and, instead, do everything in [his] power to…” stop the “death and destruction” in Palestine.
The CMEP receives little or no coverage by the mainstream media even though this organization represents millions of people.
But then look who is not taking a pro-peace stand, staying silent or actively backing the Israeli war machine. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars are on the sidelines. The AFL-CIO Labor Federation finally came out tepidly for a ceasefire but has exerted very little of its muscle on Capitol Hill.
AIPAC, the “pro-Israeli government can do no wrong lobby” has been cultivating relationships with these U.S. organizations and others like them for decades.
The worst abdications have come from the legal profession in the form of State Bar Associations and the American Bar Association (ABA) – the largest organization of lawyers in the world. These lawyers are all “officers of the court” instructed to stand for the rule of law. Except for a brief time in 2005-2006 (https://nader.org/2013/04/19/aba-white-papers/ ) the ABA has idled while Presidents regularly have violated our Constitution and all kinds of laws – domestic and international – with impunity, facilitated by a supine Congress.
Bruce Fein and I have asked 50 State Bar Associations to be first responders in challenging the ongoing breakdown of the rule of law due to their professional duties and knowledge. None have responded.
As for the healthcare professionals watching Israel raining death and destruction directly on Gaza’s hospitals and health clinics, inundated with desperate patients, their endangered physicians and assistants without the means to devote their care, the response is overwhelmingly silent. The American Public Health Association and the American Medical Student Association are among the few to have condemned Israel’s atrocities.
Yet, the desperate pleas by their wounded professional colleagues have failed to register with the likes of the American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and many others. (See the letter of March 1, 2024, which has gone unanswered).
What can turn our country around? An organized citizenry of less than one percent of the voters in Congressional Districts, giving voice to the voiceless majority, can free Congress from its captivity imposed by the forces of greed, power and violent Empire, draining resources from our dire domestic needs.
As I wrote in the Capitol Hill Citizen (February/March 2024 issue), Congress has become a weapon of mass destruction with multiple warheads. Only the people can recover their sovereign power, under the Constitution, now delegated to a Congress that sells out to the highest corporatist bidders.
On the Israeli slaughter of Gaza’s people, a small but growing number of Democrats in Congress are standing tall. They need your active backing to expand their numbers. (See, Ceasefire Tracker: https://workingfamilies.org/ceasefire-tracker/).
As for the cruel, vicious, genocidal, maniacal Republicans, they remain disgraced in their full-throttled support for Netanyahu, who is fighting for his job, trying to escape Israeli prosecutors and is hugely unpopular in Israel.
The GOP position was expressed by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton – a lawyer no less – who said last October, for posterity’s eternal damnation: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.” This is exactly what the massacring Israeli juggernauts have done with the weapons, taxpayers’ money and diplomatic cover enabled by corrupt outlaws like Tom Cotton.
The Biden administration has approved billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets for Israel to support the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza despite claims from US officials that they’re concerned about the massive civilian casualty rate.
US officials told The Washington Post that the administration approved the transfer of 500 MK82 500-pound bombs and more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs, which Israel has used to kill scores of civilians by dropping them on Gaza’s densely populated cities.
The administration also approved the transfer of 25 F-35 fighter jets to Israel, a deal worth $2.5 billion that’s likely being paid for by US military aid to Israel. US officials said both transfers had been approved by Congress years ago and not fulfilled, so lawmakers were not notified about the final approval.
A White House official confirmed to the Post that US military aid to Israel is still unconditional. “Conditioning aid has not been our policy,” the official said.
News of the weapons transfers came after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Washington to ensure continued US support for Israel’s brutal campaign. While President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appear to be at odds in public, behind the scenes, US support for Israel continues unabated.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that 32,782 Palestinians have been killed and 75,298 have been wounded since October 7. The total of dead includes over 13,000 children. The numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry are considered low estimates since they don’t take into account the thousands who are missing and presumed dead under the rubble.
Francesca Albanese on January 03, 2024 in Ariano Irpino, Italy. [Ivan Romano/Getty Images]
A United Nations expert who published a report saying there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza during its military campaign in Gaza said today that she had received threats throughout her mandate, Reuters reports.
Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza, presented a report entitled “Anatomy of a Genocide” to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, which Israel said it “utterly rejects”.
Asked whether her work on the report had caused her to receive threats, Albanese said: “Yes, I do receive threats. Nothing that so far I considered needing extra precautions. Pressure? Yes, and it doesn’t change either my commitment or the results of my work.”
