The UN counts more than a thousand Gazans killed while trying to get food

Geneva.- The number of Gazans who have been killed while trying to access food has risen to over a thousand since the controversial Humanitarian Foundation in Gaza began operating in the Strip in May, warned the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), who stressed that humanitarian assistance “is not a job for mercenaries”.

“Snipers are shooting at crowds as if they had a license to kill, it’s a massive hunt for people with total impunity,” said the agency’s general commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, who has been denied entry to Gaza by Israel for more than a year in a statement.

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Her words were complemented at a press conference this Tuesday by UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma, who added that the agency’s international staff has been unable to enter the Palestinian territories for almost six months due to Israel’s refusal to extend their visas. “We still have Palestinian staff enduring in Gaza and the West Bank, doing a great job in very difficult circumstances,” Touma indicated from Amman, the Jordanian capital, via telematics for the press accredited to the UN in Geneva. Israeli authorities have blocked the entry into the Gaza Strip of food and other essential goods since March, even before the unilateral breakdown of the ceasefire, and since mid-May put the task of delivering assistance in the hands of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created by Israel and the US. That foundation, which had its official headquarters in Geneva (although the Swiss authorities ordered its dissolution at the beginning of this month), is linked to ex-military personnel and former US intelligence officials, and the UN refuses to collaborate with it. “Their alleged distribution methods are a sadistic death trap,” underlined Lazzarini in his statement, who affirmed that it is the United Nations and its humanitarian partners “who have the experience and resources necessary to provide safe, dignified assistance with the necessary scale.” This aid should not only include food but also other basic goods such as diapers, added Touma, who reported that in Gaza many mothers use plastic bags to make up for the lack of these essential products for their babies. “More than 6,000 trucks with humanitarian aid are waiting in Egypt and Jordan for the green light to enter Gaza,” added the spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency that Israel has repeatedly accused of having Hamas members among its staff in the Strip.