By John Pickard
The bombs are still falling on Gaza, killing innocent civilians, including many children, sometimes while they’re sleeping. The numbers killed are still mounting day by day. Trying to shelter anywhere in Gaza is a risk to life and limb.
But a danger that is faced by the whole of Gaza’s two-million plus population is starvation and disease, as a result of the blockade of humanitarian aid imposed by the Israeli government.
That blockade alone is a war crime on a scale unprecedented in modern times and, if leading western politicians were genuine in the concerns they have belatedly expressed, should mean an immediate and full embargo on all trade with Israel, particularly on sales of weapons.
For three months the Netanyahu government has stopped all humanitarian aid, food and medical supplies to the population of Gaza, insisting that there is “enough” food in the area. The United Nations have argued, on the contrary, that a large proportion of the Gaza population are facing outright starvation and so now, and only as a result of the international outcry, Israel has allowed a tiny trickle of aid to get through.
But even the humanitarian aid is being used by Israel to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It has been the Israeli aim all along – and it remains their strategy – to push two million Gazans out of their land and south towards Egypt, although the latter government has insisted that it will not cooperate in any forced displacement.
The food programme devised jointly by the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government aims to displace the UN agencies which up to now have distributed food aid. Instead they are making a little-known private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) the sole agency in charge. The GHF plan is for a regular distribution of ready-prepared, boxed meals to families from a series of distribution ‘hubs’ established and secured by the IDF in Gaza.
The United Nations, has refused to cooperate with the GHF arrangement, describing it as a “fig leaf” to cover the forced displacement of the Gaza population, because most of the hubs are located in southern Gaza and the effect will be for hundreds of thousands to be effectively starved into moving south for food.
The tiny number of food trucks being allowed into Gaza, was described by UN secretary-general António Guterres, on Friday as “a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required”. But according to Netanyahu, this limited aid is a “bridge” to the full implementation of the GHF plan.
Now, however, the whole project is in question, after the executive director of the GHF rumbled the Israeli plan and resigned. The Financial Times suggests that he believes the GHF plan “would not be able to adhere to humanitarian principles”. Jack Wood, a US marine veteran, was reported to have said “…it is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”
Workers and youth internationally, must continue their protests and to make their voices heard. Whether it is London, Paris, Berlin or New York, the demonstrations should and will continue. Mainstream politicians have at last been forced to start making noises about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But pressure has to remain, for them to turn words into action, and where action is not forthcoming (which is most likely), then the labour movement, especially trade unions in transport and manufacturing, must take steps themselves to stop the Israeli killing machine.
[Feature picture from the UNICEF website, here]
