Oxfam warns of “catastrophic situation” in Gaza
UNRWA said more than one million people have fled Rafah (File)
Paris:
Oxfam warned on Tuesday that Palestinians displaced by the Gaza war are living in “appalling” conditions, where children sometimes go entire days without food and thousands of people use the same toilet.
Deadly Israeli bombing and fighting have continued in recent weeks in the Gaza Strip’s far southern Rafah region near the Egyptian border, again displacing people who fled there in search of safety.
According to the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, more than one million people have fled Rafah to other areas.
Oxfam said it is estimated that more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population live in less than a fifth of the besieged area.
“Despite Israeli assurances that those fleeing will be provided with full assistance, the majority of Gazans remain deprived of humanitarian aid, as famine looms,” the aid agency said.
“A food survey conducted by aid agencies in May found that 85 percent of children had not eaten for a whole day at least once in the three days preceding the survey,” it said.
Oxfam, citing UN data, said an average of eight aid trucks have arrived there per day since Israeli troops began a ground assault on Rafah on May 6.
It said that although hundreds of commercial food trucks are estimated to visit the place daily, the trucks carry items such as non-nutritious energy drinks, chocolates and cookies, which are often very expensive.
“By the time a famine is declared, it will be too late,” said Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa director.
“Withholding tonnes of food for a malnourished population while enjoying caffeinated drinks and chocolate is disgusting.”
In an interview with French television last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected allegations of starvation in Gaza, saying everything possible was being done to prevent famine.
He said people in Gaza are eating 3,200 calories a day, which is 1,000 calories more than the daily requirement.
‘Forced to depend on the sea’
Oxfam said that in some parts of southern Gaza, such as the coastal area of al-Mawasi, which the Israeli military has declared a “humanitarian zone”, families are barely getting by with no water or sanitation services.
“Living conditions are so deplorable that Al-Mawasi has just 121 toilets for more than 500,000 people – meaning 4,130 people have to use each toilet,” Oxfam said.
Mira, an Oxfam worker in al-Mawasi who has been displaced seven times since October, described the situation there as “unbearable”.
“Clean water is not available and people are forced to depend on the sea,” he said.
On Monday, a camp for displaced people in Khan Younis was flooded with sewage after a wastewater pipe burst, and some people were trying to scoop out the filth from their tents using plastic bottles, an AFP correspondent said.
The war began on October 7 with an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, 41 of whom the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 36,550 people in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)