“We remain fully committed to the United Nations Charter and to the principles of peace and cooperation among nations,” Marape said.
Marape said Guterres’ visit during PNG’s 50th anniversary celebrations “is historic” and “affirms our place in the global family of nations and our shared responsibility to work together”.
He also assured the UN boss that his government is committed to implementing the outcome of the Bougainville referendum. Bougainville head to the polls on Thursday to elect their next government.
Guterres said PNG has chosen the path of wisdom and peace when it came to their autonomous region of Bougainville.
He said the way the government has managed the Bougainville referendum demonstrates its commitment to democracy and dialogue.
PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko said the country recognises the crucial role of the UN through collective action and cooperation among member states.
“We have always stood firm with our colleague of member nations, as we believe in and will continue to promote bilateralism,” he wrote in a post on his official Facebook page.
“While we also continue to be an active contributor to global dialogue, we continue to support the role of the UN as provider of humanitarian aid, and facilitator of agreements on worldwide issues such as poverty, climate change, and disease,” he added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
CPJ joined 103 global organizations in a letter calling on Israel to stop weaponizing bureaucratic registration rules that have prevented most major international non-governmental organizations (INGO) from delivering a single truck of lifesaving supplies into Gaza since March 2, while Palestinians starve.
Millions of dollars’ worth of food, medicines, water, and shelter items lie stranded in warehouses as registration requirements, introduced in March, allow Israel to deny aid on the basis of “vague and politicized criteria,” the letter said. The new rules could force many INGOs to halt operations in Gaza and the West Bank and remove all international staff within 60 days, it said.
CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah added that Gazan journalists are “facing the same starvation as the communities they report on. With food blocked and aid agencies sidelined, even reporting the truth has become a matter of survival. Since 2023, at least 184 journalists have been killed in Gaza, according to CPJ’s data. Without urgent action, hunger and repression will silence what bullets have not.”
Doctors Without Borders is demanding the closure of Israeli- and U.S.-backed food distribution centers in Gaza run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. About 1,400 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food at GHF sites since May. A new report from Doctors Without Borders — also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF — gathers testimony from its medics and others about the apparently deliberate targeting of Palestinians seeking food.
“The GHF is singularly disorganized, reckless, dangerous, and we cannot help but come to the conclusion that these are deliberately set-up death traps,” says Doctors Without Borders CEO Avril Benoît. She stresses that the starvation crisis in Gaza is entirely a result of Israel’s ongoing siege of the territory. “People are starving because Israel wants them to,” says Benoît.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
The Gaza Government Media Office has condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s storming of the Handala aid ship, calling it an act of “maritime piracy”, reports Al Jazeera.
“This blatant aggression represents a flagrant violation of international law and maritime navigation rules,” the office said in a statement.
“It reaffirms once again that the [illegal Israeli] occupation acts as a thuggish force outside the law, targeting every humanitarian initiative seeking to rescue more than 2.4 million besieged and starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
The office also called on the international community, including the United Nations and rights groups, “to take an urgent and firm stance against this aggression and to work to secure international protection for the convoys”.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement today that the Israeli navy had intercepted the Gaza-bound Handala, and it was now heading towards Israel.
“The Israeli navy has stopped the vessel Navarn from illegally entering the maritime zone of the coast of Gaza,” said the statement, using the aid ship’s original name.
“The vessel is safely making its way to the shores of Israel,” it added. “All passengers are safe.”
Freedom Flotilla slams ‘abductions’
A statement by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition accused Israel military of “abducting” the 21 crew members of the Handala, saying the ship had been “violently intercepted by the Israeli military in international waters about 40 nautical miles from Gaza.
“At 23:43 EEST Palestine time, the Occupation cut the cameras on board Handala and we have lost all communication with our ship.
“The unarmed boat was carrying life-saving supplies when it was boarded by Israeli forces, its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized.
“The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law.”
The Handala carried a shipment of critical humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza, including baby formula, diapers, food, and medicine, the statement said.
“All cargo was non-military, civilian, and intended for direct distribution to a population facing deliberate starvation and medical collapse under Israel’s illegal blockade.”
The Handala carried 21 civilians representing 12 countries, including parliamentarians, lawyers, journalists, labour organisers, environmentalists, and other human rights defenders.
