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Top U.N. officials are again warning that the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is “at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” At least 1,800 Palestinians have been killed, many of them children, since October, when Israel imposed a draconian siege and began an intensified campaign of ethnic cleansing on northern Gaza.
Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council recently spent several days in Gaza. He describes what he saw as “devastation beyond belief,” as Palestinians face “the most intense and most indiscriminate bombardment anywhere in the world in recent memory,” coupled with the utter depletion of aid.
Egeland pleads for the United States, the largest supplier of military funding and equipment to Israel, to condition its weapons to Israel, enforce the provision of aid and commit to ending Israel’s assault. “It’s not in Israel’s interest to destroy its neighborhood in Gaza and in Lebanon. It will create new generations of hatred,” Egeland says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
As northern Gaza remains under a brutal Israeli siege for over a month, Al Jazeera reports at least 17 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the north since dawn. This follows Israeli attacks on at least two schools turned shelters for displaced people in Gaza City Thursday. Survivors said the bombing came without warning.
UMM HANI: [translated] We were baking bread, and our children were sitting around us. And we were at the bottom, and we saw nobody, and the floor shook. The bomb hit, and all the tents were destroyed. People ran. Some people were martyred on the floor. Rubble fell on us, and people were torn to pieces. Where is the humanity? Where is the rest of the world? Where is the mercy? We have never seen any nation waging war on children. I am 65 years old, and I’ve never seen any nation waging war on children.
AMY GOODMAN: Over 1,800 Palestinians have have been killed since Israel launched its deadly onslaught on the northern Gaza in October, many of them children, though that figure is likely a vast undercount, saying something like 70% of the population that has died are women and children.
Meanwhile, Israeli attacks have also continued near central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp and in Gaza City, where Israel has issued a new forced displacement order for Palestinians who have nowhere safe left to go.
Top U.N. officials have again warned the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza, quote, “is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” unquote, while UNICEF and other groups describe the conditions in northern Gaza as “apocalyptic.” For at least the past seven weeks, Israel has persistently blocked lifesaving humanitarian aid and food convoys from entering north Gaza, leaving families and children to starve. The last few operational hospitals in northern Gaza are on the brink of collapse, lacking critical supplies, while also coming under repeated Israeli attacks and raids, with many doctors and medical workers killed or detained.
We go now to Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He’s joining us from Amman, Jordan. He just left Gaza.
