The United Nations won’t resume delivering aid to Gaza under the parameters offered by the Israel Defense Forces, António Guterres, the global body’s secretary-general, told reporters on Tuesday.
“Let me be clear. We will not participate in any arrangement that does not fully respect the humanitarian principles: humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality,” Guterres said at the press conference, during which he said Gaza is a “killing field.”
Israel cut off delivery of aid to the Strip in early March to pressure Hamas to release more hostages.
“With crossing points into Gaza shut and aid blockaded, security is in shambles and our capacity to deliver has been strangled,” Guterres said. He blamed the Jewish state, which he said had an “unequivocal” responsibility as the “occupying power” to facilitate aid entry to Gaza. (Israeli soldiers and citizens were removed, many forcibly, from Gaza in 2005.)
U.N. agencies are prepared to start delivering aid again, “but the Israeli authorities’ newly proposed ‘authorization mechanisms’ for aid delivery risk further controlling and callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour,” Guterres said.
The United Nations says that the food situation in Gaza is dire and approaching famine levels, although no U.N. agency would confirm that a famine had taken place after repeated JNS inquiries. An internal review committee found that data projecting widespread famine in Gaza was incomplete and misleading.
Israeli military leaders are reportedly urging the Jewish state to begin delivering aid again, fearing global legal repercussions. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has denied that any such plan was approved.
Asked at the U.S. State Department press briefing on Tuesday about the U.N. secretary-general’s remarks, Tammy Bruce, the department’s spokeswoman said that “the reason there’s aid issues and movement issues in Gaza is because of the resumption of the conflict.”
“We work through our partners on the ground. The fact is that if it was safe to move aid through Gaza, it would move,” Bruce said. “At this point, that’s clearly an assessment that it hasn’t been safe, so I’m not going to speak about or presume to talk about what the State Department would do. Those are the decisions of the secretary and of the president, of the highest levels of this government, about how to move through that framework.”
Oren Marmorstein, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, stated on Tuesday that “there is no shortage of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.”
“Over 25,000 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip in the 42 days of the ceasefire,” Marmorstein said, accusing Hamas of using the aid “to rebuild its war machine.”
Marmorstein chided Guterres for failing to call for Hamas to step down from power, and for not acknowledging the ongoing, unprecedented anti-Hamas protests in the strip.
“As always, you don’t let the facts get in the way when spreading slander against Israel,” he stated.