Seized crew members, journalists
The seized crew includes:
United States: Christian Smalls — Amazon Labor Union founder; Huwaida Arraf — Human rights attorney (Palestine/US); Jacob Berger — Jewish-American activist; Bob Suberi — Jewish US war veteran; Braedon Peluso — sailor and direct action activist; Dr Frank Romano — International lawyer and actor (France/US).
France: Emma Fourreau — MEP and activist (France/Sweden); Gabrielle Cathala — Parliamentarian and former humanitarian worker; Justine Kempf — nurse, Médecins du Monde; Ange Sahuquet — engineer and human rights activist.
Italy: Antonio Mazzeo — teacher, peace researcher, journalist; Antonio “Tony” La Picirella — climate and social justice organiser.
Spain: Santiago González Vallejo — economist and activist; Sergio Toribio — engineer and environmentalist.
Australia: Robert Martin — human rights activist; Tania “Tan” Safi — Journalist and organiser of Lebanese descent.
United Kingdom/France: Chloé Fiona Ludden — former UN staff and scientist.
Tunisia: Hatem Aouini — Trade unionist and internationalist activist.
The two journalists on board:
Morocco: Mohamed El Bakkali — senior journalist with Al Jazeera (based in Paris).
Iraq/United States: Waad Al Musa — cameraman and field reporter with Al Jazeera.
The attack on Handala is the third violent act by Israeli forces against Freedom Flotilla missions this year alone, said the statement.
“It follows the drone bombing of the civilian aid ship Conscience in European waters in May, which injured four people and disabled the vessel, and the illegal seizure of the Madleen in June, where Israeli forces abducted 12 civilians, including a Member of the European Parliament.
“Shortly before their abduction, the Handala‘s crew affirmed that they would be hunger-striking if detained by Israeli forces and not accepting any food from the Israeli Occupation Forces.”
Israeli officials have ignored the International Court of Justice’s binding orders that require the facilitation of humanitarian access to Gaza.
The continued attacks on peaceful civilian missions represent a grave violation of international law, said the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
“Kia Ora Gaza is a longtime member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and supports the current Handala civil mission to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza and end Israel’s campaign to wipe out the Palestinian population.
“All governments must urgently take strong effective action to stop the genocide and occupation and end all complicity with Israel. There are no Kiwis on the Handala which was intercepted under an enforced communications blackout today.”
Activists on board the Handala aid ship before leaving Italy’s Gallipoli Port on July 20, 2025. Image: Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The starvation crisis in Gaza is deepening under Israel’s brutal blockade and amid regular massacres of civilians attempting to secure aid at the only officially sanctioned aid sites, run by Israeli troops and American mercenaries. The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the onset of famine are the subjects of a new report by analysts Davide Piscitelli and Alex de Waal for the research organization Forensic Architecture on the “architecture of genocidal starvation” in Gaza. “I’ve been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today,” says de Waal, who is also the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
UN human rights office says 615 of the deaths were in vicinity of sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
At least 798 people have been killed while seeking food at distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and other humanitarian convoys since the end of May, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Friday.
The GHF, proposed by Israel as an alternative to the UN aid system in Gaza, has been almost universally condemned by rights groups for its violation of principles of humanitarian impartiality and what they have said could be complicity in war crimes.
UN human rights office says 615 of the deaths were in vicinity of sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
At least 798 people have been killed while seeking food at distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and other humanitarian convoys since the end of May, the UN human rights office said on Friday.
The GHF, proposed by Israel as an alternative to the UN aid system in Gaza, has been almost universally condemned by rights groups for its violation of principles of humanitarian impartiality and what they have said could be complicity in war crimes.
War has intensified poverty and hunger as aid is cut, with many families living in makeshift camps barely surviving
The pain of going to bed hungry is becoming familiar for Jamila Rabea. It’s hard to sleep. The meagre rations of bread, tomato paste and tea she spends much of her day trying to gather, she gives to her children. Five of them live with her in a shelter built from tarpaulin, cloth and scraps of wood.
Like many of the refugee families living here in a makeshift camp to the east of the Yemen port city of Al-Mukalla, she has had to leave home because of the bombs and fighting.
It’s made to order. First, eliminate the aid system after creating circumstances of enormous suffering. Then, kill, starve, vanquish, and displace those in need of that aid. Finally, give the pretence of humanity by ensuring some aid to those whose suffering you created in the first place.
