Gaza / 9 out of 10 children sick – Humanitarian disaster, new impasse ahead at UN

The humanitarian situation remains catastrophic Gaza Strip. Nearly one and a half million people, piled into Rafaare threatened as his large-scale ground operation is imminent Israel. At the same time, the possibility is strong of a new impasse in the UN Security Councilwhich will consider a draft decision in which the request to immediately declare a ceasefire is presented.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Rafah is home to nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, more than half of the enclave’s population (2.4 million). Their numbers have increased sixfold since the outbreak of war on October 7 as hundreds of thousands of displaced people have flocked to it.

The city, on the closed border with Egypt, is subjected to daily aerial bombardment by the Israeli armed forces, who say they are preparing for a ground attack.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he describes Rafah as the “last stronghold” of Hamas and declares that he is determined to continue the attack “until the total victory”.

On the night of Monday to Tuesday, Israeli shelling was concentrated in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip and in Khan Younis (south), a few kilometers from Rafah, an AFP journalist found on the ground.

Nine children out of ten sick

After some twenty weeks of war, UN agencies are sounding the alarm about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

As they underline, food and drinking water are increasingly scarce and90% of young children are infected with infectious diseases.

“The Gaza Strip is headed for an explosion in the number of preventable child deaths,” which would “exacerbate the already intolerable level of child deaths” there, said Ted Chaiban, deputy director of humanitarian operations at the Israel Fund. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“My children are starving, they wake up crying,” said a mother in an IDP camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “Where can I get food for them?”

“Missiles are falling, how long can a human being last?” wondered Ayman Abu Samali, who was injured when he was struck stationary in Zawayda, in the central part of the Gaza Strip. “People in the north are dying of hunger, we are dying of bombing.”

Since the Israeli retaliatory attack on October 7, at least 29,092 people have lost their lives in the Gaza Stripthe vast majority of them women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.

According to Israeli sources, more than 130 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of Hamas in the Gaza Strip — an army spokesman said recently that at least 31 of them are believed to be dead — of the approximately 250 kidnapped on October 7. “If the hostages are not home by Ramadan, fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area,” threatened Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s wartime government, the day before Sunday. “Hamas has a choice. (Its members) can surrender, release the hostages and the civilians in Gaza will be able to celebrate Ramadan,” he added.

Impasse ahead at the UN

As APE-MPE reports, the prospect of an attack on Rafa worries the international community. Twenty-six of the 27 EU member states called for an “immediate humanitarian pause” yesterday. But the hopes that a new truce will be declared seem to be fading more and more.

The UN Security Council is expected to speak today on a new text, which was drawn up in the course of the last weeks by Algeria and calls for an “immediate” ceasefire. This plan may be thwarted by exercising vetoed by the US, Israel’s main ally. If indeed it is exercised, it will be the third since the outbreak of the war.

The most recent version of the text, which came to the attention of Agence France-Presse, “calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties”, while rejecting “the forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population” and demanding that it stop immediately the “violation of international law”, while Israel says it is considering an emergency evacuation of civilians ahead of an attack on Rafah if it does not see the release of all hostages immediately.

Washington made it clear that it does not consider Algeria’s draft resolution acceptable. “We don’t believe that (…) it would improve the situation on the ground, so if it is put to a vote it will not pass,” repeated US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood yesterday.

Alternative American draft decision

The US argues that the decision would jeopardize ongoing diplomatic negotiations to declare a new ceasefire, which would allow the release of hostages.

The American delegation released a competing draft resolution, the content of which was obtained by AFP on Monday. It refers to a “temporary suspension” of operations in the Gaza Strip as soon as this is “practicable” and on the basis of a “formula” that will include the release of “all” hostages.

The US draft resolution expresses concern about Rafa, warning that “a ground attack cannot take place under the current conditions”.

However, a diplomatic source noted, there is no chance that the alternative draft decision will be adopted as it is: it is certain that Russia will exercise a veto.

The Security Council, deeply divided over the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years, has only been able to adopt two resolutions on the issue, mainly of a humanitarian nature, since October 7th until today.

The most recent, adopted in a vote held in late December — the US allowed it by abstaining — called for a “large-scale” distribution of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave. It has had no real response, as aid continues to trickle into the Gaza Strip and remains a drop in the ocean of need.