China – China’s representative to the Security Council, Geng Shuang, urged Israel on Thursday to provide “security guarantees and facilitate the vaccination campaign” against polio in the Gaza Strip.
This came in a briefing by Jing before a Security Council session to discuss the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian issue.
“Israel restricts the work of UN teams in the Gaza Strip, and repeatedly refuses to deliver supplies such as fuel,” he added.
“We must not allow the Gaza tragedy to be repeated in the West Bank,” the Chinese official said.
During the same session, US Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood pledged his country’s full support for the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza.
Wood urged Israel to stop issuing evacuation orders during the vaccination campaign.
He stressed that “children’s lives depend on her success.”
Wood expressed concern about the Israeli army’s firing on a World Food Programme and UNICEF aid convoy.
“Israel must acknowledge its mistakes and ensure that its forces do not open fire on UN personnel again,” he said.
He concluded by saying, “Today’s Security Council meeting stresses that the time has come to reach an agreement on a ceasefire and the release of prisoners.”
Commenting on Israel’s targeting of the World Food Programme convoy in Gaza, James Kariuki, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, said it was the “deadliest” conflict ever for humanitarian workers.
Israel’s intensification of short-term evacuation orders in the Strip, including in areas that are supposed to provide safe haven, leaves Palestinians “without a safe place to go,” Kariuki added.
Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya said the situation in Gaza was “absolutely desperate.”
She added that civilians were hungry, thirsty, sick and homeless, and that they had been “pushed beyond the limits of endurance, beyond what any human being can bear.”
“We cannot plan more than 24 hours in advance because we struggle to know what supplies we will get, when we will get them or where we will be able to deliver them,” Msowya stressed. “The lives of 2.1 million people cannot depend on luck and hope alone.”
The UN official pointed out that the evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army in August affected a quarter of a million people in 33 neighborhoods in the cities of Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and northern Gaza.
Msuya noted that the evacuation order issued on August 25 resulted in the largest relocation of UN staff since they were forced to leave northern Gaza in October 2023.
Earlier on Thursday, Hamas announced that the Israeli army had “deliberately” targeted a World Food Programme aid convoy in the Gaza Strip, with the aim of “terrorising and terrorising” humanitarian organisations from providing relief to the Palestinian people.
On Wednesday evening, the UN program announced the suspension of its activities in Gaza “until further notice” after a vehicle in its convoy came under fire near an Israeli checkpoint on Tuesday evening.
In a statement, Hamas held the Israeli army “fully responsible for the shooting crime” that targeted the food programme convoy as it passed near an Israeli military checkpoint in the central Gaza Strip.
She stressed that the attack that targeted the convoy after it delivered a shipment of humanitarian aid “we consider it a deliberate attack aimed at terrorizing and intimidating humanitarian institutions from performing their duty in providing relief to our people who are being subjected to a war of extermination.”
For months, Palestinian and international relief organizations have been complaining about the lack of protection for their teams, which has led to the killing and wounding of many humanitarian workers by Israeli fire, which increases the suffering of Palestinians in light of their urgent need for life-saving aid.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel, with American support, has been waging a war on Gaza, resulting in more than 134,000 Palestinian deaths and injuries, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children.
In contempt of the international community, Tel Aviv continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate end to it, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Israel is also defying a request by the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant for their responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Tel Aviv has turned the Gaza Strip into the largest prison in the world, as it has been besieging it for the 18th year, and its war has forced about two million of its citizens, numbering about 2.3 million Palestinians, to flee in catastrophic conditions, with a severe and deliberate shortage of food, water and medicine.
Anatolia
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2024-08-30 13:18:14
