New Delhi: The UN Security Council has underscored the need to protect civilians in Gaza in the wake of the deadly incident at an aid convoy on Thursday.
Members issued a statement on Saturday expressing their deep concern over reports that “more than 100 individuals lost their lives, with several hundred others sustaining injuries, including gunshot wounds…in an incident involving Israeli forces at a large gathering surrounding a humanitarian assistance convoy southwest of Gaza City.”
They noted that an Israeli investigation is underway.
The Council stressed the need to take all necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, adding that all parties to conflicts must comply with their obligations under international law.
Immediate delivery
Parties were urged to refrain from depriving civilians in Gaza of basic services and humanitarian assistance.
The Council expressed grave concern that the entire population, more than two million people, could face alarming levels of acute food insecurity.
Members reiterated their demand for parties “to allow, facilitate, and enable the immediate, rapid, safe, sustained and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale to the Palestinian civilian population throughout the Gaza Strip”.
They urged Israel to keep border crossings open for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, to facilitate the opening of additional crossings to meet humanitarian needs at scale, and to support the rapid and safe delivery of relief items to people across the enclave.
‘Airdrops close to worst ways to deliver aid’
Meanwhile, the US military on Saturday carried out its first airdrop of aid into Gaza. Other countries including Jordan and France have already conducted airdrops of aid into Gaza.
The US airdrop used C-130 transport aircraft which dropped more than 38,000 meals along Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline, Reuters reported.
However, experts say this is the worst way to deliver aid.
“You only resort to [airdrops] when there is something on the ground blocking you from using better forms of transportation,” Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International and a former disaster relief official in the [former US President Barack] Obama and [US President Joe] Biden administrations, told Al Jazeera.
“They’re very expensive, they’re dangerous because there’s a lot that can go wrong when things drop and they deliver a very small volume of aid. Relative to the level of need that exists in Gaza today, this is not enough to make a meaningful dent in the humanitarian crisis.”
“You have to ask, why is this necessary? Well, it’s necessary because over the last nearly five months, the Israeli military offensive has made it virtually impossible for normal humanitarian operations to exist in Gaza,” Konyndyk added.
“They could be opening more border crossings – they have refused to do that. Even the two crossings in the south that are open have seen their volumes decline in the last few weeks. And they’ve made it very difficult for humanitarian groups to operate within Gaza – there have been air strikes on humanitarian facilities, there was a naval strike on a UN food convoy heading to the north that was actually [previously] stopped at an Israeli checkpoint at the time.”
“So this resort to air strikes is a reflection of how impossible the Israeli government has made it to conduct normal and frankly more effective humanitarian operations inside Gaza.”
Meanwhile, UNICEF chief Catherine Russell has called for a “ceasefire now”, saying that “every minute counts” for children in Gaza facing “deadly” malnutrition.