Far-right minister suggests Israel should halt aid to Gaza for month or two
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has suggested that Israel should take more extreme steps to strengthen its position in the war on Gaza.
“There are things we haven’t done yet, like halting the gas, telling them ‘no more humanitarian aid’, we haven’t done that. Let’s do it for a month or two, see them then,” he said during an interview on Israel’s Army Radio.
The far-right minister was speaking as he encouraged people to attend the contentious and often incendiary annual Jerusalem Day Flag March, which will be held on Wednesday at the Damascus Gate and the Muslim quarter.
‘People don’t have near enough water’ in Gaza: UNRWA
The UNRWA has said that Israel should provide access for fuel to get into the Gaza Strip so that desalination plants can function and provide water to people.
“Survival is a struggle. Families and children walk long distances in the heat for water. People need water to live. Israeli authorities must provide access now,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on X.
With almost no fuel available in #Gaza, critical desalination plants have shut down. People don’t have near enough water
Survival is a struggle. Families & children walk long distances in the heat for water
People need water to live - Israeli authorities must provide access NOW pic.twitter.com/yh0peaM5XP
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 4, 2024
Oxfam says Israel obstructing aid in Gaza, increasing famine risk
Israel is making it “virtually impossible for aid agencies to reach trapped, starved civilians” in Gaza, increasing the risk of famine in the besieged enclave, aid group Oxfam said in a statement.
It said aid groups were struggling to collect aid delivered through Karem Abu Salem, the only crossing that remains open, due to “long delays in Israeli approval” and “extremely dangerous” conditions on the Gaza side of the crossing.
“When hunger claims many more lives, nobody will be able to deny the horrifying impact of Israel’s deliberate, illegal and cruel obstruction of aid,” said Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa director, Sally Abi Khalil.
“By the time a famine is declared, it will be too late,” she added.
Elderly woman in Gaza lost 25kg due to lack of food
Hadeel Qazzaz, OXFAM’s gender coordinator for the MENA region, has described the situation in Gaza as “terrifying”.
Qazzaz, who has family in the besieged and bombarded territory, told Al Jazeera that she is worried for her 80-year-old mother who has lost nearly 25kg (55lbs) due to the lack of food. “She has one meal a day. At 80 years old, you cannot afford to lose that much weight,” she said, adding that people have been living on canned foods for eight months.
Qazzaz said one of her sisters has already moved 10 times from one house to another trying to find safety. “[During the Rafah evacuation order], she had to leave in half an hour and carry whatever she could. She had to pay a huge amount of money for a small car to carry whatever she can [bring with her] and it took her almost four hours to move because of the crowded streets.
“There are basically no streets; people are everywhere, any [space] that is empty you can find a tent.” Due to the closure of border crossings and lack of aid deliveries, it is very expensive to even buy drinking water, she added. “My sister who is also suffering from a tumour in her spine from before the war, doesn’t have any access to medication or access to medical services even when she got bitten by a scorpion.
“It’s the reality day to day that maybe the world doesn’t hear or doesn’t see enough,” Qazzaz said.
Two-thirds of population crammed into one-fifth of Gaza: Oxfam
About 1.7 million Palestinians are estimated to be crammed into just one-fifth of the Gaza Strip, after more than one million people fled Rafah, according to the aid group Oxfam.
Most of the people who left Rafah have sought refuge in nearby al-Mawasi, Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis, an area totalling just 69 square kilometres (26 square miles), Oxfam added.
“This area was designated a humanitarian zone, but there is nothing humanitarian about the situation here,” said Meera, an Oxfam staff member who is now in al-Mawasi, after being displaced seven times since October.
“The conditions are unbearable, there is no access to clean water, and people are forced to rely on the sea,” she said.
Displaced Palestinians walk on a road amid tents in a camp in al-Mawasi camp, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 24
