The United Nations humanitarian chief said Friday that the "parallel tragedies" unfolding in Israel and the Gaza Strip over the past 26 days are a "blight on our collective conscience," and appealed for urgent humanitarian pauses to deliver critical aid to Palestinians.
Negotiations among Israel, Egypt, the United States and the U.N. to get aid into Gaza "must continue, but they are not enough," Martin Griffiths told member states. "We must have those pauses."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday there would be no humanitarian pauses until the hostages Hamas abducted during their terror attack on October 7 are released.
"We're continuing with all our force, and Israel is refusing a temporary truce that doesn't include the release of our hostages," he said after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been trying to negotiate more aid to Gaza.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' spokesperson said a halt in fighting to get humanitarian aid in and the immediate and unconditional release of hostages "should not be linked and should not be used as bargaining chips."
The Palestinian envoy said the priority is a cease-fire and appealed to diplomats for international action.
"Now it changed from 'cease-fire' to 'pauses,' which means Israel continues killing the Palestinians, but gave us a few hours every now and then in order to get food and other stuff, but continue the fighting," said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N. who was at the humanitarian meeting.
Humanitarian imperatives
U.N. aid chief Griffiths recently returned from the region where he met families of some of the 240 Israeli and foreign hostages that Hamas is holding. He said each day is full of anxiety and uncertainty for the families.
"This is a humanitarian issue of the highest importance — finding these people and getting them home," Griffiths said, reiterating U.N. calls for their immediate and unconditional release.
Israel has said it will destroy Hamas, following Hamas's surprise attack on Israeli towns and settlements on October 7 that killed 1,400 people. Its military has been conducting heavy airstrikes on parts of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and expanded its ground operation a week ago.
The Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza has put the resulting death toll at more than 9,000 Palestinians. It says more than 3,700 children are among the dead.
Israel has also imposed a blockade on the territory, only recently relaxing it to allow just over 300 trucks with food, water and medicine to enter from Egypt in the past 13 days for the population of more than 2.2 million.
The U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, UNRWA, has remained in Gaza and is housing nearly 700,000 displaced people in 150 shelters across the Strip. UNRWA's Gaza director, Thomas White, has traveled across the besieged territory over the past few weeks and described desperate scenes.
"It is a scene of death and destruction," he told diplomats. "Let's be very clear: There is no place that is safe in Gaza right now.
He said that includes shelters with the U.N. flag flying over them; more than 50 have been damaged in strikes and shelling since the war started.
White said sewage is beginning to overflow in the streets, posing a health hazard. Hospitals have patients on every flat surface, including the floor, and their courtyards shelter displaced families while the dead are laid out in "open air morgues" just a few meters away. Food and water are in short supply.
"Now people are beyond looking for bread, it's looking for water," White said.
The United Nations will put out a call next week for $1.2 billion to assist Gaza and the West Bank until the end of this year.
France announced that it will organize an international conference in Paris on November 9 that will focus on modalities for the delivery of aid, as well as being a pledging conference.
Mounting anger
Anger continues to grow, especially among Arab and Muslim nations, at international failure to stop the war and get more aid into Gaza.
"Depriving more than 2 million civilians from food, water, [and] fuel is a war crime," said Libyan Ambassador Taher El-Sonni, who currently chairs the Arab group of nations at the U.N. "We have to say that. That is a war crime. If it's not, then what is?"
Pakistan's envoy said Gaza has become "a killing zone."
"This is unfortunately a people who suffered the Holocaust, a people who suffered the genocide, committing the modern genocide, and we must call it for what it is," Ambassador Munir Akram said.
Palestinian envoy Mansour told reporters that the Muslim nations in the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation have discussed halting oil sales to Israel since it is preventing fuel from reaching Gaza's hospitals and humanitarian agencies. Several OIC members, including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Gabon, Egypt and Nigeria, sell oil to Israel.
Israel has banned fuel from entering Gaza, saying Hamas has a stockpile of 500,000 liters and will divert new supplies for its war machine.
On October 27, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly voted for "an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities" for Gaza. Diplomats called for its implementation.
