From the Electronic Intafada.
Yesterday, Israel announced it is banning dozens of the world’s best-known humanitarian organizations from providing lifesaving aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Among them are Doctors Without Borders, Medical Aid for Palestinians, World Vision International, Mercy Corps, branches of Oxfam, the Catholic charity Caritas, and church-based organizations from around the world.
This announcement came just one day after Donald Trump – standing beside Benjamin Netanyahu at a Mar-a-Lago press conference – declared that “we’re helping the people of Gaza a lot” (sic) and, even more grotesquely, “so is Israel.”
The reality could not be more different.
In the 82 days since the so-called ceasefire was declared, Israel has violated it nearly 1,000 times. At least 418 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,100 wounded.
Israel is allowing only a fraction of the humanitarian supplies and shelter materials required under Trump’s so-called “peace plan.” As a result, more Palestinians – especially children and older people – have suffered or died from exposure during merciless winter storms.
“Israel’s military violence is just one side of the coin,” Hassan Abo Qamar wrote for The Electronic Intifada from Gaza earlier this month. “Gaza is devastated. Over 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed, creating what the UN estimates is 61 million tons of rubble. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened.”
“Israel’s strategy since the ceasefire has not been to rebuild Gaza, but to manage its collapse,” Abo Qamar explains. “By controlling what enters and leaves, Israel dictates the pace of Gaza’s decay. It maintains the illusion of progress – a few aid convoys here, a photo opportunity there – while ensuring that no real recovery can take root.”
Yet Trump insisted that “Israel has lived up to the plan, 100 percent.”
The American Friends Service Committee – which has been working in Gaza since 1948, and which has now been banned – said Israel’s restrictions are “part of a systematic effort to arbitrarily criminalize humanitarian organizations, dismantle aid infrastructure and inflict further harm on Gaza’s civilian population.”
Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, was more blunt: “Independent humanitarian aid is ending. Israel’s genocide continues.”
More than two years into this genocide, I am certain of two things: Israel is as determined as ever to exterminate the Palestinian people – and this could be stopped, if governments choose to act on their legal and moral obligations.
It is no coincidence that many of the banned aid organizations are based in the United States and Europe – the very governments that are Israel’s staunchest backers, largest trade partners and principal arms suppliers.
These governments could intervene. Instead, they choose silence – or worse, active complicity.
They preach human rights while enabling genocide. They jail or persecute their own citizens when they protest.
It is enraging. And we cannot allow it to succeed.
The antidote to their effort to kill Gaza in silence is to speak out louder – to expose these crimes relentlessly and demand accountability for those responsible and complicit.
Even if Gaza disappears from mainstream headlines, we must keep it front and center everywhere we can.
