Palestinians were evacuated from Jabalia refugee camp and the Sheikh Radwan and Abu Iskandar districts in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday. Mahmoud Issa/IMAGO via Reuters Hide caption
toggle caption Mahmoud Issa/IMAGO, Reuters
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel has blocked nearly all food aid from flowing into northern Gaza for the past two weeks, leaving the roughly 400,000 Palestinians living there with no good options, U.N. Aid says. The agency says: “Stay here and starve to death, or follow orders and flee south.” There is no guarantee of safety or shelter for the displaced.
Israeli human rights groups Gisha, B’Tselem and others claim that Israel has quietly adopted a starve-or-leave policy toward northern Gaza, following pressure from the United States to increase aid to the region. Israel may roll back this policy in the future. The US secretaries of state and defense warned Israel in a letter on Sunday that the US could cut off military aid to Israel unless it increases humanitarian aid to Gaza next month.
The Israeli military denies that Israel is intentionally blocking food from reaching the area.
UN officials say there is also a shortage of fuel needed for hospital generators, bakeries, ambulances and water points.
“The situation in northern Gaza looks like a disaster within a series of disasters,” said Jonathan Fowler, a spokesman for UNRWA, the United Nations agency that oversees the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza. “Nowhere in Gaza is safe.”
The ongoing Israeli military offensive in northern Gaza also casts doubt on whether UN agencies will be able to administer the second phase of polio vaccinations to children in the Strip. A second round of vaccinations began this week in central Gaza.
The United Nations agency will administer the second phase of polio vaccination to children in Gaza on Tuesday. NPR’s Anas Baba Hide caption
toggle caption NPR’s Anas Baba
The first wave of the campaign calls for a pause in humanitarian fighting and Israeli military shelling in certain areas where families are queuing up to vaccinate their children against the highly contagious virus. It was. In Gaza, the virus was found to be spreading due to water and water destruction. Sewerage facilities during the war.
Israeli military attack in northern Gaza
Israel launched its latest offensive in northern Gaza about two weeks ago, forcing everyone to leave the area and move south across Nesarim, a roughly two-mile-wide corridor held by Israeli forces across Gaza. I called out again. This corridor separates northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave. Those who followed the orders throughout the war were not allowed to return.
Since October 5, Israeli forces have also surrounded and besieged the densely populated refugee camp of Jabalia in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces say Hamas fighters are attempting to regroup.
Civilians in Jabalia say airstrikes by fighter jets and drones have killed people in their homes and those trying to flee. Journalists were among the casualties. Al Jazeera announced that its cameraman was shot live on television by Israeli forces while covering the siege and remains in critical condition.
Gaza civil defense and rescue workers say hundreds of people have been killed since the offensive began in the north. The United Nations agency says people are left with an impossible choice.
UNRWA Director Philippe Lazzarini tweeted: “Civilians have no choice but to leave or starve.”
Vice President Harris told social media platform X on Sunday that civilians in Gaza “must be protected” and that Israel must redouble efforts to ensure aid reaches those in need. wrote, expressing concern about the situation. “International humanitarian law must be respected,” she added.
People gather outside a collapsed building as they try to rescue a man from under rubble after Israeli military shelling in the Saftawi area of Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, on October 15. Omar Al-Katta/AFP via Getty Images Hide Caption
toggle caption Omar Al-Qatta/AFP via Getty Images
The White House said President Biden also raised the issue in a phone conversation with the Israeli prime minister on October 9.
The lockdown appears to have eased slightly in recent days.
A UN team successfully delivered fuel to three hospitals in northern Gaza after several previous attempts by Israeli forces at the Nesarim checkpoint were denied permission.
The head of the World Health Organization said such one-off missions are not enough.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post about X: “There is an ongoing need for supplies to keep hospitals functioning.”
COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of civil affairs in Gaza, also said that 30 trucks carrying food aid from international aid agencies entered northern Gaza on Monday on orders from Israel’s political leadership. Announced. This is the first time food aid has been delivered to northern Gaza since October 1.
