The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has announced that it is suspending staff movement across Gaza after Israeli forces attacked WFP employees in a vehicle this week, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians starve under Israel’s famine campaign.
On Tuesday, an armored WFP vehicle was approaching an Israeli checkpoint in central Gaza when Israeli forces shot the vehicle 10 times, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said. None of the staff members were hurt. The workers had been returning from escorting a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid to central Gaza.
A picture of the vehicle shared by the group shows that it was clearly marked as a UN car, and WFP noted that the group had received “multiple clearances” from Israeli officials for its route.
The group said on Wednesday that its movement is paused “until further notice.” WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain condemned the attack as “totally unacceptable.”
“As last night’s events show, the current deconfliction system is failing and this cannot go on any longer,” said McCain. “I call on the Israeli authorities and all parties to the conflict to act immediately to ensure the safety and security of all aid workers in Gaza.”
It’s unclear how long the suspension will last, but conditions aren’t likely to improve soon. Humanitarian groups have raised alarm this week that Israel’s continuous shrinking of the humanitarian “safe zone” — in which Israel is still killing Palestinians — is making it nearly impossible for aid groups to operate safely in Gaza.
A senior UN official said this week that UN programs in Gaza are effectively suspended as Israel has made it so that there are no options for safe passage for humanitarian convoys.
Palestinians are now squeezed in a small strip of land representing just 11 percent of Gaza due to Israel’s forced evacuations, in sewage-filled camps that extend all the way up to the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, which is also contaminated with waste runoff.
But humanitarian aid is needed now more than ever, with a polio epidemic potentially raging across the region and a famine created by Israel’s near-total aid blockade; humanitarian expert Kenneth Roth has said that the attack was part of “Israel’s starvation strategy” across Gaza. A suspension of aid, even if it’s temporary, could have catastrophic consequences for Palestinians across the region, for whom humanitarian aid is their only lifeline.
Israel has attacked aid workers relentlessly throughout its genocide in Gaza, having killed nearly 300 aid workers in Gaza since October — despite it being a war crime to target aid workers.
WFP noted that humanitarian groups are facing other challenges imposed by Israeli officials. The group has already been forced to relocate this week for the third time in the past 11 months after Israel ordered evacuations in Deir el-Balah, where the group’s main operating hub was located. Further, last week, the group said it lost access to its last operational warehouse and five of its community kitchens in central Gaza due to evacuation orders.
The food aid group has continuously had requests for safety from Israeli attacks ignored. In June, the group announced that it had to pause use of the U.S.’s Gaza pier over safety concerns after Israel shelled one of its warehouses and used the area near the pier to stage a massacre. This week, a watchdog report from the U.S. government found that, in fact, U.S. officials had ignored safety requirements laid out by WFP during the planning process for the pier.
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