Trump failing to pressure Netanyahu to end Gaza assault, lift blockade
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, says “games [are] being played with children’s lives” as Palestinians in Gaza face starvation.
Commenting on earlier remarks by Marco Rubio – the US secretary of state – about Washington being troubled by the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Bishara said, “The aid issue is not complicated at all.”
“Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid just met with [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu today and he walked out of the meeting and said, it’s Netanyahu – he’s the obstacle for making a deal on a ceasefire or on letting the aid in. It’s clear,” Bishara said.
“But the Trump administration continues to give Netanyahu excuses and continues to play games,” he said, referring to a United Nations plan for an alternative aid delivery system that has been rejected by the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies.
“It’s very easy: you open the borders, you let the [aid] trucks in, it’s as simple as that.”
Israel has not allowed any humanitarian aid into Gaza since early March
‘Gaza is being starved’: UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has reiterated that it has thousands of aid trucks waiting outside of Gaza to deliver critical assistance to Palestinians, but cannot due to Israel’s blockade.
Gaza is being starved, not by lack of aid but by lack of access,” the agency said in a post on X.
“Hunger and desperation are spreading as food and relief assistance are being weaponised. The siege must be lifted now.”
The world’s top hunger monitor said earlier this week that Gaza’s entire population faced a risk of famine due to the Israeli blockade, while 500,000 Palestinians face starvation.
Israel’s blockade becoming ‘a tool of extermination’: HRW
Major NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) is sounding the alarm over reports that Israel plans to destroy Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure and force Palestinians into a tiny area in the bombarded coastal territory.
That plan, the rights group said, “would amount to an abhorrent escalation of its ongoing crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide” in the Gaza Strip.
HRW cited a recent report by US news outlet Axios that said Israel planned to “flatten” Gaza and move two million Palestinians into the southern Rafah area if no deal is reached by the end of US President Trump’s trip to the region today.
“Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza’s two million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington,” said Federico Borello, HRW’s interim executive director.
“Israel’s blockade has transcended military tactics to become a tool of extermination."
