In a statement on Friday, June 16, 2024, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) emphasized that aid for the Gaza strip must be scaled up after the UN Security Council passed a resolution in support of a stalled three-phase ceasefire agreement.
“Workarounds and changes at the margins will not stave of famine, disease, and death in Gaza,” the group said.
“However, a humanitarian reset must not be tied to political progress,” the group noted.
“So even if the ceasefire deal falters, we urge the UN Security Council to push for immediate and measurable improvements to humanitarian access,” it said.
In northern Gaza, where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat mean they are surviving on bread alone.
Food that can be found in the market is being sold at exorbitant prices, they said. One kilo of green peppers, which cost about a dollar before the war, was priced at nearly $90. Traders demanded $70 for a kilo of onions.
Separately, Carl Skau, Deputy Director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) noted that while hunger and the risk of famine have been present in northern Gaza for months, the situation is deteriorating in the south due to Israel expanding its military operations and an emerging public health crisis.
Skau, who has just returned from a trip across the Gaza Strip, said, “We had stocked up before the operation in Rafah so that we had put food into the hands of people, but that’s beginning to run out.”
“We don’t have the same access that we need, that we used to have. It’s a displacement crisis that brings a protection catastrophe really, that a million or so people who have been pushed out of Rafah are now really crammed into a small space along the beach.
“It’s hot. The sanitation situation is just terrible. We were driving through rivers of sewage. And it’s a public health crisis in the making.”
Carl Skau
Skau said that while more food is now reaching northern Gaza, basic healthcare, water and sanitation are still needed to “turn the curve in the north on famine completely.”
Meanwhile, he stated that safety remains a “serious concern” for aid workers, adding that two rockets had hit WFP routes in recent weeks.
“Our colleagues spend many hours a day waiting at checkpoints,” he added.
“It takes time for clearances, and we’re also struggling with looting in parts of Gaza.
“So it is a very, very difficult operating environment,” he said.
US Sanctions Far-Right Israeli Group Accused Of Blocking Gaza Aid
Also on Friday, the US added Tzav 9 to its sanctions list of specially designated nationals.
The group has ties to Israeli army reservists and Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and has been sanctioned over activities including blocking, harassing and damaging aid shipments bound for Gaza, the US Treasury Department said.
On Thursday, June 13, 2024, US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan called it a “total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys”.
“It is completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour,” he said, specifically referring to an incident in which the group blocked aid as it went through the Tarqumiyah checkpoint near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Democracy for the Arab World Now, a US-based human rights group, this week called for the US to take action against Tzav 9 and other groups it said have enjoyed impunity from Israeli authorities.
Order Nine released a statement saying that this is a blow to those who are relatives of the kidnapped and that Israel has a right to defend itself.
According to analysts, the sanctions on far-right Israeli group represent a warning shot from the Biden administration, which has been concerned about some of the actions of the right-wing ministers within the Netanyahu government.
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