Mondoweiss
At least 15 Palestinian children died on Sunday morning of malnutrition and dehydration as Israeli forces blocked sufficient humanitarian aid from accessing the enclave.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the children died in Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza, while six others, suffering from malnutrition and diarrhea, are still in the intensive care unit with their lives are at risk.
The hospital’s ability to run electric generators and oxygen cylinders has been depleted in the past five months of Israeli bombardment, which damaged medical equipment and ambulances while putting dozens of hospitals and healthcare centers in Gaza out of service.
Israeli forces have consistently denied the entry of medical devices into Gaza vital for running hospital wards and saving patients’ lives.
Overnight, paramedics brought the bodies of 20 Palestinian martyrs to Kamal Adwan Hospital following an Israeli bombing of two homes in Jabalia refugee camp and the Saftawi area, north of Gaza City.
Israel blocks entry of vital medical machines and ventilators
CNN has reported that Israeli forces have set up ‘arbitrary and contradictory criteria’ regarding what items are allowed to enter Gaza, blocking the delivery of anesthetics and anesthesia machines, oxygen cylinders, ventilators, and water filtration systems.
‘Other items that have ended up in bureaucratic limbo include dates, sleeping bags, medicines to treat cancer, water purification tablets and maternity kits,’ the report added.
Since 2007, Israel’s blockade over the Gaza Strip barred Palestinians, at varying periods, from importing products such as cumin, soft drinks, shaving cream, instant coffee, and cookies. Other items include wheelchairs, footballs, lentils, and tomato paste. At the time, Palestinians circumvented these draconian bans through the use of underground tunnels, which were mainly used for commercial purposes.
UN officials and humanitarian organizations have been warning of a famine in the Gaza Strip, enabled by Israeli forces’ siege and shooting at Palestinians gathering near aid trucks, seeking to get a share of the food.
Wafa news agency reported that since Thursday, Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinians waiting for aid to arrive at the Nabulsi roundabout, doing so twice in less than 48 hours, west of Gaza City. At least 117 people were killed and hundreds were injured.
UN officials see that Israel is deliberately carrying out a policy of starvation against the 2.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, where one in six children under the age of two suffers from acute malnutrition.
In February, Israel allowed half the number of aid trucks to enter Gaza compared to January. Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, called for sanctioning Israel over its starvation policy in the Gaza Strip.
‘Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 8,’ Fakhri wrote on X.
‘Now famine may very well be already occurring. The only way to end/prevent this famine is an immediate ceasefire. And the only way to get a ceasefire is to sanction Israel,’ he said.
U.S. aid airdrop is ‘Performative BS. It fools no one.’
The U.S. was the latest country to carry out an airdrop of humanitarian aid along the Gaza coastline on Saturday, dropping 38,000 meals in a joint mission with its junior ally, the Jordanian Air Force.
Critics decried the move as an illustration of U.S. hypocrisy in handing Israel some of the most advanced bombs in the world while dropping aid from the sky at a trickle to the same people who are on the receiving end of those weapons.
Charlie Herbert, a major-general in the British Army, described the airdrop on X as ‘total performative BS.’
‘With one hand US airdrops 38,000 meal packs…while the other hand continues to provide Israel with the arms, munitions and funds required to sustain this conflict. Performative BS. It fools no one,’ he added.
Critics of the U.S. also pointed out that delivering aid by air is cumbersome and inefficient and that the Biden administration must force Israel to allow aid trucks to enter Gaza through its land crossings.
Last week, Jordan airdropped seven tons of food to people in Gaza, but a single truck can transport 20-25 tons of food and essential aid.
‘Airdrops are the worst or close to the worst possible way to deliver aid,’ Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, told Al-Jazeera.
‘They are very expensive, they are dangerous because there is a lot that can go wrong when those things drop and they deliver very small volumes of aid,’ he added.
Some of the aid dropped by Jordan last week ended up in the sea, pushing Palestinians to enter the cold water to fish it out.
Tamara Nassar and Ali Abunimah described these airdrops in the Electronic Intifada as ‘humanitarian aid theatre’ that does nothing to end Israeli bombardment and starvation of people in the Gaza Strip.
They added that countries taking part in these operations, such as Egypt and the UAE, ‘but especially Jordan whose air force is carrying them out, are providing public relations cover for countries directly involved in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,’ namely the U.S.