Albanese, who has held the position since 2022, did not elaborate on the nature of the threats, nor did she say who had issued them.
“It’s been a difficult time,” she said. “I’ve always been attacked since the very beginning of my mandate.”
Israel has harangued Albanese, saying she was “delegitimising the very creation and existence of the State of Israel.” Albanese denied the accusation.
Albanese said one of her key findings was that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally “subverted their protection functions in an attempt to legitimise genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”
“The only reasonable inference that can be drawn from the unveiling of this policy is an Israeli state policy of genocidal violence toward the Palestinian people in Gaza,” she said.
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. In spite of its claims, over 70 per cent of the victims of Israel’s bombing campaign have been women and children, with civilians rounded up, stripped and disappeared from across the Strip. Over the past week there have been numerous reports of rape of Palestinian women by Israeli occupation soldiers, many in front of their husbands and brothers.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the ICJ, which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza. Since the verdict in January, Israel has tightened its siege on northern Gaza and reduced the entry of aid, causing a man-made famine.
As the Israeli military is poised to escalate its genocide in Gaza with a long-planned offensive in the southern city of Rafah, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has left for talks in Washington with top US officials. Last Friday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that the barbaric operation into the city crammed with 1.5 million Palestinian refugees will proceed.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Nov. 30, 2023. [AP Photo/Saul Loeb]
Amid ongoing international outrage and protests against the Israeli genocide, the Biden administration has expressed concerns about the Rafah offensive. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Netanyahu in Israel last Friday and warned that the operation “risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardising its long-term security.” Vice President Kamila Harris told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that any military operation into Rafah “would be a huge mistake” and dropped a hint that there would be “consequences” for Israel.
These meaningless expressions of concern are simply window dressing for behind-the-scenes talks that will focus on how, not if, the Israeli war in Gaza is going to reach a bloody climax in Rafah. The Biden administration, which regards the conflict as part of a wider war in the Middle East targeting Iran, has backed Israel to the hilt—politically, financially and militarily with the supply of huge quantities of arms.
Gallant’s comments prior to his departure only underscored the character of the upcoming talks with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “During my visit, I will focus on preserving Israel’s qualitative military edge and on ways to achieve our common goals: victory over Hamas and returning the hostages home,” he said in a statement issued by his office.
As well as focussing on Israel’s “ability to obtain platforms and munitions,” Gallant signalled that he and US top officials would discuss the opening of a new military front in southern Lebanon against Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The conflict has been underway and escalating since the Israeli war in Gaza began, involving Israeli strikes deep inside Lebanon as well as in the border area with Israel. Tens of thousands have been displaced.
The top figures in the Zionist regime in Israel have been pressing for a military offensive against Hezbollah to drive its militia forces back from the border. “We will also discuss the need to return Israel’s northern communities to their homes, whether this is achieved via military action or via agreement,” Gallant said. Given that Israel knows that its demands for Hezbollah to pull back some 30 kilometres from the border are completely unacceptable, what will be discussed involves a dramatic escalation of the conflict into Lebanon.
The desperate situation for the Palestinians in Gaza only intensified on Sunday as the Israeli military stepped up its onslaught and Israeli authorities told the UN that the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, would no longer be allowed to send food convoys into northern Gaza. “As of today, UNRWA, the main lifeline for Palestine refugees, is denied from providing lifesaving assistance to northern Gaza,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in a post on Twitter/X.
Lazzarini demanded that the restrictions be lifted, declaring: “This is outrageous & makes it intentional to obstruct lifesaving assistance during a man-made famine… By preventing UNRWA to fulfill its mandate in Gaza, the clock will tick faster towards famine & many more will die of hunger, dehydration + lack of shelter. This cannot happen, it would only stain our collective humanity.”
The cynicism of the Biden administration’s expressions of concern for the plight of Palestinian refugees was underscored by its lack of funding for the UNRWA. The newly passed US foreign aid spending bills puts severe limits on funding for the UN agency until at least March 2025. Lazzarini emphasised the urgency for assistance declaring that humanitarian agencies were in a race against time to avoid famine. Any gap in funding would undermine access to food, shelter, primary health care and education at an extremely difficult time.
After visiting Egypt’s border with Gaza at the Rafah crossing on Saturday, UN Secretary General António Guterres reiterated his call for a ceasefire. “Looking at Gaza, it almost appears that the four horsemen of war, famine, conquest and death are galloping across it,” he said, adding that nothing justifies the collective punishment of Palestinians.
