The total blockade of Israel of Gaza succeeded in its 60th day, deepening the hunger crisis in the coastal enclave, while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held a third day of hearings in the humanitarian obligations of Israel towards the Palestinians.
The continuous blockade is the longest closure of this kind that the Gaza Strip has ever faced and came while Israeli forces continued to bomb the territory, killing at least 30 Palestinians on Wednesday.
He has caused famine warnings, with the remaining charities through the strip warning, they may have to close in a few days if the aid is not allowed.
“We have 70 to 80 community kitchens that still work in Gaza … In four to five days, these community kitchens will close their doors,” said Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO network (PNGO) in Gaza, at the Reuters news agency.
Shawa put the number of operational community kitchens in Gaza before closing the level passages around 170.
He said 15 additional kitchens closed on Monday.
Since March 2, Israel has banned all supplies, including food, water and entry drugs in Gaza, in order to force Hamas to renegotiate the cease-fire agreement in January.
Israel wants the Palestinian group to disclose other Israeli captives detained in Gaza in exchange for humanitarian aid, prolonged truce and more Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli prisons. But Hamas insisted on an Israeli commitment to a permanent ceasefire, saying that any “partial transaction” will allow Israel to resume murder in Gaza.
Israel then abandoned the ceasefire and resumed the Gaza bombardment on March 18, killing at least 2,308 people in attacks against tents, hospitals and soil shot in school. The number of deaths since October 2023 at the start of the war crossed 52,000 people. 118,014 others were injured.
Current famine assessment
In the midst of intensified attacks and continuous blockade, the global hunger watchdog, known as the classification system for the integrated food security phase (IPC), began an analysis of food insecurity and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip.
The evaluation started on April 28 and will last a week, according to the United Nations Humanitarian Agency (OCHA). More than 50 analysts trained from the United Nations agencies and aid groups, the Gaza Strip and the foreigner, participate in the financial year, he said.
The IPC had issued at least four warnings since the beginning of the genocidal actions of Israel on Gaza, saying that the territory could wave on the precipice of famine.
The evaluation comes a few days after the World Food Program (WFP) said that its actions in the enclave had been exhausted. The agency had closed all its bakeries in the band earlier in the month, on a lack of flour and fuel.
Most families survive less than one meal a day and use “everything they can find”, even if it is not sure for consumption, according to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Meanwhile, the large number of deaths and injured submerged partially functional hospitals in Gaza, and the medical staff warns that many die because of the shortage of medical supplies, according to Hani Mahmoud of Tel Aviv Tribune, reported by Gaza City.
“Medical staff warn that there are many more dyings quietly in the emergency services of other health establishments due to the shortage of medical supplies. Medicines as simple as pain relievers are not available,” he said.
The president of Palestine Red Crescent Society, Younis al-Khatib, asked that sanctions be imposed in Israel because she “left no space for humanity to live in Gaza”.
“I cannot see my colleagues, my friends and my staff killed by a state that does not respect our emblem, does not respect international law,” Al-Khatib told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“If another state had done so, it would have been punished.”
We defend Israel to ICJ
Meanwhile, in The Hague in the Netherlands, the CIJ continued its hearings on what Israel must do to provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, following a request for advisory opinion from the United Nations General Assembly last year.
The United States defended Israel on Wednesday, saying that even if it has to provide assistance to Gaza, it does not have to work with UNRWA. Israel prohibited the agency from operating on its territory in January, after alleging that 19 out of approximately 13,000 employees participated in the attack in Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Joshua Simmons, a legal advisor to the American State Department, argued that there was “no legal requirement that an occupying power allows a third state or a specific international organization to carry out activities that would compromise its security interests”.
Simmons suggested that other organizations could fulfill the mission of UNRWA, although the United Nations agency has repeatedly declared that there could be a replacement for its role as a help provider.
Similar points have been raised by Hungary because he spoke to defend Israel.
The Russian Federation, which spoke directly after the United States, said that UNRWA’s work was crucial to the Palestinian people and that the agency was supported by the majority of the international community.
“The urgency of this case cannot be overestimated. Gaza balances on the verge of famine. Hospitals are in ruins. Millions of Palestinians in the band (Gaza), as well as in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, face existential despair,” said the Maksim Musikhin court, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.
Rory Chalands d’Tel Aviv Tribune, reporting from The Hague, said that other countries, including Turkiye, France, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan and Kuwait, were to speak against the help of Israel before the end of the day.
Challands said that the countries that have made statements to court during the first two days of hearings had all criticized Israel’s actions. “It was only at the beginning of the third day that a country arose and spoke to defend Israel,” he said. “And it was, of course, the United States.”
