Tánaiste urges Israel to lift Gaza aid blockade as region on 'verge of total collapse'
SIMON HARRIS HAS called on Israel to end its two-month blockade of aid entering the Gaza Strip as the Red Cross warns the region is on 'the verge of total collapse'.
The Tánaiste released a statement today, exactly two months into the blockade which the World Health Organisation (WHO) described as an 'abomination'.
Harris posted a strongly-worded statement to X where urged Israel to bring an end to the 'unconscionable' suffering of people in Gaza.
'No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza in over eight weeks as a result of the Israeli blockade,' he began.
'Children are starving. Hospitals are running out of basic painkillers. The World Food Programme has said that its food stocks are now depleted. Life-saving aid is available and urgently needed, but trucks cannot cross into Gaza.'
An aid delivery truck in Gaza during the ceasefire, January 2025.
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Describing the resumption of bombing in the enclave as 'disastrous', Harris called on Israel to obey international law by ending the impasse.
'Ireland calls on Israel to immediately lift the blockade and allow for unimpeded access to humanitarian aid.'
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Israel strictly controls all inflows of international aid vital for the 2.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
It halted aid deliveries to Gaza on 2 March, days before the collapse of a ceasefire that had significantly reduced hostilities after 15 months of war.
Since the start of the blockade, the United Nations has repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
'We have to ask ourselves: How much blood is enough to satisfy whatever the political objectives are,' WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan told reporters in Geneva.
'We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza, because if we don't do something about it we are complicit in what is happening.'
UNIEF Ireland said yesterday that Israel's maintenance of the current aid blockade into Gaza is 'a clear breach of humanitarian law' which it says is causing 'unimaginable horror'.
Pascal Hundt of the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement today: 'Civilians in Gaza are facing an overwhelming daily struggle to survive the dangers of hostilities, cope with relentless displacement, and endure the consequences of being deprived of urgent humanitarian assistance,'.
Supplies are dwindling and the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) last Friday said it had sent out its 'last remaining food stocks' to kitchens.
With reporting from AFP.
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