With a quarter of the Gaza population starved and deprived of basic needs, 22 countries have condemned Israel into lifting aid ban. Photo / Getty Images
With a quarter of the Gaza population starved and deprived of basic needs, 22 countries have condemned Israel into lifting aid ban. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Phil Goff
Phil Goff is a former Foreign Affairs Minister and was a Labour MP for more than 30 years.
More than 20 countries, including New Zealand, have called for Israel to allow a full and immediate resumption of aid to Gaza.
Tom Fletcher, the UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, told the Security Council that denial of food and medical supplies was driving Gaza towards famine.
Other international organisations have condemned the blockade as being designed to intentionally starve the population.
Latest reports from the United Nations suggest that 14,000 babies in Gaza are suffering severe acute malnutrition.
Half a million people, a quarter of the population, face starvation.
From the comfort and safety of our homes and New Zealand, we’ve seen film clips of the human suffering ofbabies already victims of advanced malnutrition.
The deprivation of basic needs such as food and medicine comes on top of families already contending with ongoing military attacks.
Bombs are further pulverising the ruins of homes and hospitals, the vast majority of which have been reduced to rubble.
It is estimated that of the 53,000 people killed by the bombing and 121,000 injured, the majority are women and children. Some 13,000 children have been killed, twice as many maimed and most suffer from the trauma of war and deprivation, the effects of which they will feel for a lifetime.
Finally, some two months after Israel stopped all humanitarian aid into Gaza, more than 20 countries including New Zealand have issued a statement condemning what is happening.
This followed a statement from Tom Fletcher, the UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, to the Security Council that denial of food and medical supplies was driving Gaza towards famine and creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
Other international organisations have condemned the blockade as being designed to intentionally starve the population and as a form of collective punishment, constituting a war crime.
As in the past, Israeli actions will not stop the suffering of innocent civilians. The attacks on Gaza are in fact ramping up.
It is likely to be at most a token effort to reduce the criticism of Israeli actions, with even President Trump acknowledging “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza.
The proposed distribution system for the aid, replacing UNRWA which Israel has banned, is already being criticised as inadequate and neither independent or impartial.
Israel Prime Minister Netanhyu's partial lifting of Gaza aid ban is a "token effort" to reduce the criticism of Israeli actions, says Phil Goff. Photo / Getty Images
It is difficult to comprehend how Israel, a democracy and a country whose people have been victims of oppression and the Nazi holocaust, is now inflicting so much suffering on others.
The Netanyahu Government justifies its actions as being directed at Hamas leaders and fighters.
Israel was justified in responding to this but the scale and proportionality of the killing and destruction inflicted on Palestinian civilians cannot be justified.
It is not a defence to say that the children and civilians now being killed in such numbers and subjected to severe deprivation is simply unfortunate collateral damage in its efforts to destroy Hamas.
The consequence of Israeli actions will not be to destroy Hamas but rather to create a new generation of angry and embittered young Palestinians with hatred in their hearts that will drive them to back Hamas against those they see as their oppressors.
I first visited Israel in the late 1970s, staying at kibbutzim on the northern border with Lebanon.
Just decades after the Holocaust, it was easy to understand why Jewish people wanted to establish a country of their own where they might be safe.
It was in many respects a progressive and idealist society shaped by those who had fled from the Nazi atrocities in Europe.
Israel today seems a different place with a much different government.
The Netanyahu Coalition is heavily influenced by extremists such as Smotrich and Ben Gvir who are open about their desire to take over Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza.
It appears that the suffering being inflicted on Palestinian people is at least in part motivated by the desire to make their homelands unliveable and to force them to leave.
Trump has contributed to this sentiment by his own proposal to deport Palestinians from Gaza and send them to other countries.
This, he says, would present a huge real estate opportunity for Gaza to become the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
These comments represent a lack of basic decency and humanity as well as being contrary to international law.
New Zealand in the past has been critical of many of Israel’s actions, including the illegal settlement of the West Bank by more than half a million Israelis.
It has sought to balance the interests of the Jewish people to their own state while meeting the needs of Palestinian people for their own homeland, supporting a two-state solution.
As New Zealanders, we uphold the values of fairness, decency, and the rule of international law.
We condemn actions which have unacceptable humanitarian consequences and which are judged as constituting war crimes.
Condemning what the Netanyahu Government is doing is only the first step. It will need to be backed up by a willingness by the New Zealand Government to back action to pressure Israel to end what it is doing.
That includes adopting a position in opposition to President Trump who has imposed sanctions - not on Israel for the war crimes the International Criminal Court found it guilty of, but against the judges on the ICC for their finding.
