DaysofPal- Each day, countless children across Gaza walk the rubble-strewn streets, clutching empty bowls and bottles in search of food and clean water. After more than eleven weeks of a total Israeli blockade that has choked off humanitarian aid, the situation has reached catastrophic levels, with families resorting to desperate and dangerous means to keep their children alive.
Rachel Cummings, humanitarian director with Save the Children, who is currently on the ground in central Gaza, described the unfolding humanitarian disaster as “desperate and dire,” saying it is “unimaginable how it feels to be a child in Gaza” under current conditions.
“I see children every day walking the streets trying to find food with empty bowls, trying to find water with empty bottles in hand,” Cummings said.
“We have mothers telling us how they are trying to keep their children alive, how they’re talking to bulk it out with grass or dirty water, knowing that could result in their child becoming sick.”
Cummings acknowledged that a trickle of aid has entered Gaza in the past 72 hours, calling it “welcome but insignificant in terms of the actual number of people it can help.”
“What is needed are the thousands of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies that are held up by Israel outside Gaza, carrying life-saving aid,” she said, underscoring the urgent need for widespread humanitarian access.
“This is a very active and complex war. Bombs are dropping on children every day,” she continued. “So we need a definitive ceasefire in Gaza, we need to be able to access populations and children who are in the most desperate circumstances, and we need humanitarian supplies to enter.”
As famine conditions accelerate, humanitarian agencies are also raising serious concerns over new aid delivery proposals that could undermine neutral humanitarian operations.
On Sunday, Save the Children issued a strong statement distancing itself from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and any associated plans for militarized aid delivery. The organization reiterated that it will not participate in any system that compromises humanitarian principles.
Gabriella Waaijman, Chief Operating Officer of Save the Children, said: “Save the Children reiterates its firm position that it will not engage with any system of aid delivery in Gaza that fails to uphold humanitarian principles following reports about engaging with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation over a new militarized proposal for aid delivery. We have not agreed to support or collaborate with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, nor will we support limiting the number of humanitarian actors in the Gaza response. We stand united with our peers in calling on the Government of Israel and the international community to let us do our jobs.”
Waaijman stressed the distinction between principled humanitarian assistance and politicized service delivery.
“Humanitarian principles guide the delivery of the aid people need to the people who need it most, independent of political considerations. Those principles are the difference between real humanitarian action and service delivery, and guide Save the Children’s assistance to children and families across the world.”
She warned of the consequences of deviating from these standards: “New proposals for aid delivery that fail to uphold these standards are a distraction with devastating costs. After 11 weeks of total siege on the entry of all supplies into Gaza, thousands of children’s lives hang in the balance.
But instead of ensuring urgent, principled humanitarian aid delivery at the vast scale needed to save them, the Government of Israel is wasting time on political interference with what must remain a humanitarian-led system.”
“We reiterate our call to the Government of Israel and the international community to uphold humanitarian principles and international humanitarian law to ensure that people urgently receive the relief they need. Anything less is yet another world failure in what is becoming a long list for which the people of Gaza are paying with their lives.”
These urgent calls have been echoed by the UN and other international aid organizations, which have warned that the death toll, especially among children, will continue to rise at a horrifying rate unless immediate, widespread access to Gaza and an end to the blockade are granted.
Since March 2, Israel has been systematically starving some 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza by closing the crossings to aid that has been piling up at the border, leading to famine and many deaths.
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