By Monica Moorehead
March 12, 2024
The heinous genocide of the people of Gaza by U.S.-backed Israel has lasted five months as of March 7, resulting in the massacre killing over 31,000 Palestinians and wounding nearly 80,000.
Thousands of Gazans surround one humanitarian aid truck. (Credit: Al-Jazeera)
Presently, hundreds of thousands of people face a slow, agonizing death by starvation. The Israeli Occupation Forces continue to block Gaza’s Rafah border with Egypt. There, some 1,500 trucks wait, ready to bring food, water, medical supplies and other humanitarian needs to besieged Gaza, stopped by the IOF.
In response to the roadblocks by the Israelis, some countries, including the U.S., have been making air drops of food to Gaza. The amounts are a mere pittance compared to what is really needed. Some drops ended up in the sea, out of reach of the people. Some contained expired food. Five Gazans, including children, were recently killed when these heavy crates fell on them and crushed them.
The Palestinian resistance has stated on multiple occasions that these air drops are insufficient and ineffective in meeting the humanitarian needs of the people — and they are also humiliating.
The Biden administration, which has been complicit since day one in this genocide, announced last week its plans to build a floating pier, allegedly to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. This pier reportedly will take up to two months to build. The Pentagon also announced plans to send 1,000 U.S. troops to help build the pier.
At the same time the administration made this announcement, it was revealed that the U.S. has continued to send more weapons to the Zionist regime.
In a March 10 statement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, emphasized: “The behavior of the American administration in the previous days and its suspicious movements, such as its announcement of establishing a floating sea port on the shores of the Gaza Strip that takes time to build, and its continuation in supplying the occupation with huge and unprecedented amounts of ammunition and weapons by air bridge non-stop as revealed by American media, does not indicate a change in the American stance from the war on the Strip. Rather it indicates insistence on prolonging the duration of the battle and besieging the Strip security and field under humanitarian justifications.” (Resistance News Network)
UNRWA staff members tortured
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has provided aid for displaced Palestinians since 1950. In February UNRWA issued a report stating that some of their staff members were illegally detained and then coerced by Israeli authorities, who used torture, into falsely stating that the agency worked in concert with Hamas in carrying out the Oct. 7 uprising.
These accusations led to the firing of some of the UNRWA staff and the defunding of hundreds of millions of dollars from the agency. The Belgian government accused Israel of bombing the Belgian Agency for Development Cooperation in the Gaza Strip when officials in Brussels refused to rescind their funding from the UNRWA.
At least 150 UNRWA staff members have been killed by the Israelis since Oct. 7.
Despite UNRWA coming under attack, the agency announced efforts to use an Israeli military road bordering Gaza to test its suitability for delivering humanitarian aid to northern parts of the enclave, according to a U.N. official.
