A UN rights expert warned on Friday that the US proposal to open a temporary port off Gaza in order to bring in aid is a cynical performance for a US audience and will not stop mass famine.
US President Joe Biden announced the project on Thursday at his yearly State of the Union speech, during which he implored Israel to allow more supplies into the blockaded area.
In addition, he supported Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, a militant organization in Palestine.
“A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting in Gaza,” Biden told Congress.
But Michael Fakhri, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, dismissed the measure.
“No one has asked for a maritime pier not the Palestinian people, not the humanitarian aid community,” he told a briefing in Geneva.
The UN has maintained time and over that the only way to stop the spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza is to send huge and continuous relief over land, even after more than five months of fighting.
According to Fakhri, neither a pier nor the growing airdrops over Gaza would “prevent starvation and famine by any definition”.
He noted that such delivery techniques of aid were typically only employed as a last resort to get aid into hostile territory.
That Israel’s main ally is resorting to such a measure “is absurd in a dark, cynical way”, he said.
He suggested the move was likely “a performance to try to meet a domestic audience, with elections around the corner”.
Fakhri is an independent expert mandated by the UN Human Rights Council,but does not speak on behalf of the United Nations.
He accused Israel of mounting “a starvation campaign” in Gaza, where the UN has warned famine is “almost inevitable”.
“I think it is fair to say now that Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he said.
“Every single person in Gaza is hungry right now.”
Following an unprecedented October 7 onslaught by Hamas on southern Israel, which according to Israeli sources resulted in roughly 1,160 deaths, mostly civilians, the war in Gaza broke out.
The health ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, claims that Israel’s relentless attack in retaliation has killed at least 30,878 people, the majority of them were women and children.
