The PNGO demanded that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United Nations officially declare Gaza a famine zone, in addition to putting out a call for countries to intervene.
Israel has imposed a complete blockade on Gaza since March 2, blocking all humanitarian aid from entering the already unlivable occupied territory. In light of this, the leading Palestinian NGO Network has launched an immediate appeal to the International Community to intervene to relieve what they called “an advanced stage of famine” in Gaza.
The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) is an umbrella organization that includes some 140 local rights and civil society groups. Therefore, its statements are seen as an authoritative reflection of the research set forth by such groups regarding the situation in the occupied territories.
The PNGO’s urgent appeal was published this Thursday, entitled “Stop the famine… Stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip”, but was widely ignored by Western corporate media.
Despite brazenly shutting off access to all medical and food aid needed to sustain life in Gaza, Israel continues to run an online Genocide Revisionist campaign that seeks to deny that starvation and famine ever occurred during the past 18 months.
The Israeli campaign of denial and often outright mockery of Palestinian victims of starvation and collective punishment is contradicted by extensive reports, analyses, and announcements from the world’s leading experts and international rights groups.
In late March, the Gaza media office announced in a statement that “Gaza has officially entered the first stage of famine, with nearly two million people completely losing their food security”. Various calls have also been made by UN officials for Israel to comply with its legal implications and permit aid entry into the Gaza Strip.
In fact, on April 8, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, formally rejected an Israeli plan to control the passage of all aid into the besieged territory and stood firm on the position, grounded in international law, that Israel cannot condition aid to civilians.
PNGO’s statement is a significant marker in the course of Palestinian suffering due to Israel’s crime of collective punishment. It compiles evidence to support the notion that Gaza “has entered an advanced stage of famine and warns of its catastrophic impact on the lives and health of civilians—especially children, women, and the elderly.”
The urgent appeal press release notes the following:
“91% of Gaza Strip’s population is now classified as being in crisis levels of food insecurity (Phase 3 or higher), among them 345,000 people are in the most extreme phase (Phase 5). 92% of children aged 6 months to 2 years, along with breastfeeding mothers, are not receiving adequate nutrition—putting them at risk of lifelong health complications. 65% of people lack access to the minimum daily requirement of 6 liters of clean water for drinking and cooking.”
It also mentions that “the Ministry of Health in Gaza has warned that 60,000 children urgently need treatment for malnutrition. All of this confirms that we are not only facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis but a systematic and deliberate crime that demands urgent international intervention.”
The PNGO demanded that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United Nations officially declare Gaza a famine zone, in addition to putting out a call for countries to intervene in order to provide international protection. In addition to calling for action to be taken at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the PNGO requested that the UN Security Council impose immediate international sanctions on Israel and that all nations end their military support for the Israeli armed forces.
It is noteworthy that in April of 2024, Israel’s own top rights group B’Tselem published a report entitled “Manufacturing Famine”, in which it detailed how the Israeli government was deliberately creating the conditions to impose famine upon the people of Gaza.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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