(Jerusalem) International NGOs warned again Thursday of their virtual impossibility of working in the Gaza Strip, ravaged by a war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas which, in the eyes of the president of Médecins sans frontières France, “is equivalent to a genocide.”
Their joint press conference was organized three days after the death of seven members of the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territory, where the conflict will soon enter its seventh month.
This event “is not a surprise because for six months we have witnessed the choices made by Israel, which is waging a war against an entire population trapped, deprived of food and massively bombed. Gaza is gradually becoming unfit for human life,” said Isabelle Defourny, president of Médecins sans frontières (MSF) France, during an online press briefing of representatives of several NGOs working in Gaza.
None of these NGOs plans to leave at this stage, even if the question arises “every day,” said M.me Defourny.
“The conditions for providing humanitarian assistance are not met,” she added. But “we will not stop working in Gaza”, where MSF has 300 Palestinian collaborators, and even foreigners, confined to the far south of the territory.
” Target ”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has called on Israel to “take all measures to prevent genocide […]Israel has so far done the opposite, continuing to block humanitarian aid and destroying vital infrastructure as shown by (the incident at) WCK and the destruction of the Al-Chifa hospital,” denounced Mr.me Defourny, for whom “the situation in Gaza has passed the point of absolute horror”.
Today, “any state providing military support to Israel: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the EU countries, Germany, France… is morally and politically complicit in what amounts to genocide in our eyes,” she added.
With residents of the northern Gaza Strip living on fewer than 245 calories a day – “less than a can of beans” – the area “should be a famine action zone.” Instead it’s a free zone for shooting,” said Scott Paul, for Oxfam, which has 26 people on site.
“The attack on the WCK convoy generated an indignation not seen in six months, but let’s say it: this attack is not an anomaly. More than 200 humanitarian workers have already been killed, it’s systemic. Except this week it was international workers,” he added.
According to Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatrician just returned from two weeks at Deir al-Balah hospital (central Gaza) for the British organization Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), “everyone is a target.”
“Serious questions”
“On the ground, you don’t see Hamas, what you see are entire families removed from civil registers,” she said. “In most wars, the majority of victims are young men. This is not the case here,” where women and children form a very large majority of those killed.
But “it is not possible to reach (the populations) without a ceasefire,” insisted Karyn Beattie, in Rafah for Save the Children International.
Médecins du Monde (MDM) manages medical counters in refugee camps. Louise Bichet, head of the Middle East division, described teams as “exhausted, stressed, depressed”, lacking everything.
“NGOs need suitable working conditions, and first of all security,” she stressed, recalling that the MDM office in Gaza City was partially destroyed. “However, we had communicated our GPS position, which was well known to the Israeli army, which shows the failure of the process” of coordination.
“And more broadly, this raises serious questions about the confidence we can have in the understanding and respect by the State of Israel of international humanitarian law,” she added, when, after the blunder of the WCK, Israel promises a “new coordination platform”.
The war was sparked by the Hamas attack on October 7 in Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures. Israel’s retaliatory operation left more than 33,000 people dead in Gaza, according to the Hamas health ministry.