Famine in Gaza

Inaction of the international community against Israel's anti-human and barbaric activities targeting the unarmed, innocent Palestinians, despite so much proof of aggression against them is indeed intriguing, writes Asad Mirza

- Asad Mirza

Israel is still blocking aid for Gaza despite promise to lift siege, the UN has said.

Four days after Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was lifting the siege of Gaza, Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians, the UN has said, as the leader of the country's centre-left Democrats party said his country was becoming a pariah nation that "kills babies as a hobby".

Only five trucks of aid had reached Gaza by Tuesday afternoon and aid workers had not been given permission to distribute even that token shipment. Even that shipment would do little to reduce widespread hunger after 11 weeks of near total siege; it is just a fifth of what reached Gaza daily before the war, when people were well-fed.

Looming famine in the territory has provoked international outrage and heavy diplomatic pressure on Israel's prime minister to allow food to reach more than 2 million people trapped in Gaza.

On Sunday night Netanyahu announced he was ending the siege on Gaza because a "starvation crisis" would damage his country's global standing.

Yair Golan, the leader of the opposition Democrats who served as deputy chief of staff for Israel's military before entering politics, said that after an unjustifiably brutal campaign, much of the damage had already been done.

Netanyahu's government was making the country as isolated as apartheid-era South Africa. "A sane country doesn't engage in fighting against civilians, doesn't kill babies as a hobby and doesn't set the expulsion of a population as a goal," Golan said.

According to The Guardian, for most of the war, opposition to Netanyahu among Jewish Israelis has focused on the failure to bring back hostages or the conduct of the campaign, rather than the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, or the hunger and destruction there.