In a meeting of the UN Security Council called yesterday to address the horrific humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, Tom Fletcher, the Emergency Relief Coordinator of the Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, presented a wrenching report on the genocide and near-starvation conditions created by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and he challenged UNSC members to “stop the 21st-century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.” It is time, he said, for the international community to reflect on what it will tell future generations about what actions “we each took” to stop this atrocity. “Will we use those empty words `we did all we could?’”
Gazans are being forced into ever-shrinking spaces, he warned—70% of the territory is either within Israeli-militarized zones or under displacement orders. The healthcare system is destroyed. “I can tell you from having visited what’s left of Gaza’s medical system that death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you.” The UN humanitarian structures “can save hundreds of thousands of survivors. We have rigorous mechanisms to ensure our aid gets to civilians and not to Hamas,” he said. “But Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians.”
Fletcher scathingly described the U.S.-Israeli proposal for a privatized aid distribution operation as “unworkable. It’s not the answer. It plans to make starvation a bargaining chip … a cynical sideshow … a fig leaf for further violence and displacement…. If any of that still matters, have no part in it.” He added that the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) is now considering whether a genocide is taking place there “and will weigh the testimony we have shared. But it will be too late.” The ICJ indicated provisional measures to be taken, he said, “but Israel has failed to do so.”
