ISRAELI airstrikes hit southern Gaza overnight on Wednesday, despite the passing on Monday of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
The United States abstained in the vote on the latest resolution, which was supported by the UK and the other 13 members of the council. It calls for “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”, as well as for the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”.
A UK government spokesman said: “This resolution sends a clear message on the need for all hostages to be released and for aid to be scaled up.
“We have long called for an immediate humanitarian pause or temporary ceasefire leading to a sustainable ceasefire, which is what this resolution calls for, and that is why the UK voted in favour of it.”
Security Council resolutions are legally binding but, in practice, unenforceable. The immediate response from the Israeli government was to defy both the ruling and the part played by the United States in allowing it to pass: a visit to Washington by two Israeli ministers was cancelled, and air strikes continued on Monday night.
On Wednesday, a group of UK parliamentarians attempted to put further pressure on the Israeli government by asking the British Government to suspend export licences for arms transfers to Israel.
A group of 107 MPs, along with 27 members of the House of Lords, signed a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, and the Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, in which they wrote that “business as usual” for UK weapons exports is “totally unacceptable”.
The group, co-ordinated by the Labour MP Zarah Sultana, argue that both the UK and international law require the UK to suspend arms exports, on the basis of the risk that they could be used in a conflict which breaches international humanitarian laws.
On Tuesday, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, presented a report in which she wrote: “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met.”
Israeli officials dismissed the report as an “outrageous distortion of the Genocide Convention”.
On Tuesday, the BBC reported that Hamas officials welcomed the Security Council vote, but said that they were not changing their demand for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Such demands were described as “delusional” in a statement issued by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which said that Israel “will continue to act to achieve all the goals of the war: releasing all the hostages, destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and ensuring that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel”.
The Roman Catholic aid agency CAFOD welcomed the UN resolution. The charity’s programme officer for the Middle East, Elizabeth Funnell, said on Monday afternoon: “We are finally a step closer to creating the conditions needed to prevent further loss of life, to ensure the release of all remaining hostages, and to address the catastrophic levels of hunger now faced by families in Gaza.”
Earlier this month, UNICEF published research that suggests that, in northern Gaza, one third of children under the age of two are suffering from acute malnutrition.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — which is used by the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization — estimates that, in the coming months, half of the 2.2 million inhabitants of Gaza will be classified as suffering from “catastrophe/famine”.
The impending famine was referred to by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a statement last Thursday, in which he reiterated his calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. “The only effective solution to this catastrophic situation is an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and sustained humanitarian access for the provision of essential supplies and services to those in need,” he said (News, 22 March).
The Archbishop added that alternative avenues for getting aid into the territory, including by air and sea, were “unlikely to meet the urgent and monumental humanitarian needs of Gaza’s starving population”.
On Wednesday, officials in Gaza said that 18 people died while attempting to retrieve food parcels after an airdrop on the coast; they reported that six people died in a crush, while 12 drowned trying to reach packages which had fallen into the sea.
As supplies of food and hygiene products in Gaza have become increasingly scarce, prices have increased dramatically, Christian Aid reported on Friday. In Rafah, onions were on sale for 50 times their pre-war price, and a packet of nappies cost just under £40.
Sugar cost about £17 per kilo, and flour was reported as selling for £13 per kilo.
“There is little doubt that starvation is being used as a weapon of war,” Christian Aid’s head of Middle East policy and advocacy, William Bell, said.
Last Thursday, Lord Cameron told a parliamentary committee that the “main blocker” to aid entering Gaza was the wait for Israeli permissions to be granted, and “arbitrary denials” of access.
He said that it was the Government’s understanding that the Kerem Shalom border-crossing was being closed on Saturday owing to the sabbath, after claims from an Israeli government spokesman that the border was closed at the request of the UN.
In the first half of March, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza every day remained at about one third of the pre-war levels, while food production in the Strip has been seriously curtailed.
Lord Cameron told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that “increasing the number of trucks going into Gaza is vital. I remain gravely concerned that any aid — including UK aid — has been stalled, delayed, or rejected at the border with Israel.”