‘Hungry aid staff fainting' as starvation spreads in Gaza and truce hopes fade

The Guardian

6 days ago

The head of the main UN agency serving Palestinians has said his frontline staff are fainting from hunger, as the number of people dying of starvation in Gaza continued to rise and hopes for a ceasefire faded as negotiations collapsed.
'This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave … when caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing,' Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), said on Thursday.
At least 45 people have died of hunger in the last four days. The UN and aid groups blame Israel's blockade of almost all aid into the territory for the lack of food.
Lazzarini said in a statement that a colleague in the territory had told him: 'People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.'
He said Unrwa had the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies waiting in Jordan and Egypt and urged Israel to allow 'humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza'.
Reports of people fainting and dropping dead of hunger have emerged in recent days. Civil defence workers have released photographs of gaunt bodies with little more than skin covering their bones.
Medical sources in Gaza said two more people had died of hunger on Thursday, both of whom had been ill and had not eaten for days.
As international pressure mounted for a breakthrough to end nearly two years of devastating war, Emmanuel Macron announced France would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly in September.
'True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine. I will make a formal announcement at the United Nations General Assembly in September,' the French president wrote on X and Instagram.
Earlier, Israel and the US announced they were recalling their negotiators from Doha, where peace talks were being held. The US envoy, Steve Witkoff, accused Hamas of not acting in good faith.
'We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza,' he wrote on X.
He said the US would consider 'alternative options' to recover the hostages and 'create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza' without elaborating on what those alternatives might be.
Witkoff's announcement came after Hamas sent its response on the latest ceasefire proposal to mediators. It was an abrupt about-face to the optimism earlier in the day, when the Associated Press reported an Israeli official saying the Hamas proposal was workable.
Witkoff had also been scheduled to meet the top Israeli adviser, Ron Dermer, and the Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Sardinia, which was regarded as a positive sign for the ceasefire talks. It was unclear if or when those meetings would still happen.
Hamas's proposal included requests on the number of prisoners exchanged, the agencies to be allowed to distribute aid in Gaza and a permanent end to the war rather than a ceasefire, Israeli media reported.
The group's demands came as global pressure mounted on Israel to stop fighting and a growing number of countries expressed horror at the scenes of starvation in the territory.
A Palestinian official close to the talks told Reuters the Hamas response was 'flexible, positive and took into consideration the growing suffering in Gaza and the need to stop the starvation'. A Hamas source said the proposal included a fresh roadmap for a prisoner exchange, which it told Reuters was a top priority for the group.
The Israeli Hostage Families Forum, representing the families of those held in Gaza, issued a statement of concern at the news that negotiators had been recalled and urged a ceasefire to be reached quickly.
'Each day that passes endangers the hostages' chances of recovery and risks losing the ability to locate the fallen or gain vital intelligence about them,' it said.
The deal that was under consideration is expected to involve a 60-day ceasefire during which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 others in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Talks would be held during the ceasefire period to reach a lasting truce and aid supplies to the besieged strip would be increased.
It has only been since the end of the war between Iran and Israel last month that the serious prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza has emerged. As negotiations continued, Israeli attacks increased. At least 89 people were killed in the last 24 hours as Israeli airstrikes pounded central Gaza, health authorities said.
Israel says the global media is exaggerating the scale of the hunger crisis, even though aid groups and pictures coming from Gaza show clear evidence of starvation and doctors who treat malnourished children say they are unable to get enough to eat themselves.
Israel only lets a trickle of aid into Gaza, the vast majority of which is distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US firm. GHF operates four food distribution points staffed by US mercenaries, a system which has been described as a death trap.
More than 1,000 people seeking aid have been killed trying to access supplies in the nearly two months since GHF began operating in Gaza.
Aid was formerly distributed through more than 400 distribution points under a UN-led system, but Israel has all but stopped UN aid into the territory since March. Israel accuses Hamas of stealing UN aid, a claim for which humanitarians say there is little evidence.
Aid groups say GHF, which was meant to replace the UN, lacks the capacity to do so and that its militarised model violates key humanitarian principles.
Restoring the UN aid system as a part of a ceasefire deal is a key Hamas demand. Israeli negotiators have softened their stance on the issue as pressure grows even within Israel to stop the starvation crisis, which the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described on Wednesday as man-made.
Thousands of Israeli demonstrators carrying bags of flour and pictures of Palestinian children who died of starvation protested in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, calling for an end to the Gaza blockade.
Hamas is also calling for a ceasefire deal to include a permanent end to the Gaza war, something that Israel has refused.
A ceasefire deal is unpopular among the more extreme members of Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet and Israel has sought to keep open the possibility of restarting the war after the ceasefire period.