By: Jonathan Whittall, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories
Translation: Telegrafi.com

For 22 months, Gaza has been under pressure, only allowed to breathe when the Israeli authorities succumb to political pressure from those who wield more influence than international law itself. After months of relentless bombardment, forced displacement and deprivation, Israel's collective punishment of the people of Gaza has never been more devastating.

Since October 2023, I have been part of the humanitarian aid coordination efforts in Gaza. Any life-saving aid that has entered since then has been the exception – not the rule. More than a year after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to “take all measures in its power” to prevent acts of genocide – and despite all our warnings – we continue to witness hunger, lack of access to water, a sanitation crisis and a collapsing health system, against a backdrop of ongoing violence that is resulting in dozens of Palestinians being killed every day, including children.

Powerless to change this situation, we, the humanitarian workers, have begun to use our voices - along with Palestinian journalists who risk everything - to describe the horrific and inhumane conditions in Gaza. Speaking out, as I am doing now, in the face of deliberate - and avoidable - suffering is part of our role in promoting respect for international law.

But this comes at a price. After a press conference I held in Gaza on June 22, where I said starving civilians were shot as they tried to reach food - what I called "conditions designed to kill" - the Israeli Foreign Minister announced in a post on X that my visa would not be renewed. Israel's permanent representative to the UN followed up with a statement to the Security Council, saying that I was expected to leave by July 29th.

This effort to silence us is part of a broader pattern. International NGOs face increasingly restrictive registration requirements, including clauses that prohibit certain criticisms of Israel. Palestinian NGOs, which despite all odds continue to save lives every day, have been cut off from the resources they need to function. UN agencies are increasingly granted visas for only six, three or even one month, depending on whether they are deemed “good, bad or ugly”. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been targeted with special laws, its international staff barred from entry, and its operations are being gradually curtailed.

These reprisals cannot erase the reality that we have seen - every day - not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. What I have seen there looks different from what is happening in Gaza, but it has a common goal: the disruption of territorial continuity and the pushing of Palestinians into ever smaller enclaves. Palestinians in the West Bank are being oppressed and confined every day: oppressed by settler violence and home demolitions in areas where settlement construction is expanding, and confined by a network of movement restrictions in isolated urban areas where military interventions are increasing.

Gaza is also being torn apart. The population of 2.1 million is now crammed into just 12 percent of the Strip’s land area. I remember the shocking phone call I received on October 13, 2023, announcing the forced displacement of the entire northern part of Gaza. Since that first brutal act, almost all of Gaza has been forcibly displaced – not once, but repeatedly – ​​without adequate shelter, without food, and without security. I have seen with my own eyes what seems like a systematic dismantling of the means of survival for Palestinian life. As part of our role in coordinating humanitarian operations, my colleagues and I have helped to remove patients from dark, cat-filled intensive care wards in destroyed hospitals occupied by Israeli forces, where the dead were being buried in the courtyards by the last remaining – sleepless – staff who had watched their colleagues being forcibly removed.

We have helped uncover mass graves in other hospital courtyards, where families searched through scattered clothes to identify relatives who had been stripped naked before being killed or disappeared. We have confronted soldiers who tried to force a spinal-injured patient out of an ambulance as he was being evacuated from a hospital. We have repatriated the bodies of aid workers killed by drone strikes and tank fire while trying to deliver aid, and we have collected the bodies of family members of NGO workers who were killed in places designated – by Israeli forces themselves – as “humanitarian zones.”

We have seen doctors killed, in uniform, buried under ambulances crushed by Israeli forces. Overcrowded shelters for the displaced under bombardment, with parents hugging their wounded or dead children. Countless bodies in the streets, eaten by dogs. People calling from under the rubble while rescue teams are refused help until no one is left alive. Children starving from malnutrition, while aid faces an insurmountable bureaucratic and military obstacle course.

The Israeli authorities accuse us of being the problem. They say we are failing to get the goods through the crossings. We are not failing - we are stumbling. Last week I was in a convoy heading to the Kerem Shalom crossing inside Gaza. We escorted empty trucks through an overcrowded area, on an unnecessarily complicated route that had been set up by Israeli forces. When the trucks lined up at the checkpoint and finally got the green light from Israeli forces to cross, thousands of desperate people joined us, hoping that the trucks would return with food. As we slowly advanced, people clung to cars - until we saw the first dead body, on the side of the road, shot in the back by Israeli forces. At the crossing, the gate was closed. We waited about two hours for a soldier to open it.

That convoy took 15 hours. With other convoys, Israeli forces have delayed the return of trucks - while crowds gathered - while killing desperate people awaiting their arrival. Some of our goods have been looted by armed gangs operating under the supervision of Israeli forces. During the ceasefire, we organized several convoys a day. Now, chaos, killings and obstructions are once again the norm. Aid is vital, but it will never be a cure for the projected shortage.

The ICJ has been clear. With its interim measures, it not only ordered Israel to prevent acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention, but also ordered Israel to urgently enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance, including by increasing aid crossings. In a separate advisory opinion, the ICJ left no room for doubt: the continued occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law. Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are different parts of the same picture.

What is happening is not complicated. It is not inevitable. It is the result of deliberate political choices by those who create these conditions and those who enable them. Ending the occupation is long overdue. The credibility of the multilateral system is being eroded by double standards and impunity. International law cannot be a convenient tool for some, while it aims to be a valuable tool of protection for all.

Gaza is already being suffocated by bombs, starvation and relentless blockades that prevent the essentials of survival. Any delay in implementing the most basic rules aimed at protecting human life is another hand pressing down on Gaza as it struggles to breathe. /Telegraph/

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