Irish premier calls for end to war in Gaza describing it as ‘horrific'
It comes following reports of children dying due to malnutrition and starvation in recent days.
Palestinians in Gaza are facing severe shortages of food, water and aid.
It comes after Tanaiste Simon Harris was one of 26 signatories to a joint statement on Monday, which calls for an end to the war in Gaza.
Mr Harris, who is also Minister for Foreign Affairs, said the 'suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths'.
The situation in Gaza is horrific.
The suffering of civilians and the death of innocent children is intolerable.
I echo the call by Foreign Ministers of 28 countries for all hostages to be released, and for a surge in humanitarian aid.
This war must end and it must end now.
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) July 22, 2025
In a social media post, Mr Martin said: 'The situation in Gaza is horrific. The suffering of civilians and the death of innocent children is intolerable.
'I echo the call by foreign ministers of 28 countries for all hostages to be released, and for a surge in humanitarian aid.
'This war must end and it must end now.'
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described Gaza as a 'horror show with a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times'.
He told the Security Council: 'Malnourishment is soaring. Starvation is knocking on every door.
'Now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles.
'That system is being denied the conditions to function. Denied the space to deliver. Denied the safety to save lives.'
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Keir Starmer faces pushback after announcing UK will recognise state of Palestine unless Gaza crisis ends
Update: Date: 2025-07-30T07:54:39.000Z Title: Starmer faces pushback following Palestinian statehood announcement Content: Hello and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. UK prime minister Keir Starmer is facing pushback after announcing the UK will recognise a Palestinian state if the crisis in Gaza is not brought to an end. The prime minister said the UK could take the step of recognising Palestine's statehood in September, before a major UN gathering. The UK will only refrain from doing so if Israel allows more aid into Gaza, stops annexing land in the West Bank, agrees to a ceasefire and signs up to a long-term, peace process over the next two months. Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, must immediately release all remaining Israeli hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and 'accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza', Starmer also said. But the PM's announcement rewards 'Hamas's monstrous terrorism', his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed. In a statement on social media site X, Israel's prime minister added: 'Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails.' Donald Trump, who met Starmer on Monday and discussed measures to end the starvation faced by Palestinians in Gaza, suggested the pair had not talked about recognising Palestinian statehood. But Trump said he did not mind the PM 'taking a position' on the issue. This was a contrast with his reaction to Emmanuel Macron's announcement that France will recognise Palestine at the UN general assembly in September, which the US president said would make no difference. In other news: Transport secretary Heidi Alexander rejected the idea that Keir Starmer's pledge to recognise a Palestinian state is gesture politics. She told Times Radio on Wednesday that the decision to recognise a Palestinian state in September is about making sure it comes at the time of 'maximum impact' and denied that it's a 'reward for Hamas'. Nigel Farage is 'happy for there to be a free for all on the internet', Alexander said on Sky News on Wednesday, as she appeared to double down on her fellow Cabinet minister's claim that the Reform UK leader is on the side of 'people like Jimmy Savile'. Technology secretary Peter Kyle also accused Mr Farage of being on the side of 'extreme pornographers' on Tuesday. Keir Starmer spoke with a series of world leaders throughout Tuesday, including Netanyahu, and King Abdullah II of Jordan, whose nation is leading efforts to airdrop aid into Gaza. About 20 tonnes of aid have been dropped by the UK and Jordan in recent days, according to foreign secretary David Lammy. High-level representatives at the UN conference on Tuesday urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state and gave 'unwavering support' to a two-state solution. The New York Declaration, issued by the conference, sets out a phased plan to end the nearly eight-decade conflict and the ongoing war in Gaza. Foreign states are becoming bolder in their attempts to silence dissidents in the UK and the government must take stronger action, parliamentarians have warned. In a report published on Wednesday, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said transnational repression had increased in recent years, with foreign states using online harassment, lawsuits and physical violence to intimidate people in the UK.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Gaza's aid crisis: Looting, blame and the fight for control
