The International Court of Justice (ICJ) held hearings this week on Israel’s ban on cooperation with UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees. It could take some time for a (non-binding) ruling on Israel’s move to cut ties with UNRWA, and it has already been two months since Israel reinstated its full siege on Gaza, blocking the entry of aid and commercial goods while bombarding the territory. In a graphic illustration of the extent of the siege, organizers of a vessel carrying aid and activists to Gaza said it was bombed by Israeli drones, leaving the ship disabled off the coast of Malta.
Meanwhile, on the ground in the Gaza Strip, the situation is becoming more dire by the day. UNICEF says vaccines are quickly running out, disease is spreading, and malnutrition is on the rise; more than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the start of the year. People are looting food shops, community kitchens and aid warehouses in what Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO network in Gaza, called “a grave signal of how serious things have become in the Gaza Strip—the spread of hunger, the loss of hope…among residents, as well as the absence of the authority of the law.”
Amnesty International says the past two months of renewed siege constitute a “genocidal act, a blatant form of unlawful collective punishment, and the war crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”
From The New Humanitarian, May 2
See our last reports on the UNRWA ban and genocide accusations against Israel.
Photo: Maan News Agency