As things stand, the system of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is intended to cause suffering and destruction to recipients. Since May 26, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an opaque entity with Israeli and US backing, has run the distribution of parcels from a mere four points, a grim joke given the four hundred or so outlets previously operated by the United Nations Palestinian relief agency. The entire process of seeking aid has been heavily rationed and militarized, with Israeli troops and private contractors exercising murderous force with impunity. Opening times are not set, rendering the journey to the distribution points even more precarious. When they do open, they do so for short spells.
Haaretz has run reports quoting soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces claiming to have orders to deliberately fire upon unarmed crowds on their perilous journey to the food sites. In a June 27 piece, the paper quotes a soldier describing the distribution sites as “a killing field.” Where he was stationed, “between one and five people were killed every day.” Those seeking aid were “treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”
The interviewed soldier could recall no instance of return fire. “There’s no enemy, no weapons.” IDF officers also told the paper that the GHF’s operations had provided a convenient distraction for continuing operations in Gaza, which had been turned into a “backyard”, notably during Israel’s war with Iran. In the words of a reservist, the Strip had “become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident’ like they used to say.”
An IDF officer involved in overseeing security at one of the distribution centers was full of understatement. “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that’s highly problematic, to say the least.” It was “neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.”
Much the same story can be found with the security contractors, those enthusiastic killers following in the footsteps of predecessors who treat international humanitarian law as inconvenient if not altogether irrelevant. Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to the blood-soiled record of private military contractors, with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad city’s Nisour Square by Blackwater USA employees in September 2007 being but one spectacular example. While those employees faced trial and conviction in a US federal court in 2014 on an assortment of charges – among them murder, manslaughter, and attempted manslaughter – such a fate is unlikely for any of those working for the GHF.
On July 4, the BBC published the observations of a former contractor on the trigger-happy conduct of his colleagues around the food centers. In one instance, a guard opened fire on women, children, and elderly people “moving too slowly away from the site.” Another contractor, also on location, stood on the berm overlooking the exit to one of the GHF sites, firing 15 to 20 bursts of repetitive fire at the crowd. “A Palestinian man dropped to the ground motionless. And then, the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’. And then they laughed about it.”
The company had also failed to issue contractors any operating procedures or rules of engagement, except one: “If you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later.” No reference is made to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers. To journey to Gaza was to go to a land unencumbered by laws and rules. “Do what you want” is the cultural norm of GHF operatives. And this stands to reason, given the reference of “team leaders” to Gazans seeking aid as “zombie hordes”.
The GHF, in time-honored fashion, has denied these allegations. Ditto the IDF, that great self-proclaimed stalwart of international law. It is, therefore, left to such contributors as Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, to enlighten those who care to read and listen. As one of the few Palestinian journalists working for a US news outlet in the strip, his observations carry singular weight. In a recent report, Baba neatly summarised the manufactured brutality behind the seeking of aid in an enclave strangled and suffering gradual extinction. “I faced Israeli military fire, private US contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves – to get food from a group supported by the US and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”.
If nothing else, it is high time that the GHF scraps any pretense of being humanitarian in its title and admits to its true role: an adjutant to Israel’s program of extirpating Gaza’s Palestinian population.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States next week to meet with President Donald Trump and other top officials in the U.S. administration, supposedly to “capitalize on the success” of the 12-day war against Iran. This comes after nearly 21 months of Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed at least 56,000 Palestinians, with daily violence only increasing. “There’s basically an airstrike every other minute,” says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada. “There’s nonstop artillery fire, gunfire, machine gunfire, as well as Israeli quadcopter drones that are swarming Gaza and shooting people at random.” While there have been news reports of a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, Shehada says “there are no negotiations,” and therefore no end in sight to the daily bloodshed.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
In Gaza, at least 41 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since midnight, including more Palestinians targeted by Israeli forces while seeking food and humanitarian aid. This comes as UNICEF is warning Gaza is facing what amounts to a “man-made drought” with children at risk of dying from thirst due to Israel’s blockade. We go to Dr. Mark Brauner, an emergency medicine physician who is currently volunteering at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza. He describes “execution-style” killings of Palestinians at food distribution sites and the desperate lack of baby formula leading to the deaths of children suffering from malnutrition and starvation.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, he and his Republican allies have worked to destroy the U.S. government’s overseas humanitarian aid programs.
