By Dr Marwan Asmar
Israel is starving the Palestinian people of Gaza while the world watches. It looks on helplessly pretending it can’t do anything while the reigns of control remain in Israeli hands.
There are presently 15,008 food and supply trucks standing on the Rafah border waiting for Israel to allow them to enter Gaza and feed the starving and hungry – hundreds of thousands – people who came to assemble these to escape Israeli missiles and bombs.
These waiting trucks are donations from countries from all over the world as well donations from ordinary people, yet they remain sitting at the border because Israel won’t allow them to enter the devastated Gaza.
Don’t believe the view that says it is up to Egypt to let them in since it controls the border. While it may do that in theory, in practice it can’t because of the big Israeli guns from the air who constantly monitor the border and fires indiscriminately at it as a means of control.
In the past 100 days israeli warplanes frequently shot at the border and the city of Rafah as part of its military campaign against its people. So in actual fact, it doesn’t control the border and its entry point in Gaza. And as proof of that is the over 15,000 trucks which would avert the starvations Gazans are experiencing and turn the horrible situation currently is under now.
These trucks generated by donations from different countries of the world and under the UN auspices and have food, medical and fuel supplies would go a long way to alleviating the deadly and critical situation of the Palestinian people in the 365-kilometer Strip. But as yet Israel says blank no.
Civilians are being collectively punished while Israelis take their time in looking for Hamas and other Palestinians fighters who can’t be found except in underground tunnels all over Gaza. But how do you catch them!
This Israelis have displaced 1.9 million Palestinians and forced them to move from one place to another, chasing them away from their destroyed homes and workplaces. The number of those killed currently stands at over 24000 not to mention the around 8000 dead under the rubble whilst the injured at around 59000. It’s havoc and catastrophe and needs a lot of aid to get it back on its feet.
Before 7 October the number of trucks daily entering the Rafah border daily was 500. After that they came to a halt and then barely trickled down. But now, these thousands of trucks lie congested on the border and nobody knows when they will be allowed to start moving again.
Dr Marwan Asmar has a PhD from the UK’s Leeds University is a contributor on Middle East affairs
17 January 2024
Source: countercurrents.org