Don’t use aid as ‘bargaining Chip,’ MSF urges Israel

The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical charity claimed Wednesday that Israel had “instrumentalised humanitarian needs” in Gaza, with its decision to halt aid and cut electricity into the Palestinian territory.

“Israeli authorities are yet again normalising the use of aid as a negotiation tool,” MSF emergency coordinator Myriam Laaroussi said in a statement.

“This is outrageous. Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip in war.” Israel halted aid deliveries to war-torn Gaza after a deadlock over a fragile ceasefire, which since January 19 has reduced hostilities after more than 15 months of relentless fighting.

And ahead of a current round of talks in Doha, Israel on Sunday halted the supply of electricity to the territory’s only desalination plant, in a move Hamas condemned as “cheap and unacceptable blackmail”.

Describing the move as “collective punishment”, MSF demanded that Israel “end this inhumane blockade of the Strip”.

It warned that with the suspension of electricity supply, the water desalination plant in Khan Yunis in the south of the territory had already run out of fuel.

“The plant has dropped its production from 17 million to 2.5 million litres per day,” its statement said.

“This decision to cut electricity will gradually severely impact the public water supply” to Gaza’s some 2.4 million people, who are already caught in a dire humanitarian crisis, it said.

“The blockade on all supplies is inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people and is having deadly consequences,”

Laaroussi said.MSF said its last delivery into Gaza had taken place on February 27, when it sent in three trucks carrying mostly medical supplies.

It warned that even before the blockade, people on the ground were facing critical shortages.

“Although more trucks have entered during the ceasefire, the Israel authorities’ goods entry system, systematically used to obstruct humanitarian aid, has made it impossible for us to scale-up properly, even before this blockade,” Laaroussi said.

The system has consistently obstructed and restricted “the entry of lifesaving supplies including scalpels, scissors, oxygen concentrators, desalination units, and generators”, MSF said.

“Even when approved, the process takes a long time and continues to be a complex bureaucratic impediment.”

Agencies