Washington, DC – The United Nations is warning that the threats to aid delivery in Gaza are reaching crisis levels, as Israel continues to wage war in the Palestinian enclave.
But advocates say the United States — a critical ally of Israel and the largest donor to the UN — has been conspicuously silent.
On Monday, a UN official said the organisation was forced to pause almost all aid operations in Gaza after Israel issued another raft of wide-ranging evacuation orders.
And on Wednesday, the UN’s World Food Programme announced it would temporarily halt employee travel in Gaza after one of its vehicles came under attack as it neared an Israeli checkpoint.
Advocates say the US has a duty to speak up, particularly as childhood malnutrition surges in Gaza and cases of polio — a preventable but highly contagious disease — spread.
“The United States government has run out of words and hasn’t even issued its usual performative statements to comment on the UN suspension of its aid operations in Gaza,” said Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a human rights nonprofit based in Washington, DC.
Legal experts say blocking humanitarian aid to civilians and attacking aid workers could amount to war crimes under the Geneva Convention.
The UN is also warning of a dire toll on Gaza’s civilians. Its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented a spike in acute malnutrition among Gaza’s children from May to July — including a 300 percent increase in the enclave’s north. In the south, the rate more than doubled.
As the UN gears up to launch a massive polio vaccination drive, Hassan el-Tayyab — the legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a nonprofit — said the inability to deliver basic necessities could compound the health crisis.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