The grainy video shows a flat-bed lorry piled high with cardboard boxes, surrounded by Palestinians. Standing on top of the boxes, clear enough against the sandy backdrop, are two masked figures, both armed with Kalashnikov rifles. The IDF published the footage on Tuesday, saying it showed Hamas 'violently looting humanitarian aid' and 'preventing it reaching the civilian population of Gaza'. Purportedly shot on Friday, the video acts as 'further evidence that Hamas is the primary obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid', the military said. In the maelstrom of claim and counterclaim over Gaza – where foreign journalists are banned – pictures and footage such as this have taken centre stage in the propaganda battle over what is really going on with the delivery of aid. It is an argument that entered a new phase this week, after Israel enacted daily pauses in fighting in three highly populated areas, and established 'safe' corridors, following a torrent of international criticism Hamas says it provides security for aid from looters and gangs. The UN, WHO, dozens of other NGOs, and several of Israel's key allies (Britain included) say that escalating starvation in the Strip is principally caused by Israel's two-and-a-half-month total blockade up to the second half of May, followed by the lethally ineffective US-backed replacement scheme, coupled with a 'trickle' of NGO aid trucks since then. Further arresting imagery emerged on Tuesday, this time taken from a satellite and showing what appeared to be hundreds of people swamping aid trucks in Khan Younis. Gaza's famine was thus 'visible from space'. One thing all sides agree on is that looting is a widespread problem. Mobile phone footage taken on top of a truck also showed hundreds swamping an aid vehicle. Israel claims Hamas is looting the aid in a concerted effort to steal it for its own fighters and to fill its coffers, with a parallel aim of depriving civilians of food, thus enabling 'useful idiots' in the West to accuse the Jewish state of deliberately starving Palestinians. Hamas denies this. However, given the terror group's track record of using Palestinians as human shields, critics say it is unlikely they will not be seizing the food and supplies for themselves when opportunities arise. The UN and the international humanitarian community concedes that there is significant looting of its vehicles, including since the IDF improved access on Sunday. They put this down to a number of factors, including the inevitable instability caused by, they say, Israel's starvation of the civilian population through its military blockade. The organisations also blame what they describe as the IDF's reluctance to work with them to ensure the safety of their convoys, thus reducing the number of truck deliveries they can even attempt, let alone complete. In one sense, this current row was triggered, or at least escalated, by the IDF's publication last week of drone footage of a vast open-air storage site just inside the Gaza perimeter at the Karem Shalom Crossing in the south of the enclave. According to the military, it showed enough aid to fill 1,000 lorries which had been cleared for delivery but left languishing by the UN. The implication was – and this was briefed off the record by certain officials – that the UN either was not capable or could not be bothered to pass the food, clean water, medical supplies and fuel to ordinary Gazans. Some anonymous officials even suggested the UN was privately supportive of Hamas. The UN hit back, saying that, in practice, Israel was placing practical and bureaucratic hurdles in the way of successful deliveries. Towards the end of last week, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a more detailed explanation of what those hurdles allegedly were. One of the principal accusations was that, amid a disintegrating situation in the Strip, the IDF was effectively refusing to work with the UN to provide safe routes for its trucks. Last week, the Times of Israel newspaper quoted one senior Israeli defence official as saying that nearly all of the trucks heading to warehouses of aid organisations and the UN were being looted by Gazan mobs, not Hamas. Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist renowned for his access to senior officials, reported on the N12 channel that, prior to last week, Israel had, in practice, allowed only one route for the 'safe' transfer of aid – where trucks were routinely looted. Some have suggested that this looting was in part instigated by a gang led by Yasser abu Shabab, the Bedouin leader of an anti-Hamas gang which has links to organised crime, and which it has been alleged is armed by Israel. On Tuesday, Al-Araby al-Jadeed, a London-based Arab news outlet, reported that more than half of the Egyptian aid trucks that entered Gaza on Sunday, the first day of the improved access regime, were looted, with their contents sold in local markets. Out of 130 trucks, 73 were looted on or near the Morag Corridor, a key military axis that separates Rafah from Khan Younis and is controlled by the IDF. For those who accuse Israel of a deliberate policy of starvation, which Israel strongly denies, this is further evidence. Images were also released last week of air drops of aid into Gaza. For the first time, Israel, the country controlling access on the ground, participated, sending cargo aircraft to parachute in emergency aid. The IDF published impressive footage showing infrared footage of the drops, emphasising its role in 'facilitating humanitarian assistance'. Inevitably, however, there was a counter-narrative. 'Humiliation', screamed sections of the Israeli press, referring to what they described as Benjamin Netanyahu's volte-face on the ever acrimonious question of aid.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. It couldn't have done it without the west's help
