EDITORIAL: A food distribution point turned into a massacre scene when an aid convoy, the first in more than a month, arrived in northern Gaza.
Thousands of Palestinian desperately in need of food flocked to the aid trucks only to be faced with live fire from the occupation forces that left 112 of them dead and another 280 wounded.
Israel claimed that its soldiers opened fire when the people came too close to their tanks, and that most were run over by trucks while trying to escape. Officials at Al Shifa Hospital which received the casualties, both dead and wounded, however, found that bullets caused most of the casualties.
Unsurprising, US President Joe Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, as usual, was inclined to accept its account, as he said there are two competing versions of what happened, adding that he did not yet have an accurate account. What concerned him more was that the talks regarding the release of hostages could fall through.
As expected, international rights organisations have strongly condemned the carnage, pointing the finger at Israeli army. UN Humanitarian Affairs chief Martin Griffith “appalled” at the killings and injuries voiced a common sentiment in these words: “even after close to five months of brutal hostilities, Gaza still has the ability to shock us. ... Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has announced that it is investigating the attack on food aid seekers as part of its ongoing documentation of violations against Palestinian civilians, also emphasising that as the occupying power, Israel has a clear obligation to meet the basic needs of Palestinians, including by ensuring their unimpeded and safe access to aid. Sufficient evidence suggests that the Jewish state is deliberately using food as a weapon of war.
According to the UN agency for Palestinians refugees, UNRWA, in February just 100 trucks entered the besieged Gaza Strip per day, which was down from around 500 that came in daily before the war. Much of the population of remains deprived of its basic food needs.
Set against that despairing reality is the blind support extended to the aggressor by US-led Western countries. With their help Israel has unleashed a ferocious assault on the Gaza Palestinians.
Whereas the two years of war in Ukraine have claimed 10,000 lives, in less than five months of what Israel has been doing in Gaza prior to the latest atrocity, over 30,000 people, majority of them women and children, lost their lives and countless others incurred lifelong physical disabilities.
Still, there is no hope of a durable ceasefire. As indicated by Biden, he is interested only in a pause to secure the release of Israeli hostages, letting the Jewish state resume attacks on Palestinian homes, hospitals, aid workers, journalists and UN facilities to force people out of the Gaza Strip.
It has been South Africa, rather than fellow Arabs which went to International Court of Justice invoking the Genocide Convention against Israel; some Latin American countries have also withdrawn their diplomatic representatives from it. But sadly for them, Arab states have only been tut-tutting, unwilling to do they can to stay Israel’s hand. No one knows how and where the Palestinian people’s unspeakable suffering will end.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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