THOUSANDS of people in northern Gaza are facing an imminent massacre as the Israeli military continues its weeks-long siege and heavy bombardment of the region, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations declared yesterday.
Riyad Mansour, in identical letters addressed to UN Secretary General António Guterres, President of the UN General Assembly Philemon Yang and rotating President of the Security Council Pascale Baeriswyl, said Israel is committing genocide before of the eyes of the international community.
He warned that more than 470,000 individuals in the northern flank of Gaza are going to perish en masse.
‘Israel has been depriving the Palestinian people in the north of food, water, medicine and everything necessary for human life for weeks.
‘Israel bombs hospitals and is preventing civilians from receiving medical care. Israel forcibly deports Palestinian families to the south, even though there is nowhere safe to go.’
Osama Hamdan, Hamas representative in Lebanon said the Israeli regime is committing ‘organised crimes’ against civilians in northern Gaza, adding that the occupying regime forces are preventing the entry of aid into the blockaded territory in order to put pressure on Palestinians.
He also noted that Israel’s rejection of all requests for the entry of aid into northern Gaza has led to the death of hundreds of sick and injured people there, stressing that the crossings, which the occupiers claim are safe, have become a trap for targeting civilians.
He stated that Israeli crimes are being carried out with the full US support, adding that the one-month deadline from Washington for Israeli forces to consider allowing aid in confirms it is giving it a deadline to commit more crimes.
Hamdan denounced the international community’s silence on Israeli crimes, stressing that the credibility of the international community and its institutions is being tested on the charters they were founded on.
He called for a UN Security Council meeting to put pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing aggression, emphasising that only Palestinians can decide the details of the day after the war.
The Israeli human rights group B’tselem said yesterday that the Tel Aviv regime is ‘taking advantage of the fact that global attention has been diverted’ to commit ‘ethnic cleansing’ in northern Gaza.
‘It is clearer than ever that Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war,’ B’Tselem said in a statement, calling on the world’s nations and international bodies to take ‘immediate, decisive’ action.
‘Ever since Israel’s current operation in the northern Gaza Strip began on October 5, the area has been under a near complete siege, relentlessly pummelled by the military,’ the statement added.
‘Israel has cut them off from the world’ and ‘the few testimonies that have trickled out … describe dead bodies lining the streets, hunger, drinking water nowhere to be found’.