This action flies in the face of the U.S. government’s lengthy record of humanitarian assistance to people of other nations whose lives had been blighted by war, poverty, and illness. From the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-devastated Europe, to Senator George McGovern’s Food for Peace project to feed the hungry, to massive international public health campaigns to eradicate global diseases, U.S. aid programs have played an important role in alleviating human suffering around the world.
Of course, these actions were not unique. Other wealthy nations also developed overseas humanitarian aid programs. In 2023, when the U.S. government allocated 0.24 percent of its gross national income to humanitarian aid, Britain allocated 0.58 percent and Norway allocated over 1 percent.
Behind the support for the U.S. international aid program lay two key factors―a desire to reduce human misery and a desire to win friends for the United States in foreign lands.
But such concerns were ignored by the Trump administration. On January 20, 2025, the day of his return to the White House, Donald Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign assistance. Three days later, the State Department issued a “stop work” order while the aid program received what it called a “comprehensive review.”
Elon Musk, the arrogant, eccentric, and drug-addled multibillionaire, took the lead in this review process. Unleashing his DOGE minions on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administered most of the federal government’s humanitarian aid programs, Musk proclaimed that the agency was a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” USAID, he announced, “is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
Trump apparently shared this warped perspective and, consequently, most of USAID’s vital signs rapidly plummeted. In response to the president’s orders, its staff was decimated, its website was shut down, and its budget was slashed. After USAID’s shattered remains were transferred to the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut 83 percent of its international humanitarian programs, reducing them from 6,200 to about 1,000.
As the distinguished historian Alfred McCoy reported this May, when USAID’s “skilled specialists in famine prevention, public health, and governance stopped working, the pain was soon felt around the world, particularly among mothers and children.” In Asia, the end of USAID’s funding forced the World Food Program to cut by half the pathetic food rations it provided to a million Rohingya refugees residing in miserable camps in Bangladesh, with food support shrinking to $6 a month per person.
In Africa, as McCoy noted, departing USAID officials estimated that the aid cuts would likely produce a 30 percent spike in tuberculosis, a disease that kills over a million people worldwide every year, and that 200,000 more children would probably be paralyzed within a decade. In the Congo, 7.8 million war refugees were likely to lose food aid and 2.3 million more children were predicted to suffer from malnutrition. Thanks to cutbacks in USAID health programs, a half-million AIDS patients were projected to die in South Africa, while, in the Congo, an estimated 15,000 could die within a month. In West Africa, the end of USAID’s Malaria Initiative virtually ensured that, within a year, there would be 18 million more malaria infections and 166,000 more likely deaths.
Malnutrition, as journalist Nicholas Kristof recently reported, already “leaves more than one-fifth of children worldwide stunted, countless millions cognitively impaired, and vast numbers … weak from anemia. Malnutrition is a factor in 45 percent of child deaths worldwide.”
Nevertheless, in early June, the Trump administration and its Republican allies took further action toward dismantling U.S. overseas humanitarian aid programs. In response to a request by the President, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to claw back billions of dollars Congress had already appropriated for such aid. This included $500 million for activities related to infectious diseases and child maternal health, $400 million to address the global HIV epidemic, and $800 million for a program providing emergency shelter, water and sanitation, and family reunification for people forced to flee their countries.
Before the House vote, the president of Oxfam America, a leading humanitarian aid organization, appealed to the assembled legislators, arguing that the measure “would do irreversible harm” to millions of people. “We are already seeing women, children and families left without food, clean water and critical services after earlier aid cuts,” she declared, “and aid organizations can barely keep up with rising needs.” Nevertheless, despite unanimous Democratic opposition, the House Republican leadership pushed the bill through by a vote of 214 to 212.
Applauding GOP passage of the measure, Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, promised “more of this in the days to come.” John Thune, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, pledged Senate action on the House bill this July.
As the United States, the world’s wealthiest nation, is the largest financial contributor to the United Nations, the drastic reductions in U.S. humanitarian aid are already having a devastating impact on UN assistance programs that provide life-saving food, medicine, and shelter to the world’s poorest, most desperate people. In mid-June, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that it was being forced to drastically scale back these programs due to “brutal funding cuts.” The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief commented gloomily: “We have been forced into a triage of human survival.”
