After days of reports about starvation deaths, the Israeli military finally halted fighting in Gaza yesterday to allow food trucks to cross the border in a pause that the Israeli government said it would take again in coming days.
Reports of more than a hundred literal starvation deaths, most children, had spurred air drops of food from Israelis, Jordan, UAE and Europeans, though the content of dropped supplies were less than could be carried by a single truck or two. Previous food drops were halted after people were injured and coordination of deliveries was ruled unworkable.
As Axios.com reported, the plan approved this weekend by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in response to mounting international criticism over the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza and literally came about only because Netanyahu held a Cabinet approval meeting while missing two ministers who opposed the move.
The question, of course, is how awful things have to get with a recalcitrant Hamas to ignore starving children, and why the Israeli right believes that starvation is a weapon of war justified even by the horrors of the October, 2023 killing attacks into Israel’s south.
During these pauses, the military was allowing safe access for the UN and other aid organizations to reach population centers in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, the first such real break since March, when fighting resumed after a brief ceasefire. Hamas still holds about 50 Israeli hostages, though many are believed to be dead, and has resisted accepting various international interventions for a broader ceasefire.
A statement by the Israeli Defense Forces said that the military would establish “humanitarian corridors” to allow safe passage for UN convoys and aid organizations delivering food and medicine, even as it continued to hunt for Hamas fighters. The IDF also announced that Israel has reconnected a power line to operate Gaza’s southern desalination plant for drinking water for 900,000.
It has been nearly impossible to separate food and medicine from the larger issues of conflict.
Disputing the Food Facts
Generally, Israel has denied that starvation is occurring in Gaza, calling it Hamas propaganda, and insisted that Hamas has taken food meant for civilians. But now, they are acknowledging that the humanitarian situation is dire. Hundreds also have been reported killed in gunfire — disputed in intent as protective or intended — or in stampedes around food trucks amid desperate attempts to get food.
On Friday, The New York Times reported that the Israeli military, caught up in domestic politics, said there is no proof that Hamas has systematically stolen food aid as it had been allowed across the border — and served as a main justification for an Israeli aid blockade. “In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population,” said The Times.
The leaders of the U.K., Germany and France held an “emergency” phone call on Friday to discuss the crisis, issuing a joint statement that called for “all parties to bring an end to the conflict by reaching an immediate ceasefire.” France has said it is willing to recognize an eventual Palestinian state. More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups warned this week of “mass starvation” and implored Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian assistance.
Donald Trump, who was golfing in Scotland, has said that Israel should allow for humanitarian aid, but then has done little to back that statement, instead now withdrawing U.S. negotiators from any indirect talks with Hamas because they have not agreed to a ceasefire. His statements this week have been to encourage an end to war by more war, and for the blanket removal of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries, not including the United States, of course.
The unanswered question here: Under what values — humanitarian, Jewish, Palestinian, military, or human — is the withholding of access to food, water and medicine to a broad civilian population considered acceptable, even under conditions of war. By their actions, the combatants seem to reject every part of that question as applicable fact, or by historical justification. Is it all just because of international embarrassment that we see the issue being addressed? Where are our moral leaders?
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