Image source, AFP
-
- Author, Jeremy Bowen
- Author's title, BBC News, International Editor
Israel responded to the sustained and growing international condemnation that accuses him of being responsible for the famine in Gaza announcing a series of measures that, according to Israel's defense forces (FDI), “will improve the humanitarian response.”
The Israeli authorities are now allowing the launch of help from the air, the first of them made by themselves during Saturday night and the second by the Air Force of the Arab Emirates united later on Sunday.
The IDF also announced that they would allow a “tactical pause in military activity” in some areas and establish “designated humanitarian corridors … to refute the false statement that there is international famine.”
Hamas has condemned these measures as a “deception.” Israel, he said, is “bleaching his image before the world.”
Israel subsequently carried out an air attack during the “tactical pause.” The reports from the place indicate that a mother named Wafaa Harara and her four children, Sara, Areej, Judy and Iyad, died.
Tacit admiration or gesture towards your allies?
While Israel continues to insist that he is not responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and does not impose restrictions on the aid in Gaza, these statements are not accepted by their close allies in Europe, neither by the United Nations nor other active agencies in Gaza.
The new measures could be a tacit admission by the Israelis that they need to do more.
But, it is more likely to be a gesture towards their allies, which have issued strong statements blaming Israel de la Fadda in Gaza.
Image source, Getty Images
The last one, on Friday, July 25, from Great Britain, France and Germany was overwhelmed.
“We urge the Israeli government to immediately raise the restrictions on the aid flow and urgently allow the UN and the Humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work to combat famine. Israel must fulfill its obligations by virtue of international humanitarian humanitarian law.”
Israel imposed a total blockade of all the aid for Gaza, with restrictions on the approval of the content and the circulation of the convoys. Together with the Americans, it established a new aid distribution system through the so -called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (FGH), aimed at replacing the help network managed by the United Nations.
Israel states that Hamas stole help from the UN system. The UN affirms that the Israelis are still waiting for their statements with evidence.
The UN and other agencies will not cooperate with the FGH system, which, they claim, is inhuman and militarized. More than 1,000 Palestinians have died in shots trying to reach the four FGH locations, according to the UN.
A retired colonel from the US special forces who worked for the FGH in Gaza declared the BBC that he saw American colleagues and soldiers of Israel's defense forces open fire against civilians. Both deny having attacked civilians.
Condemn
Jonathan Whittall, director of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Office for the occupied Palestinian territories (Ocha), has already condemned the methods used by the GHF.
Israel told him that they would not renew the visa after he published on social networks a month ago that the GHF system had brought Gaza “conditions created to kill … what we are seeing is a massacre. It is hungry turned into a weapon. It is forced displacement. It is a death sentence for those who simply try to survive. It seems to be the elimination of the Palestinian life.”
After the Israeli announcement of its new measures, Whittall declared to the BBC that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza has never been worse.”
And he added that for the new Israeli measures to improve the situation, it is necessary to reduce the time that trucks take to travel the crosses to Gaza and improve the routes provided by Israel's defense forces for convoys.
Israel should also offer “significant guarantees that Israeli forces will not shoot against people who meet to collect food from the rear of trucks.”
Whittall has been entering and leaving Gaza since the war began, although this will end unless Israel decides not to remove the visa. He affirms that, while the military operations of the Israel Defense Forces (FDI) continue, “an abominable contempt for humanitarian law remains.”
Image source, EPA
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, are already the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last year, accused of joint criminal responsibility for “the crime of war of starvation as a method of war; and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhuman acts.”
Netanyahu, Gallant and the state of Israel deny the accusations.
Israel published granulated images of a transport plane that launched Palehic aid on Gaza. Parachute lines waved from the back of the plane in the dark of the night.
The IDF claimed to have delivered seven humanitarian aid packages containing flour, sugar and canned food.
In other wars I have seen humanitarian aid launch, both from the plane itself and closely, while landing.
The launch of air help is an act of despair. You can also look good on television and generate the feeling of well -being that, finally, something is being done.
Last resort
It is a rudimentary process that, by itself, will not contribute much to eradicate hunger in Gaza. Only a high fire and a long -term no aid operation can achieve it. Not even large transport aircraft can transport as much as a small truck convoy.
In the Iraqi Kurdistan, after the 1991 Gulf War, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries launched help from C-130 transport aircraft, mainly military rations, sleeping bags and leftover winter uniforms, tens of thousands of people trying to survive weathering, between mud and snow, in the high mountains of the Iraqi border with Turkey.
I flew with them and observed how British and American aviators threw help from the rear load ramps of the airplanes, several thousand meters high over the people who needed it.
It was good news. But a few days later, when I reached the improvised camps in the mountains, I saw young people running towards the mined fields to collect the help that landed there. Some died and were mutilated in the explosions.
I saw families die by falling heavy pallets on their stores.
Image source, Getty Images
When Mostar was besieged during the Bosnia War in 1993, I saw Palés of “Food to eat” from the US army, launched from great height, scattered throughout the east of the city, which was constantly bombed. Some aid pallets crashed into ceilings that, for some reason, had not been destroyed by artillery attacks.
Professionals involved in relief operations consider helping from air as a last resort. They use it when any other access is impossible. That is not the case in Gaza. A short distance by car to the north is Ashdod, the modern container port of Israel. A few more hours is the border with Jordan, which has been used regularly as a way of supplying Gaza.
Gaza was one of the most densely populated places in the world before the war, when more than two million Palestinians had access to the entire strip. Compared to American cities, the strip has approximately the philadelphia or detroit size.
Now Israel has forced most of the inhabitants of Gaza to take refuge in a small area of the South coast, which represents around 17% of Gaza's territory. Most live crowded in tents. It is not clear if there is even an open space to which the dispatators can point from above. Help pallets that are launched in parachute usually fall away from those who need them.
Each pallet will be played by desperate men trying to get food for their families, and by criminals who will want to sell it for profits.
Subscribe here To our new newsletter to receive every Friday a selection of our best content of the week.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and act.
