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‘100 percent’ of Gazans at risk of famine: UN
Negotiations to end nearly 20 months of war have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming operations in Gaza in March, ending a six-week truce, AFP reported.
"Gaza is the hungriest place on Earth," said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. "It's the only defined area – a country or defined territory within a country – where you have the entire population at risk of famine. 100 percent of the population at risk of famine," he said, rejecting claims to the contrary by Israeli authorities. At a press briefing in Geneva, Laerke detailed the difficulties faced by the United Nations in delivering humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
In recent days, Israel has partially eased a total aid blockade on the Palestinian territory that it imposed on March 2, leading to severe shortages of food and medicine.
Laerke said 900 trucks of humanitarian aid had been authorized by Israel to enter the Strip since the blockade was partially lifted.
But so far only 600 trucks have been offloaded on the Gaza side of the border, and a smaller number of truckloads have then been picked up, due to multiple security considerations.
Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was "in an operational strait-jacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history."
Once truckloads enter Gaza, they are often "swarmed by desperate people", Laerke said.
"I don't blame them, for one second, for taking the aid that essentially is already theirs – but it's not distributed in the way we want."
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that European countries should "harden the collective position" against Israel if it does not respond appropriately to the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
"There is no humanitarian blockade. That is a blatant lie," Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X, defending its efforts to allow in aid.
During a visit to Singapore on Friday, Macron also asserted that recognition of a Palestinian state, with some conditions, was "not only a moral duty, but a political necessity". The French president later told a top defense forum in Singapore that abandoning war-torn Gaza to its own fate and giving Israel a "free pass" would kill the West's credibility with the rest of the world.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to build a "Jewish Israeli state" in the occupied West Bank, a day after the cabinet announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the Palestinian territory.
He said the move was a "clear message" to French president, whom Israel's foreign ministry accused of carrying out a crusade against Israel.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, seen as a major obstacle to lasting peace, are regularly condemned by the United Nations as illegal under international law, and Thursday's announcement drew sharp foreign criticism. "It is also a clear message to Macron and his associates: they will recognize a Palestinian state on paper – but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground," he added.