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UN aid chief slams Israel for using ‘starvation as a bargaining chip’
We’ve been covering a UN Security Council briefing on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The head of the UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, Fletcher said that aid organisations are “desperate to resume humanitarian aid at scale across Gaza” after no “food, medicine, water or tents” have entered the enclave “for more than 10 weeks”.
“But Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians,” he said.
“It is bad enough that the blockade continues. How do you react when Israeli Ministers boast of it?”
Fletcher also excoriated Israel’s proposal to only allow aid into Gaza if it is delivered through a new Israeli-designed process that bypasses all existing aid organisations, including the UN.
He said the Israeli-designed proposal “makes aid conditional on political and military aims” and uses “starvation” as “a bargaining chip” while also forcing “further displacement”.
As we’ve been reporting, Fletcher also called on the Security Council to “act now” to “prevent genocide” in Gaza.
For more than 10 weeks, nothing has entered Gaza – no food, medicine, water or tents.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have, again, been forcibly displaced & confined into ever-shrinking spaces."
– @UNReliefChief on humanitarian crisis in Gaza.https://t.co/hqxNMi8bsl
— United Nations (@UN) May 13, 2025
US envoy touts widely criticised aid plan for Gaza
Dorothy Shea, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, used her speech to call on aid groups to support the US-Israeli plan for aid distribution in Gaza, through a newly created foundation.
“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is an independent entity that has been established to provide a secure mechanism, capable of delivering aid directly to those in need, without Hamas stealing, looting or leveraging this assistance for its own ends,” she said.
“We call upon the United Nations, humanitarian organisations and the international community to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in providing assistance to civilians,” she added.
The US-Israeli proposal will skirt the existing system for aid delivery, replacing about 400 UN distribution points across Gaza with just four. The UN and other humanitarian organisations have opposed it, calling it dangerous and saying it will effectively worsen displacement in Gaza.
UK rejects US-Israeli plan for Gaza aid
The United Kingdom’s envoy to the UN, Barbara Woodward, told journalists outside the meeting that Israel must lift its blockade on Gaza, which is now in its 10th week, noting that the world’s leading hunger monitor has warned that the whole of the territory is at risk of famine.
She also rejected the US-Israeli plan for aid distribution in Gaza, which seeks to supplant the already existing system run by the UN, saying, “The UK will not support any aid mechanism that seeks to deliver political or military objectives or puts vulnerable civilians at risk.”
She added, “We call on Israel to urgently engage with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles.”
Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza for over two months. Gazans are at risk of starvation.
International law requires Israel to allow aid to get to civilians. Gaza is no exception to this rule.
All European members of the Security Council call on Israel to let aid in now. pic.twitter.com/uSS0LHebpC
— UK at the UN 🇬🇧🇺🇳 (@UKUN_NewYork) May 13, 2025
You're just going to keep calling on Israel until everyone is dead? While still supporting genocide with F-35 parts?
Death toll from Israeli attacks in Jabalia rises to 45
That’s according to medical sources. They say dozens more have been wounded in the raids that hit homes in the town of Jabalia and the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
This brings the total toll from attacks since midnight local time today to at least 51.
