‘Starvation is the intent,’ head of humanitarian group says
Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former US aid agency official, says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is using starvation as a weapon of war”.
Citing a New York Times report that said the Israeli military has never found proof that aid is being diverted by Hamas in Gaza, Konyndyk noted that “humanitarian groups have long denied that their aid is being diverted at any significant scale” in the enclave.
“Netanyahu has used aid diversion claims as pretext for massive obstruction of aid to Gaza. Now we learn the [Israeli army] had briefed his team that these claims were false (as aid groups have long argued),” Konyndyk wrote on X.
“The diversion claims were diametrically false, and Bibi’s team knew it,” he said, using a common nickname for the Israeli prime minister.
“So then why suppress a UN-led aid operation that was effectively feeding people with negligible diversion, and replace it with a militarized GHF operation that delivers little aid but produces daily massacres of aid-seekers? This only makes sense if starvation is the intent.”
Starved baby in Gaza weighed less at death than birth
The five-month-old girl who died of malnutrition in Gaza today, Zainab Abu Haleeb, weighed just two kilogrammes (4.4 pounds) at the time of her death – smaller than her birth weight of more than three kilos (6.6 pounds), and less than a third the average weight of an infant her age.
Dr. Ahmed al-Farah, head of the paediatric department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where she was examined, said Zainab had suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea without access to the specialised baby formula she needed. As her immune system collapsed, she developed a bacterial infection and sepsis, causing her to rapidly lose weight, he said, according to The AP news agency.
Zainab’s mother fears that her daughter could be just one of many babies to die due to malnutrition. “Their names are on a list that no one looks at. They are just names and numbers. We are just numbers,” she said.
Palestinian mother Israa Abu Haleeb holds her five-month-old daughter, Zainab, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, July 15
Gaza death toll rises again
At least 71 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across since dawn today, hospital sources tell Al Jazeera.
That figure includes 42 people who were killed while seeking desperately needed aid.
