When Sean Casey, coordinator of the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency medical teams, returned from Gaza, where he spent five weeks, in mid-January, he was outraged that he had seen patients in the north of the enclave “waiting to die in a hospital “. without fuel, electricity or water”. On January 18, after a three-day visit to the Palestinian enclave, which has been under fire from the Israeli army since Hamas's attack on the Jewish state on October 7, Ted Chaiban, deputy director general of Unicef, denounced an “astonishing deterioration.” in the living conditions of the children of Gaza” and called for an end to their “massacre”.
The statements of these UN envoys reflect anything but an alleviation of the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza, the main goal of Resolution 2720, adopted by the UN Security Council a month ago, on December 22nd. The text called for all parties to the conflict to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory. “We are rather in a state of stagnation, which in such a context amounts to a step backwards,” estimates a UN source.
Among the rare changes noted on the ground is a “small increase” in the number of aid trucks permitted by Israel to enter the enclave, according to Martin Griffiths, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). ). It is not enough to meet the demand.
“The incoming aid is a drop in the ocean. Given the influx of patients in hospitals, it is not possible to break the vicious circle: operations without anesthesia, lack of medication for chronic diseases, etc. », Judge Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The organization provides logistical support to the Egyptian Red Crescent (which is tasked by Cairo with coordinating Egypt's international assistance to Gaza) and its Palestinian counterpart (which operates ambulance and medical services in the enclave).
“We need a minimum level of security”
Otherwise nothing has actually changed. While the resolution calls for a “safe and unhindered” delivery of aid and the “protection of humanitarian personnel and their freedom of movement,” access to the northern Gaza Strip, now the most disadvantaged area, is “repeatedly denied.” by the Israeli authorities,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for OCHA.
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