Gaza: ‘History is watching’ warns UN relief chief, saying aid access is key priority

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - GENEVA — Every effort continues to be made by the United Nations and partners to get aid supplies into Gaza following the Israeli order to evacuate the north of the enclave, the UN’s emergency relief chief said on Monday.

“History is watching,” Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told UN News in Geneva, highlighting the desperate situation facing around one million Gazans uprooted in the last week, after the Israeli military warned of an imminent offensive following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by militant group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2006.

“Aid access is our overwhelming priority. And we are in deep discussions hourly with the Israelis, with the Egyptians, with the Gazans about how to do that,” Griffiths said.

He added that he was optimistic about hearing “some good news” soon that a solution could be found to the political impasse which has prevented aid convoys crossing from Egypt’s Rafah into southern Gaza.

The top UN aid official was speaking before heading to the Middle East, “trying to help, working with diplomats from all countries” to secure aid access and de-escalate the tinderbox situation, which UN Secretary-General described on Sunday as being on the “verge of the abyss”.

“It’s all Member States who have obligations...not just those in the region” to defuse the worst Israeli-Palestinian conflagration in decades, Griffiths continued.

“The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the Arab world all have obligations” to ensure that the lives of civilians are protected and the rules of war observed.

“Don’t attack civilian infrastructure, protect civilians when they move,” the UN official insisted. “Make sure they get the aid they need and make sure that there are corridors which allow them some respite from the relentless attacks that are happening upon them.”

The UN Security Council is due to meet in emergency session later on Monday in New York to discuss different resolutions from Council members related to the fast-moving crisis in and around Gaza.

Among the key issues facing diplomats is securing the release of a reported 199 Israeli hostages, seized during the Hamas raid, the UN emergency relief chief continued.

“This war was started by taking those hostages. Of course, there’s a history between Palestinian people and the Israeli people, and I’m not denying any of that. But that act alone lit a fire, which can only be put out with the release of those hostages.”

Amid ongoing airstrikes in Gaza and concerns over a regional escalation of the conflict — especially on the northern border with Lebanon — Griffiths reiterated the need for humanity to prevail.

“History is watching to see if the consequences of this war are going to be generationally bad or if there are going to be ways in which swiftly that can be rebuilt, some kind of comity or neighborliness between those two tragic peoples. ...(Those are) the messages I’ll be taking to the region about biased in favor of one or the other, that biased in favor of humanity.”

Since the start of the war, which has claimed the lives of some 1,300 Israeli citizens and injured 3,200 more, a reported 2,750 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 7,500 wounded.

Fourteen staff from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, have also been killed. “They were teachers, engineers, guards and psychologists, an engineer and a gynecologist,” Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told journalists on Sunday.

In an exclusive interview with UN News on Sunday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, told us that despite Israel’s stated war aim of destroying the infrastructure of the Hamas extremist group, “their current trajectory is going to destroy Gaza.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has rushed critical medical supplies to Lebanon in order to be ready to respond to any potential health crisis there.

Two shipments arrived in Beirut on Monday from WHO’s logistics hub in Dubai, and include enough surgical and trauma medicines and supplies to meet the needs of 800 to 1000 injured patients.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health is in the process of identifying the referral hospitals that will receive these vital supplies.

Lebanon’s health system has been crippled as a result of an economic crisis, the Beirut port blast that occurred in August 2020, and the additional burden of the Syrian refugee crisis. There are severe shortages of specialized medical doctors and health workers, and medicines and medical equipment.

Since violence escalated between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory last Saturday, there have also been reports of clashes on the border between Israel and south Lebanon, resulting in casualties among civilians.

Latest updates from UNRWA:

# Over one million people — almost half the total population of Gaza — have been displaced. Some 600,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are in the Middle Area, Khan Yunis and Rafah, of those, nearly 400,000 are in UNRWA facilities — much exceeding our capacity to assist in any meaningful way, including with space in our shelters, food, water or psychological support.

# Despite the Israeli Forces’ evacuation order, an unknown number of IDPs remain in UNRWA schools in Gaza city and the North. UNRWA is no longer able to assist or protect them. Over 160,000 IDPs were sheltering in 57 UNRWA premises.

# The number of killed is increasing. There are not enough body-bags for the dead in Gaza. 

# There is some water available in local shops, but rations are still down to one liter of water per person per day for the UNRWA teams in the Rafah logistics base (to cover drinking and all other needs).

# People across Gaza have severely limited access to clean drinking water. As a last resort, people are consuming brackish water from agricultural wells, triggering serious concerns over the spread of waterborne diseases. 

# After five days, Gaza has had no electricity, pushing vital services, including health, water and sanitation to the brink of collapse.

# UNRWA has sent an advance team to Egypt to prepare for the possible opening of a humanitarian corridor to bring humanitarian aid supplies into the Strip.

# As of Sunday only eight UNRWA health centers were operational across Gaza providing primary health-care services, with estimated supplies of less than one month.

# There are a total of 3,500 hospital beds in Gaza. Evacuation orders apply to 23 hospitals in Gaza and north Gaza, adding up to 2,000 beds.

All parties to the Israel-Palestine conflict have failed to take effective precautionary measures to avoid civilian casualties, exacerbating the long-running crisis, deepening divisions and hate on all sides, an independent UN rights body investigating potential war crimes reported on Monday.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, completed its latest study prior to Hamas’s acts of terror” and retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza, which have prompted allegations of war crimes levelled against both sides.

The report to the General Assembly looks at the upsurge in violence covering the period between May 2021 and August, “examining the use of force by Israel and the de facto authorities in Gaza, and Israeli military and police operations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.”

“Our report is painful and timely,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “It emphasizes that the only path towards ending violence and achieving sustainable peace is through strict observance of international law throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.

“This requires addressing the root causes of the conflict, including the occupation of Palestinian territory, and allowing the Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination.”

“The atrocities we have witnessed since Oct. 7 add an unprecedented urgency to our conclusions and recommendations,” Pillay said. “Civilians and civilian objects should always be protected. They are never a legitimate target. All parties must uphold their duty to protect them under international humanitarian law.”

Following the attack on Israel launched by Hamas on 7 October, the Commission has begun collecting evidence of war crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and by Israeli security forces, the inquiry said. — UN News