Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher today (13 May) asked the Security Council Members “to reflect for a moment on what action we will tell future generations we each took to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.”

Fletcher, briefing the Council on the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave, said, “Israel is deliberately un unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory. For more than ten weeks. Nothing has entered Gaza. No food, medicine, water, or tents. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have again been forcibly displaced and confined into ever shrinking spaces, as 70 percent of Gaza's territory is either within Israeli militarized zones or under displacement orders.”

The humanitarian official said Israel denies humanitarians access, “placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians.”

He said, “we have lifesaving supplies ready now at the borders. We can save hundreds of thousands of survivors. We have rigorous mechanisms to ensure our aid gets to civilians, and not to Hamas. But

He asked Council Members, “what more evidence do you need now? Will you act decisively to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law? Or will you say instead that we did all we could?”

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director of its Liaison Office with the United Nations, Angélica Jácome, told the Council that “agrifood systems have collapsed in the Gaza Strip while food prices have soared.”

Jácome said, “we are witnessing the systemic breakdown of conditions essential for survival. People in Gaza are not only experiencing lack of food, but they are going through a profound breakdown of health, livelihood, and social structures, leaving entire communities in a state of desperation, devastation, and death.”

Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the Council that “930,000 children are at critical risk of famine” in Gaza, “not because there is no food. Food is there. A few meters away. Rotting instead of reaching those who desperately need it. But because Israel has been openly and brazenly blocking humanitarian aid for over two months now.”

Mansour said, “this is engineered starvation. It is the most inhumane form of torture and killing.”

He noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee of the Israeli Knesset on Sunday “we are destroying more and more homes. They have nowhere to return to. The only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to immigrate outside of the Gaza Strip.”

For his part, Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon said, “we will not accept a humanitarian mechanism that props up the terror organization that butchered our people. We will not sit idly by as food, fuel and funds meant for civilians are funnelled into the Hamas terror machine. We will never allow our morality to be weaponized against us again.”

Danon said Secretary-General António Guterres had “refused to engage” in a new humanitarian distribution plan proposed by Israel, alleging that the plan “in his view, does not meet the principles of and I quote, ‘impartiality, humanity, independence and neutrality.”

The Israeli Ambassador said, “the irony is unbelievable, as the previous mechanism made a mockery of every one of those principles. That is not diplomacy. That is not neutrality. That is sabotage disguised as principle.”

Danon said, “to Secretary-General Guterres I say this; the aid that ended up in Hamas hands did not bring hope. It did not bring progress. It brought death. That path leads nowhere, Mr. Guterres, you are invited to return to the table. But if you do come with open eyes, and open ears, something can be achieved.”