Having been at the border where some 7,000 aid trucks are waiting for Israeli approval to enter Gaza, Guterres declared that the starvation being inflicted on Palestinians was a “moral outrage”. He called on Israel to remove the “obstacles and chokepoints to relief,” saying: “Palestinians in Gaza desperately need what has been promised: a flood of aid… not trickles, not drops.”
Even before Gallant’s talks in Washington begin, the Israeli military is intensifying its assault in southern Gaza. The Israeli military carried out around 40 strikes in the al-Amal neighbourhood in Khan Younis to the north of Rafah while its troops were “encircling the area and continuing to eliminate” alleged Hamas militants. It also sent tanks into the al-Qarara area in northern Khan Younis, backed by airstrikes.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society reported on Sunday that Israeli forces were “besieging” al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis. It stated that the military was using bulldozers and smoke bombs around the hospital and demanding that everyone inside evacuate. A PRCS emergency services volunteer in the facility reported “intense and continuous shelling”, as well as “continuous gunfire.” He was later killed by Israeli gunfire.
In Gaza City, the Israeli siege of the al-Shifa Hospital continued on Sunday despite calls by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, on Thursday to halt the attacks that have cut off access to the facility. “We repeat once again: hospitals are not battlegrounds. They must be protected in line with international humanitarian law.” The Israeli military declared that it has detained 480 “suspects” for interrogation including health workers.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 32,226 people have been killed and 74,518 injured in Gaza since the war began. That figure will only increase dramatically as Israeli forces mount their offensive into Rafah.
The “temporary pier” being built on the Mediterranean coast of Gaza is not there to alleviate the famine, but to herd Palestinians onto ships and into permanent exile.
Piers allow things to come in. They allow things to go out. And Israel, which has no intention of halting its murderous siege of Gaza, including its policy of enforced starvation, appears to have found a solution to its problem of where to expel the 2.3 million Palestinians.
If the Arab world will not take them, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed during his first round of visits after Oct. 7, the Palestinians will be cast adrift on ships. It worked in Beirut in 1982 when some eight and a half thousand Palestine Liberation Organization members were sent by sea to Tunisia and another two and a half thousand ended up in other Arab states. Israel expects that the same forced deportation by sea will work in Gaza.
Israel, for this reason, supports the “temporary pier” the Biden administration is building, to ostensibly deliver food and aid to Gaza – food and aid whose “distribution” will be overseen by the Israeli military.
“You need drivers that don’t exist, trucks that don’t exist feeding into a distribution system that doesn’t exist,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration, and now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy group told The Guardian.
This “maritime corridor” is Israel’s Trojan Horse, a subterfuge to expel Palestinians. The small shipments of seaborne aid, like the food packets that have been air dropped, will not alleviate the looming famine. They are not meant to.
Five Palestinians were killed and several others injured when a parachute carrying aid failed and crashed onto a crowd of people near Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.
“Dropping aid in this way is flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service,” the media office of the local government in Gaza said. “We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip, and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the citizens’ heads.”
If the U.S. or Israel were serious about alleviating the humanitarian crisis, the thousands of trucks with food and aid currently at the southern border of Gaza would be allowed to enter any of its multiple crossings. They are not. The “temporary pier,” like the air drops, is ghoulish theater, a way to mask Washington’s complicity in the genocide.
Israeli media reported the building of the pier was due to pressure by the United Arab Emirates, which threatened Israel with ending a land corridor trade route it administers in collusion with Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to bypass Yemen’s naval blockade.
The Jerusalem Post reported it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who proposed the construction of the “temporary pier” to the Biden administration.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has called Palestinians “human animals” and advocated a total siege of Gaza, including cutting off electricity, food, water and fuel, lauded the plan, saying “it is designed to bring aid directly to the residents and thus continue the collapse of Hamas’s rule in Gaza.”
“Why would Israel, the engineer of the Gaza famine, endorse the idea of establishing a maritime corridor for aid to address a crisis it initiated and is now worsening?” writes Tamara Nassar in an article titled “What’s the Real Purpose of Biden’s Gaza Port?” in The Electronic Intifada. “This might appear paradoxical if one were to assume that the primary aim of the maritime corridor is to deliver aid.”
When Israel offers a gift to the Palestinians you can be sure it is a poison apple. That Israel got the Biden administration to construct the pier is one more example of the inverted relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, where the Israel lobby has bought off elected officials in the two ruling parties.
