Detail from Gaza, Photo: Reuters
Britain and more than 20 other countries called on Wednesday for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and criticized the Israeli government’s model for delivering aid after hundreds of Palestinians were killed near a food distribution site.
France, Italy, Japan, Australia, Canada, Denmark and other countries said more than 800 Palestinians were killed while seeking aid and condemned what they called the “drop-by-drop aid delivery and the inhumane killing of civilians.”
Most of those killed were near the sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which the United States (US) and Israel supported to take over the distribution of aid in Gaza from the United Nations (UN)-led network.
“The Israeli government’s model of providing aid is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives the people of Gaza of their human dignity,” the countries’ foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
The call for an end to the war and the way Israel provides aid comes from several countries that are allies of Israel and its most important supporter, the US.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation uses private American security and logistics companies to deliver supplies to Gaza, largely bypassing the UN-led system, which Israel says has allowed Hamas-led militants to loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the accusations.
The UN has called the GHF model unsafe and a violation of standards of humanitarian impartiality, which the GHF denies.
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