(United Nations) An “even more hellish scenario”, to which humanitarian operations may be unable to respond, is looming in the Gaza Strip, a UN official warned on Monday as Israel tightens its grip on the south of Palestinian territory.
Since the resumption of hostilities on 1er December after a seven-day truce, “Israeli military operations expanded to southern Gaza, forcing tens of thousands more people to flee into increasingly concentrated spaces, in desperate need of food, water, shelter and security,” Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, said in a statement.
“The conditions necessary to provide aid to the people of Gaza do not exist. If this is possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to come true, to which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond,” she added.
“No one is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go,” insisted the Canadian, rejecting in these conditions the idea of “safe zones” mentioned by the United States. These zones can be “neither safe nor humanitarian when declared unilaterally,” she said.
“What we see today are empty shelters, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no sanitation and insufficient nutrition for a mentally and physically exhausted population: a perfect recipe for epidemics and a public health catastrophe,” she described, lamenting the insufficient humanitarian aid and fuel that could enter the Gaza Strip.
“The space allowed for the humanitarian response in Gaza is constantly shrinking”, with the now closure of two major roads crossing the territory to UN teams and trucks, further denounced the UN official based in Jerusalem, whose visa does not will not be renewed by Israel which accused it of not being “impartial”.
The spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, once again calling for a “lasting humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza” and the release of all hostages, for his part called on Israeli forces to “avoid new actions that could exacerbate the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza and spare civilians further suffering.”
The Israeli army tightened its grip on the south of the Gaza Strip, where dozens of tanks entered on Monday as part of its offensive against Hamas, almost two months after the start of the war launched on October 7 by the bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel.