©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: People walk near the border with Egypt, as displaced Palestinians, who fled their homes due to Israeli attacks, take refuge in a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas, in Rafah, in the south
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By Ahmed Fahmy
RAFAH PASSAGE, Egypt (Reuters) – A long line of rescue trucks stranded on the Egyptian side of the border with the Gaza Strip, where people risk starvation, is a moral outrage, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to the Rafah crossing on Saturday. .
It was time for Israel to make an “iron commitment” to unrestricted access to humanitarian goods across Gaza, said Guterres, who also called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The UN will continue to work with Egypt to “rationalize” the flow of aid to Gaza, he told reporters outside the gate of the Rafah crossing, an entry point for aid.
“Here from this gateway, we see the pain and cruelty of it all. A long line of rescue trucks stuck on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other,” he said.
“This is more than tragic. It is a moral outrage.”
Guterres’ visit comes as Israel faces global pressure to allow more humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has been devastated by more than five months of war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel is threatening to launch a major military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, just across the border from Egypt, despite international calls against such an attack.
The majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents take refuge around Rafah. Although conditions are worse in the northern Strip, the situation for civilians across the territory has worsened dramatically as the conflict has intensified.
Before his stop at the border, where he met with UN aid workers, Guterres landed in Al Arish, in Egypt’s North Sinai, where much of the international aid for Gaza is delivered and stored.
Receiving it, regional governor Mohamed Shusha said that around 7,000 trucks were waiting in North Sinai to deliver aid to Gaza, but that inspection procedures required by Israel had blocked the flow of relief.
Guterres also visited a hospital in Al Arish where Palestinians evacuated from Gaza are receiving treatment.
As hopes for a truce in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan have faded and the humanitarian situation in Gaza has grown more desperate, the United States and other countries have sought to use airdrops and ships to deliver aid.
But aid workers say only about a fifth of the needed amount of supplies has entered Gaza and that the only way to meet needs is to quickly speed up deliveries by road.
SPREAD HUNGER
Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas and is worried the Palestinian militant group could divert aid, has kept all but one of its land crossings to the enclave closed. It opened the Kerem Shalom crossing near Rafah in late December and denies accusations by Egypt and U.N. aid agencies that it had delayed the delivery of humanitarian aid.
This week, a global food watchdog warned that famine is imminent in northern Gaza and could spread to other parts of the territory if a ceasefire is not agreed.
“It is time for an ironclad commitment from Israel to full and unrestricted access to humanitarian goods across Gaza,” Guterres said.
“It’s time to truly flood Gaza with life-saving aid. The choice is clear: either the flood of aid or starvation,” he said.
According to local health authorities, more than 32,000 people have been killed by the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, many of them women and children.
Israel launched the assault in response to a Hamas attack in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Guterres, who previously made a trip to the Egypt-Gaza border shortly after the war broke out, is visiting Egypt and Jordan as part of an annual “solidarity trip” to Muslim countries during Ramadan.
While in the Egyptian capital Cairo, he is expected to break his daily fast with refugees from Sudan, where war between rival military factions has displaced nearly 8.5 million people, driven parts of the population to extreme hunger and led to waves of ethnic unrest. murders in Darfur.