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SvennoJ on 18 November 2024
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Like a broken record

Relief group urges Israel to lift restrictions on aid into Gaza

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has issued a statement in response to the UN-backed Famine Review Committee’s warnings of famine in northern Gaza.

“The escalating crisis is primarily driven by the obstruction of humanitarian aid,” said Bart Witteveen, the IRC’s Country Director for the occupied Palestinian territory. “Over 80% of humanitarian aid into Gaza is currently blocked, with deliveries now at their lowest levels since October 2023,” he noted.

The worst-case scenario may already be under way, he said. “Across Gaza, starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease are rapidly increasing.”

He added, “We urge immediate lifting of restrictions on aid into and within Gaza. The Government of Israel must fulfill its obligations to ensure that people across Gaza can access food, medical supplies and other basic necessities needed for the survival of the population. Lives are now hanging in the balance.”

Rights expert urges Pope to read UN reports on Gaza genocide

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, responded to Pope Francis’s call for an inquiry by pointing him to three UN reports investigating Israel’s “genocidal practices” in the past year.

In a post on X, Albanese said she hoped Pope Francis would find the time to read the two reports that she has written this year, as well as that from the UN Committee on Israeli Practices, “which also covers charges of genocide”.

She also noted that the UN special rapporteur on the right to food has issued a report denouncing starvation/destruction of food sovereignty as a genocidal practice.


 
UN chief calls for ceasefire in Gaza, Lebanon at G20

Antonio Guterres renewed the appeal while speaking to reporters in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, ahead of the G20 summit, which kicks off on Monday.

Here’s what he said:

  • “On the Middle East, I do believe that we cannot have double standards. We need to apply the same principles everywhere. We need to apply the [UN] Charter, international law and international humanitarian law.”
  • “We need peace, but we need peace on the way to a two-state solution. We need peace that guarantees the right of the Palestinian people as the right of the Israeli people, to have a state, and for the two states to live in peace and security.”
  • “And at the same time, we need to address the immediate crises. Condemning, as we have condemned, the Hamas attacks, but recognising that they do not justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. So, we need immediately, a ceasefire, the immediate release of the hostages and effective humanitarian aid to Gaza.”