Oxfam in a March 15 report accuses Israel of actively hindering aid operations in Gaza in defiance of the orders by the International Court of Justice. It notes that 1.7 million Palestinians, some 75 percent of the Gaza population, are facing famine and two-thirds of the hospitals and over 80 percent of all health clinics in Gaza are no longer operable. The majority of people, the report reads, “have no access to clean drinking water” and “sanitation services are not functioning.”
The report reads:
The conditions we have observed in Gaza are beyond catastrophic, and we have not only seen failure by Israeli authorities to meet their responsibility to facilitate and support international aid efforts, but in fact seen active steps being taken to hinder and undermine such aid efforts. Israel’s control of Gaza continues to be characterized by deliberate restrictive actions that have led to a severe and systemic dysfunctionality in the delivery of aid. Humanitarian organizations operational in Gaza are reporting a worsening situation since the International Court of Justice imposed provisional measures in light of the plausible risk of genocide, with intensified Israeli barriers, restrictions and attacks against humanitarian personnel. Israel has maintained a ‘convenient illusion of a response’ in Gaza to serve its claim that it is allowing aid in and conducting the war in line with international laws.
Oxfam says Israel employs “a dysfunctional and undersized inspection system that keeps aid snarled up, subjected to onerous, repetitive and unpredictable bureaucratic procedures that are contributing to trucks being stranded in giant queues for 20 days on average.” Israel, Oxfam explains, rejects “items of aid as having ‘dual (military) use,’ banning vital fuel and generators entirely along with other items essential for a meaningful humanitarian response such as protective gear and communications kit.” Rejected aid, “must go through a complex ‘pre-approval’ system or end up being held in limbo at the Al Arish warehouse in Egypt.” Israel has also “cracked down on humanitarian missions, largely sealing off northern Gaza, and restricting international humanitarian workers’ access not only into Gaza, but Israel and the West Bank including East Jerusalem too.”
Israel has allowed 15,413 trucks into Gaza during the past 157 days of war. Oxfam estimates that the population of Gaza needs five times that number. Israel allowed 2,874 trucks in February, a 44 percent reduction from the previous month. Before Oct. 7, 500 aid trucks entered Gaza daily.
Israeli soldiers have also killed scores of Palestinians attempting to receive aid from trucks in more than two dozenincidents. These attacks include the killing of at least 21 Palestinians, and the wounding of 150, on March 14, when Israeli forces fired on thousands of people in Gaza City. The same area had been targeted by Israeli soldiers hours earlier.
“Israel’s assault has caught Gaza’s own aid workers and international agencies’ partners inside a ‘practically uninhabitable’ environment of mass displacement and deprivation, where 75 percent of solid waste is now being dumped in random sites, 97 percent of groundwater made unfit for human use, and the Israeli state using starvation as a weapon of war,” Oxfam says.
There is no place in Gaza, Oxfam notes, that is safe “amid the forcible and often multiple displacements of almost the entire population, which makes the principled distribution of aid unviable, including agencies’ ability to help repair vital public services at scale.”
Oxfam blasts Israel for its “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate” attacks on “civilian and humanitarian assets” as well as “solar, water, power and sanitation plants, UN premises, hospitals, roads, and aid convoys and warehouses, even when these assets are supposedly ‘deconflicted’ after their coordinates have been shared for protection.”
The health ministry in Gaza said Monday that at least 31,726 people have been killed since the Israeli assault began five months ago. The death toll includes at least 81 deaths in the previous 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 73,792 people have been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7. Thousands more are missing, many buried under the rubble.
None of these Israeli tactics will be altered with the building of a “temporary pier.” In fact, given the pending ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are crowded in tent cities or camped out in the open air, Israel’s tactics will only get worse.
Israel, by design, is creating a humanitarian crisis of such catastrophic proportions, with thousands of Palestinians killed by bombs, shells, missiles, bullets, starvation and infectious diseases, that the only option will be death or deportation. The pier is where the last act in this gruesome genocidal campaign will be played out as Palestinians are herded by Israeli soldiers onto ships.
How appropriate that the Biden administration, without whom this genocide could not be carried out, will facilitate it.
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Israel’s withholding of food from the population of Gaza may be a deliberate effort to starve the population, the United Nations’ highest human rights official said Tuesday.
Palestinians crowd together as they wait for food distribution in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Nov. 8, 2023 [AP Photo/Hatem Ali]
In a statement, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that “The extent of Israel’s continued restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime.”
Türk’s comments come as the rate of starvation and malnutrition surges throughout Gaza’s imprisoned population of over 2 million.
According to Türk, “The situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure.”
Asked to reply Tuesday to Türk’s statements that Israel may be using starvation as a “weapon of war,” US Department of State spokesman Vedant Patel replied, “That is not something that we have observed or witnessed.”