Calling for aid “to help 114 million people facing life-threatening needs across the world,” the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs said that “this isn’t just an appeal for money―it’s a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering.”
Thus far, there’s no indication that the Trump administration has that commitment.
It’s official. If not, it ought to be. Israeli forces freely butcher Palestinians in Gaza of all stripes, standing and states of desperation. They do so casually or indifferently or maliciously. True, they might get the odd militant here and there, but the supposedly professional Israeli Defense Forces is rather good at killing civilians. In what is becoming an almost daily occurrence, Israeli security personnel are slaughtering those seeking humanitarian aid from facilities that are obscenely restricted and appallingly located. What is unclear in the process is how devastating Palestinian militias armed and supported by the Israelis have been in pushing up the mortality count.
In one incident on June 17, Israeli tanks – not exactly a light form of population control – fired into a crown scrounging for aid from trucks in Gaza. The resulting death toll was impressively outrageous: 59 killed. A further 14 were also killed by IDF gunfire and air strikes in the enclave, taking the death toll for June 17 to 73. On this occasion, Israel’s normally mendacious publicity arm in the IDF seemed to concede that the firing had taken place. It followed that yet another cleansing review would take place.
According to Reuters, a witness by the name of Alaa interviewed at Nasser Hospital saw the following spectacle of gore: “All of a sudden, they let us move forward and made everyone gather, and then shells started falling, tank shells.”
The IDF breezily stated that it was “aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals from IDF fire following the crowd’s approach. The details of the incident are under view. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimise harm as much as possible to them while maintaining the safety of our troops.”
The previous day, 34 people awaiting to collect food were killed by IDF personnel near an aid centre operated by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a body whose dubious credentials never cease to amaze. Eyewitnesses in the crowd, including Heba Jouda and Mohamed Abed, recall Israeli troops firing on Palestinians massed around 4 a.m. at the Flag Roundabout prior to the scheduled opening of the Rafah food centre. The roundabout is located some hundreds of metres from the GHF centre, and has been the site of numerous shootings. “Fire was coming from everywhere,” stated Jouda, a worn figure who has made the harrowing journey to the aid centre a number of times. “It’s getting worse by the day.”
The International Committee on the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed receiving 200 people at its field hospital located in the Al-Mawasi area near Rafah. Up till that point, the ICRC stated that it had been “the highest number received by the Red Cross Field Hospital in one mass casualty incident.” Carrie Garavan, a British Red Cross nurse working at the field hospital, notes the daily flow of casualties into the facility, most of whom have been queuing for food. “We are having mass casualty incidents almost every day, sometimes twice a day.”
The GHF, for its part, is lukewarm to the fattening butcher’s bill. None of the shooting incidents, claimed a spokesperson to The Associated Press, “have occurred at our sites or during operating hours.” Implying that those seeking aid were responsible for their own demise, the spokesperson went on to explain that they had moved “during prohibited times … or trying to take a shortcut.” How irresponsible of them.
In oral evidence given to the UK Foreign Affairs Committee on June 16, Anna Halford, the Médecins Sans Frontières emergency coordinator for Gaza, found it “difficult to overstate at what point this is neither a humanitarian enterprise nor a system.” The entire Israeli aid effort in Gaza, as things stood, “was basically lethal chaos.” Prior to the current lethal order of aid distribution, 400 to 500 community-level points were functioning for those seeking food. Kitchens cooking hot meals and bakeries supplying bread were plentiful. The numbers currently operating had plummeted to four.
Halford’s picture of what is being provided is grisly. The rations are only of the dry variety. There is an absence of clean water and cooking fuel, with no cooking gas entering the enclave since March 2. Substitute kerosene has proven woefully inadequate, causing those using it burns. Food is cooked on broken wooden pallets, salvaged plastic taken from piles of rubbish or turned up cardboard boxes.
As for the justification given by Israel for the imposition of such onerous, cruel restrictions to the provision of aid – the deviation and theft of aid by Hamas or allied forces – Halford, speaking on behalf of MSF, was sharp in rebuke. While no aid system could ever guarantee against some deviation or theft of supplies, Israel had never offered any evidence to back its claims. “It is a strawman; it is a specious and cynical position meant to undermine a humanitarian system that was actually functioning.” And that is precisely the point of the current, sanguinary exercise.
