{"id":1528118,"date":"2024-03-01T06:55:58","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T06:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=314827"},"modified":"2024-03-01T06:55:58","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T06:55:58","slug":"gazans-are-starving-dont-cut-aid-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/01\/gazans-are-starving-dont-cut-aid-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Gazans are Starving, Don\u2019t Cut Aid Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: solidaritypalestine – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza plausibly constitute genocide<\/a>. The world\u2019s most influential judicial body ordered Israel to stop killing civilians and to admit more humanitarian aid.<\/div>\n

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Unfortunately, Israel was\u00a0having none of it<\/a>. Israel\u2019s killings have continued, with\u00a0over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza now dead<\/a>\u00a0and tens of thousands more at risk of dying from\u00a0hunger and disease<\/a>.\u00a0Precious little aid<\/a>\u00a0is getting in.<\/p>\n

And worse, the U.S. has joined Israel\u2019s efforts to incapacitate Gaza\u2019s most important relief agency.<\/p>\n

Just hours after the Court\u2019s decision was announced, Israel alleged that 12 Gazan employees of the UN\u2019s Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) \u2014 the primary body responsible for providing humanitarian support to Palestine refugees \u2014 were Hamas members connected to the October 7 attacks.<\/p>\n

For more than half a century UNRWA has provided all the services in Gaza that would ordinarily\u00a0 be provided by a government. Most of Gaza\u2019s doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and street sweepers are UNRWA employees. Without UNRWA, all the other UN agencies and nonprofits would be unable to carry out their crucial work in the region.<\/p>\n

UNRWA employs thousands of people in Gaza. Israel\u2019s claim about 12 of them was dubious \u2014 and\u00a0the country\u2019s government offered no evidence for it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the names of all UNRWA employees had been\u00a0provided to Israel earlier in the year<\/a>\u00a0for vetting and no concerns were raised. But just in case, UNRWA immediately announced it was\u00a0firing the named employees<\/a>\u00a0(minus two who\u2019d been killed). And\u00a0the UN launched<\/a>\u00a0two separate investigations.<\/p>\n

Instead of waiting for these investigations to play out,\u00a0the Biden administration immediately cut<\/a>\u00a0its entire aid allocation to UNRWA, despite the agency\u2019s irreplaceable role in getting desperately needed aid into Gaza. Many key U.S. allies followed suit, and\u00a0the U.S. Senate voted to explicitly bar UNRWA<\/a>\u00a0from receiving future humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n

Some in Washington suggested they might redirect UNRWA funds to organizations like\u00a0UNICEF and the World Food Program<\/a>, but UNICEF and WFP together have less than 70 staff on the ground in Gaza \u2014 UNRWA has over 13,000. U.S. officials themselves had admitted earlier that UNRWA was\u00a0\u201cthe only game in town\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in terms of getting any significant aid into Gaza.<\/p>\n

The impact of these cuts<\/a>\u00a0on the already threatened lives of 2.3 million displaced Gazans \u2014 as well as millions more Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria \u2014 can hardly be overstated. Defunding the agency further undermines Palestinians\u2019 access to water, food, medicine, shelter, and fuel \u2014 and alongside ongoing U.S. military support for Israel, makes Washington complicit in genocide.<\/p>\n

Thousands of Palestinians \u2014 especially babies, children, pregnant women, and the elderly \u2014 will die as a result of these cuts. And the millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the region will lose the only international agency in the UN system that\u2019s mandated to protect their rights, including their right to return someday to their homes in what\u2019s now Israel.<\/p>\n

Creating conditions that threaten the survival of all or part of a given population is part of the very\u00a0definition of genocide<\/a>\u00a0under international law. To feed children, treat the wounded, and save innocent lives \u2014 and avoid being complicit in genocide \u2014 the U.S. must restore UNRWA\u2019s funding and use its leverage to compel an immediate ceasefire in the conflict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post Gazans are Starving, Don\u2019t Cut Aid Now<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza plausibly constitute genocide. The world\u2019s most influential judicial body ordered Israel to stop killing civilians and to admit more humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, Israel was\u00a0having none of it. Israel\u2019s killings have continued, with\u00a0over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza now dead\u00a0and tens of thousands More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Gazans are Starving, Don\u2019t Cut Aid Now<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2874,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1528118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528119,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528118\/revisions\/1528119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1528118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1528118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1528118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}