This absurd denial is contradicted by the reality of mass starvation imposed on the population of Gaza.
A separate report published Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership, the official global body designating starvation, found that “famine is imminent,” with a “major acceleration of deaths and malnutrition.”
The IPC assessment notes that 1.1 million people are expected to face catastrophic levels of hunger and risk famine in Gaza, the highest number of people in that category ever recorded since the beginning of the current classification system.
“This is the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded by the Integrated Food Security Classification system—anywhere, anytime,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a news briefing Monday.
Before Israel’s assault on Gaza, less than 1 percent of children in Gaza under five were acutely malnourished. But that figure has surged to between 12.4 and 16.5 percent.
The report concluded,“Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”
The report found that every single person in the Gaza Strip lives with some level of food insecurity. The report projected that while the entirety of the Gaza Strip is currently in the “emergency” phase of food insecurity, the entirety of Northern Gaza will be in famine within a matter of months.
Israel is imposing famine on the population of Gaza in a multitude of ways. The most visible is through the imposition of a blockade that denies humanitarian organizations the ability to provide food to starving people.
In a statement Tuesday, the office of the United Nations Secretary-General said that Israel had let in less than half of the humanitarian missions that the UN had planned to send to Gaza.
“During the first two weeks of March, less than half of planned humanitarian aid missions to northern Gaza were facilitated by the Israeli authorities—that’s 11 out of 24 missions,” the statement said. “The rest were either denied or postponed. Dispatching aid to the north of Gaza requires day-to-day approvals from Israeli authorities.”
The ongoing blockade is accompanied by the systematic and deliberate killing of aid workers. On Thursday, the Israeli military carried out the latest in its repeated attacks on the Kuwait Roundabout, where the remaining population of Gaza City goes to receive food aid.
Al Jazeera reported that 23 aid workers were killed in the latest strike, which local officials said was a targeted attack on food distribution workers.
This attack on food distribution workers was accompanied by a full-scale assault on Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, which the Israeli military said left dozens of people killed.
But even this bloodbath is just a downpayment on what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in store with the planned invasion of Rafah.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu said he made it “supremely clear” to US President Joe Biden in a telephone conversation that “we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there’s no way to do that except by going in on the ground.”
Despite its rhetorical criticisms of Netanyahu’s plans to invade Rafah, where over one million people are sheltering, the Biden administration has made clear that it will continue to supply weapons and funding to Israel no matter what it does.
In a press briefing Monday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that “The president emphasized his bone-deep commitment to ensuring the long-term security of Israel.” Sullivan added, “Israel has a right to go after Hamas, the perpetrators of the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Israel has made significant progress against Hamas.”
Earlier this month, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump and one of his key advisors on Middle East issues, endorsed the prospect of expelling the population of Gaza from Palestine.
In an appearance at Harvard University, Kushner said it would be “possible” to get the population of Gaza “into Egypt…with the right diplomacy.” He also raised the prospect of displacing the population of Gaza into the Negev Desert in Israel, saying “the thing that I would try to do if I was Israel right now is I would just bulldoze something in the Negev. I would try to move people in there. I know that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that’s a better option to do so you can go in and finish the job.”
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable,” Kushner said.
The agency says many are suffering from malnutrition and do not ‘even have the energy to cry’
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, March 17, 2024
The UN’s child relief agency said on Sunday that over 13,000 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip and that many more could be dead under the rubble.
“Thousands more have been injured, or we can’t even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, according to Reuters. “We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry has said over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and has consistently stated that around 70% of the casualties are women and children.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin previously said over 25,000 women and children had been killed in Gaza, but the Pentagon walked his comment back, claiming he was talking about all Palestinians killed.
Russel said that she visited a hospital ward where children were suffering from severe malnutrition and said the place was quiet because “the children, the babies … don’t even have the energy to cry.”
Separately, the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, said one in three children under the age of two in Gaza is now acutely malnourished. “Children’s malnutrition is spreading fast and reaching unprecedented levels in Gaza,” UNRWA said. Children have already started to starve to death in Gaza, with dozens of malnutrition deaths already reported.
Despite the horrific situation and Israel’s continued restrictions on aid, the US is still providing unconditional military aid to support the slaughter and starvation campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza.
![Francesca Albanese on January 03, 2024 in Ariano Irpino, Italy. [Ivan Romano/Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/GettyImages-1909563108.jpg?fit=1200%2C799&ssl=1)
Peace and Justice Post 