What have we done? As the UN-backed monitor declares that 'the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip', this should have been the question ricocheting between the walls as Keir Starmer met Donald Trump this week. Israel's deliberate starvation of Gaza is, after all, a crime confessed to, designed and implemented in plain sight. Starmer has said the UK will recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel doesn't agree to a ceasefire and a two-state solution, but don't be beguiled: Palestinian national self-determination is an inalienable right, not a bargaining chip, and it's the most symbolic action he could take rather than, say, imposing sweeping sanctions and ending all arms sales. The hand-wringing of western politicians and media outlets will not feed Gaza's emaciated children, any more than it will absolve them of guilt. Israel's leaders have said, explicitly, repeatedly, from the very beginning, that they are deliberately starving Gaza's people. 'Man-made famine is not something that I've seen in my lifetime,' Martin Griffiths, the UN's former humanitarian chief, tells me. On 9 October 2023, Israel's then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced 'a complete siege on [Gaza]: no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel', justified on the grounds: 'We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly'. The next day, the Israeli general charged with humanitarian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank – Ghassan Alian – declared that the 'citizens of Gaza' were 'human beasts' who would suffer 'a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.' The following week, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised 'we will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip'. These statements were not reported at all by many western media outlets – or, if they were, it was in passing and with no explanation given about their objectively illegal intent. It's as though these statements were being uttered in a parallel universe, because if they were accurately covered with due prominence, then our media would have been forced to cover Israel's onslaught as a criminal enterprise, rather than a war of self-defence. Israel's western allies knew exactly what it was up to. In March 2024, our then foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, wrote a letter setting out many ruses used by Israel to block aid from entering Gaza, yet Britain took no action. In April 2024, two US government departments concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking aid, which legally required the administration to stop supplying weapons. This was overruled by Joe Biden's team. Later that year, that same administration sent a public letter detailing Israeli aid obstructions, but Tel Aviv correctly calculated this was political posturing during the presidential election, largely ignored the demands and suffered no consequences for doing so. Israel has perpetrated the biggest slaughter of aid workers in history, killing more than 400 by the spring. It waged a relentless war against Gaza's main humanitarian agency – Unrwa, the UN's Palestinian refugee agency – and banned it from the occupied territories last October. Its military killed police officers charged with escorting aid and preventing looting. It's not just the blocking of aid from entering. Israel's onslaught has left nearly all agricultural land unusable, as well as damaging 80% of cropland. Nearly all livestock and most plant life is dead. Gaza's port and fishing vehicles have been destroyed, and Palestinians defying Israel's ban on fishing face slaughter. The massacre of starving Palestinians looking for aid has been a consistent theme. In February 2024, more than a hundred civilians waiting for flour were butchered by the Israeli military, yet – as been the case throughout the genocide – media outlets treated its denials, deflections and lies as credible claims. A detailed investigation by CNN weeks later concluded what should always have been obvious – the Israeli military was to blame – but by then attention had moved elsewhere. In March this year, Israel imposed a total siege, and replaced the UN's effective aid system with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose 'distribution sites' are dystopian killing fields. As the UN-backed IPC notes, that aid is not only far too little, but it is often unusable because Israel has left Palestinians without cooking gas and clean water to prepare it. More than a thousand civilians have been butchered trying to access this aid. As aid agencies have noted, the GHF is designed to coax a starved population to the south, so they can be confined in what the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert described as a 'concentration camp', before being deported. Despite Israel's obvious, transparent, shameless guilt, its lies are indulged by western politicians and media outlets. On Monday, Donald Trump repeated that 'a lot of the food is stolen' by Hamas. This lie has been contradicted by Cindy McCain, director of the World Food Programme, and widow to the hawkishly pro-Israel late Republican senator John McCain. An internal US government analysis found no proof, and Israeli officials have briefed that their military reached the same conclusion. Perversely, it is criminal gangs backed by Israel – which Netanyahu's own former deputy noted are linked to Islamic State – that are stealing aid. The international criminal court's arrest warrants, issued eight months ago, centred on Israel's deliberate starvation for a reason: the evidence is overwhelming. Yet even if Gaza were suddenly flooded with aid, many Palestinians would die because their bodies have been irreversibly ravaged by hunger. And that is not even on the agenda. The 73 trucks allowed in on Monday were forced to take an unsafe route, and then looted. Our own prime minister has been promoting airdrops of aid. These are pinpricks, badly targeted and have killed Palestinians when they've fallen on their heads. All they really achieve is cover for Israel, to pretend it is doing something, deflecting from its deliberate mass starvation. But what else should we expect from Starmer, who backed Israel's right to impose a siege on Gaza at the beginning of the genocide, then tried to gaslight us into believing he hadn't? What have we done? If western elites had any shame, this question would be robbing them of sleep. And the answer would be straightforward. You facilitated the mass starvation of an entire people. You knew what was happening, because of a deluge of evidence for 21 months, and because the perpetrator – your friend – repeatedly boasted to the world about its crime. Alas, the architects of this abomination will not hold themselves to account. That will be left to history – and the courts. Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
