Palestinian Abdul Rahman Sharif holds the body of his 4-year-old son Abdul Rahman Muamm at his funeral yesterday. The boy was killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP
Palestinian Abdul Rahman Sharif holds the body of his 4-year-old son Abdul Rahman Muamm at his funeral yesterday. The boy was killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP
Israel has failed to comply with an order by the United Nations’ top court to provide urgently needed aid to desperate people in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said a month after a landmark ruling in The Hague ordered Israel to moderate its war.
In a preliminaryresponse to a South African petition accusing Israel of genocide, the UN’s top court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in the tiny Palestinian enclave. It stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive that has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel denies the charges against it, saying it is fighting in self-defence.
Nearly five months into the war, preparations are underway for Israel to expand its ground operation into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town along the border with Egypt, where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought safety.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said yesterday that the army had presented to the War Cabinet its operational plan for Rafah as well as plans to evacuate civilians from the battle zones. It gave no further details.
Palestinian Abdul Rahman Sharif holds the body of his 4-year-old son Abdul Rahman Muamm at his funeral yesterday. The boy was killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP
Also yesterday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh submitted his government’s resignation and President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to appoint technocrats in line with United States demands for internal reform. The US has called for a revitalised Palestinian Authority to govern postwar Gaza ahead of eventual statehood – a scenario rejected by Israel.
In its January 26 ruling, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to follow six provisional measures, including taking “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” to Gaza.
Israel also must submit a report on what it is doing to adhere to the measures within a month. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said yesterday that it had filed such a report. It declined to share it or discuss its contents.
Israel said 245 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Sunday. That’s less than half the amount that entered daily before the war.
Human Rights Watch, citing UN figures, noted a 30 per cent drop in the daily average number of aid trucks entering Gaza in the weeks after the court’s ruling. It said that, between January 27 and February 21, the daily average of trucks entering was 93, compared to 147 a day in the three weeks before the ruling. The daily average dropped to 57 between February 9 and 21, the figures showed.
The rights group said Israel was not adequately facilitating fuel deliveries to hard-hit northern Gaza and blamed Israel for blocking aid from reaching the north, where the World Food Programme said last week it was forced to suspend aid deliveries.
“The Israeli Government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch.
The Association of International Development Agencies, a coalition of over 70 humanitarian organisations working in Gaza and the West Bank, said almost no aid had reached areas in Gaza north of Rafah since the court’s ruling.
Israel denies it is restricting the entry of aid and has instead blamed humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza, saying large aid shipments sit idle on the Palestinian side of the main crossing. The UN says it can’t always reach the crossing because it is sometimes too dangerous.
In some cases, crowds of desperate Palestinians have surrounded delivery trucks and stripped them of supplies. The UN has called on Israel to open more crossings, including in the north, and to improve the process.
Netanyahu’s office said the War Cabinet had approved a plan to deliver humanitarian aid safely into Gaza in a way that would “prevent the cases of looting”. It did not disclose further details.
The war, launched after Hamas-led militants rampaged across southern Israel, killing 1200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages, has caused vast devastation in Gaza.
Nearly 30,000 people have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish in its count between fighters and non-combatants. Israel says it has killed 10,000 militants, without providing evidence.
A wall in Jerusalem bearing the photographs of hostages who were kidnapped during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. Photo / AP
Fighting has flattened large swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape, displacing about 80 per cent of the territory’s 2.3 million people, who have crammed into increasingly smaller spaces looking for safety.
The crisis has pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation and raised fears of imminent famine, especially in the northern part of Gaza, the first focus of Israel’s ground invasion. Starving residents have been forced to eat animal food and search for scraps in demolished buildings.
“I wish death for the children because I cannot get them bread,” Naim Abouseido yelled as he waited for aid in Gaza City. “I cannot feed them. I cannot feed my own children! What did we do to deserve this?”
Bushra Khalidi, of British aid organisation Oxfam, told the Associated Press that it had verified reports of children dying of starvation in the north in recent weeks, which she said indicated aid was not being scaled up despite the court ruling.
Aid groups say deliveries also continue to be hobbled by security issues. The French aid groups Médecins du Monde and Doctors Without Borders each said their facilities were struck by Israeli forces in the weeks after the court order.