Rebecca Metzer of the Tel Aviv-based Gazan rights group Gisha said that alone is not enough. “Given the scale of the crisis at the moment, it’s just a token gesture,” she said.
The World Food Program says there are only two weeks left of food supplies in northern Gaza, but independent experts on hunger say people are already facing starvation, consisting of only bread and canned goods. He often eats only one meal a day.
Across Gaza, the amount of food entering the territory is decreasing. Israel has allowed about a quarter of the food and aid to arrive by truck in the past two weeks compared to the same period last month, according to the Israeli government’s online aid tracking site.
Israeli human rights groups filed a petition with Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking authorities to ensure aid continues to reach northern Gaza.
Starvation or vacation suggestion
Former Israeli national security adviser Giora Eiland’s proposal is a strategy to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages it still holds from the deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It provides an overview. He proposed that Israel completely encircle northern Gaza and order all civilians to evacuate south or be denied food and water along with Hamas militants.
Eiland, a retired army general, said in a Hebrew-language video promoting his proposal that Palestinian militants in the region would “surrender or starve to death,” calling it “the general’s plan.” I named it.
Israeli authorities considered this plan along with other proposals for Gaza, some of which were implemented.
A government official familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss conversations with security officials.
Israeli soldiers walk through an inspection area for trucks carrying humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip on the Israeli side of the Erez River into northern Gaza on May 1. Ohad Zwigenberg/AP Hide caption
Toggle caption Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Another Israeli official, who spoke anonymously about security plans, denied there was any connection between what was happening in northern Gaza and “the general’s plan.”
“There are alarming signs that the Israeli military is quietly beginning to carry out the general’s plans through tightening the siege of the area and starving the population,” a group of Israeli human rights organizations said.
A former Israeli legal official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss war policy, said starvation of enemy militants is permissible under international law of war, but would be prohibited in the current situation with civilians remaining in northern Gaza. . .
“In my opinion, there was an attempt to partially implement the (starvation or secession) plan. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t working,” said a former Palestinian specialist. Israeli military intelligence officer Michael Milshteyn said.
Milstein said pressure tactics had not worked, in part because civilians in northern Gaza were not evacuated en masse despite military orders.
Trapped in his home in northern Gaza
The United Nations says more than 50,000 people have fled Jabalia to other parts of northern Gaza in the past two weeks.
Residents of Jabalia, where the attacks have been the heaviest, told NPR by phone and voice messages punctuated by persistent sounds of what they said were Israeli drone fire.
They said most of the residents fled to other parts of northern Gaza after heavy gunfire, but the presence of Israeli tanks meant many were trapped in their homes and unable to escape. They described quadcopters, a type of drone, flying over dense areas and firing at people and vehicles on the street.
Mohamed El Balawi said he fled the camp with a group of 25 people under heavy Israeli fire, but 10 of them were unable to escape and were injured or killed while trying to escape.
As they fled, “no one looked back at them,” he said. Relatives left behind say they have run out of food and water.
Amna Suleiman, 42, who taught science and mathematics at the American International School in Gaza before the war, has been confined to her home in Jabalia since the siege began.
Displaced Palestinian children eat food after receiving aid distributed by a charity organization at Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, September 23. Mahmoud Issa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images Hide Caption
toggle caption Mahmoud Issa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
“I’m worried that if I stay here for (more) days, I’ll run out of all the water I have,” she said.
Suleiman previously led a women’s cycling group in Gaza and was the first to ride in public in the conservative Hamas-controlled region. When the war began last year, her bicycle was damaged in an explosion, and on November 19, 2023, a month after the war began, two of her sisters were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
“I dream every day. I ask God every day… to take us up into the sky, closer to our loved ones who left us in those dark and dangerous days.” Suleiman said in an audio message punctuated by heavy gunfire.
“We are civilians. We have the right to live like everyone else,” she said.
Daniel Estrin reported from Tel Aviv. Aya Batrawi reported from Washington, D.C. Ahmad Abu Hamda contributed to this article from Cairo.
