Muhannad Hadi, UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, and Antonia De Meo, Deputy Commissioner-General of the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees, UNRWAinformed the Security Council about the dire situation.
“For nearly 10 months now, Palestinians and Israelis have been living in untold suffering, grief, mourning and loss. More than two million people in Gaza remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale,” said Ms. De Meo told ambassadors.
“Their lives are dominated by fear, thirst, hunger, disease, dehumanization, lack of basic sanitation and repeated displacement. It is a relentless and often hourly battle, day in and day out. Famine remains a risk, including in southern Gaza. Communicable diseases are on the rise.”
Deeply traumatized children
The situation is particularly worrying for the 625,000 children in the enclave, who are severely traumatised and whose future is at risk.
Most of the UNRWA schools – places of learning for about half of the children, and now used as shelters for displaced people – have been destroyed or severely damaged in Israeli military operations. Eight have been hit in the past two weeks alone.
Before October 7 last year, the day Hamas and Palestinian armed groups brutally attacked Israeli communities, and the subsequent Israeli military operation, the agency had 183 schools operated through the Gaza Strip.
Reports say more than 38,000 people have been killed and more than 88,000 injured.
Deadly diseases
Moreover, the threat of deadly infectious diseases is increasing by the day as mountains of garbage and sewage flood the settlements of displaced people.
People with pre-existing conditions such as cancer, kidney failure or diabetes are also unable to access the life-saving treatment they need. And tens of thousands of other patients are in urgent need of medical evacuation.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
A wide shot of the Security Council meeting, with Antonia De Meo (left) and Muhannad Hadi (right) on the screen.
Polio threatens
The latest specter to plague children is polio, a debilitating and incurable disease that causes paralysis. This highly contagious disease has been discovered in sewage samples.
Although the disease can be effectively prevented through vaccination, Gaza has a severely damaged and depleted health system, which has resulted in children not receiving the necessary vaccinations.
Although no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action it is “Just a matter of time“ before it reaches the thousands of children left unprotected, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
In response, the UN health agency is sending out one million polio vaccines, which will be administered to children in the coming weeks, conditions permitting.
Providing assistance is an impossible task
Mr Hadi stressed that amid all the death and destruction, humanitarian organisations “are sparing no effort to provide life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable.”
“But there is a gap between what should be done and what humanitarian organizations can do.“The commitment or willingness of the aid workers is not the problem, it is the inability to achieve our mandate, and that is beyond our control,” he warned, highlighting the lack of an enabling environment.
These measures include ensuring the protection of aid workers and the people they are trying to help; the unhindered and safe receipt, dispatch and delivery of all humanitarian assistance; no restrictions on the quantity and type of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza; and visas for all UN staff and employees of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs).
“The list of requirements is long,” he said, adding: “Regardless of what form the conflict takes in the near future, humanitarian organizations must have safe access to populations in need, wherever they are in Gaza, throughout the Strip.”