It’s been apparent for some time that the Israeli government intends to expel or kill the population of Gaza and claim the territory. This has become so obvious that even the establishment press is belatedly beginning to notice. In an editorial, the world’s leading business journal, the Financial Times, observed that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land” (emphasis mine). I’m not quite sure what would need to happen before the Financial Times would consider its suspicions confirmed; the Israeli Prime Minister is much more assertive about his intentions, he identified the expulsion of Gazans to be among his “clear conditions” for ending his genocidal campaign; he speaks of emptying Gaza as one empties a dustbin, and with the same regard for its contents. However, because coverage from the corporate press has been so incommensurate with the scale of the horrors, even this tepid statement from the Financial Times is progress.
The Israelis have sought to render Gaza uninhabitable, and then encourage what they’re perversely calling “voluntary emigration.” They’ve embraced the logic that someone fleeing a burning building has “volunteered” to leap from the window. This strategy has many components to it: tens of thousands (at least) of Gazans have been massacred by the Israelis, most of the buildings have been destroyed (the Israelis have begun a campaign to eliminate the ones that remain standing after previous assaults), the Gazan health care infrastructure has been repeatedly attacked, and the entire Gaza Strip has been subjected to a medieval siege, the consequences of which have left the population critically short of food and medicine. After reducing Gaza to starvation through months of total blockade, Israel turned aid distribution into another mechanism of murder or expulsion.
An entity with the philanthropic-sounding name the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose name is so starkly at odds with its function that it might have been coined by a satirist, has been tasked with providing aid to the Gazan population. Anyone familiar with Orwell could likely guess the character of a group with such a crudely propagandistic name. Some organizations have demonstrated the competence to deliver aid and the desire to do so efficaciously, but GHF isn’t one of them. Credible humanitarian organizations were disregarded and the GHF empowered, for reasons that Israeli officials have been forthcoming enough to articulate.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clear about why he decided to slightly relax the siege that Gaza had been subjected to: Israeli allies were beginning to become squeamish about the forced starvation of the entire population of Gaza. These same allies have supported the Israeli campaign despite the International Court of Justice ruling that it’s plausible Israel is violating the Genocide Convention, and despite the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders. The supporters of Israel have demonstrated a willingness to tolerate a great deal of savagery. But Israel’s “closest friends in the world,” as Netanyahu tells us, can’t “handle pictures of mass starvation,” so “minimal” aid deliveries must be allowed. There are no moral concerns about causing a famine in Gaza, only pragmatic considerations. Netanyahu said that “we cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons.” Doing so may cross a “red line” that could cause Israel to lose the support of the United States. Starvation is not wrong—merely inconvenient, like a dinner guest who overstays his welcome.
Another key objective is to force the Gazan population to the southern portion of the territory and then induce them to leave for other countries. The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, speaking at a conference in the first week of May, said: “Within a few months we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” He went on to say: “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.” Under the new scheme, the aid distribution sites were limited to only four locations (it was 400 locations when the United Nations was managing the dispersal of aid), and the sites were strategically located in the South of the Strip, which forces the population to congregate in these areas. They will reside under conditions that Israeli planners privately concede will be likened to “concentration camps.”
But that’s only if the Palestinians reach the distribution sites. Kit Malthouse, a conservative member of parliament in the United Kingdom said that the aid distribution system the United Nations was managing was replaced with “a shooting gallery, an abattoir, where starving people are lured out through combat zones to be shot at.” The United Nations was less poetic when voicing its condemnation of the GHF scheme, it merely said that “aid distribution has become a death trap.” Every day brings news of another massacre at an aid distribution center. The public has been subjected to the standard Israeli deceptions about these incidents, but Israeli culpability becomes clear whenever the evidence is honestly interrogated. At the time of this writing, 245 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed by the Israelis and more than 2,152 were injured; the level of savagery is such that the number is certain to be greater within moments after being transcribed.
Let us dispense with the fiction of ignorance. The evidence is not hidden, it is flaunted. The intent is not obscured, it is bragged about. The Israeli government, with the serene assurance of a state that knows its crimes will be subsidized, barely troubles itself with denials anymore. And the United States remains a participant in these crimes.
