Latest news with #AmjadAl-Shawa
The National
5 days ago
- Politics
- The National
Gaza aid chief: 'Israel herding Palestinians into concentration camps'
Amjad Al-Shawa, the head of the Palestinian Network of NGOs, said that Israel was trying to lure Gazans in the north to the south of the territory with its 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' – then imprison them. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is an American organisation which has been at the centre of an international scandal where Palestinians trying to reach food at its sites have been shot at and killed. It is backed by both the US and Israeli governments as a way of getting around the United Nations as the main distributor of food in the territory – and has been condemned by a number of humanitarian organisations, including Christian Aid and Amnesty International. Speaking from Gaza via a video link to a press conference in London on Thursday, said that Israel planned to 'starve' Palestinians in the north in a bid to move them to the south, consistent with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's (below) plans to colonise the region. He said: 'They starve Palestinians under the famine they went to catch up some aid which was distributed in these military sites, mainly in Rafah, south of Netzarim, they were shot and killed' Al-Shawa added: 'This mechanism is to serve the Israeli plan, to force displacement for the Palestinians from Gaza's north – and this was clearly declared by Netanyahu himself. READ MORE: BBC issues statement after staff 'held at gunpoint and strip searched ' by IDF 'The first step of that is displacement and the second to have concentration camps on the south for the Palestinians under the security measures of the Israeli occupation forces.' The Gazan humanitarian worker hit out at Israel for replacing a 'humanitarian structure' with 'military companies'. The GHF announced on Thursday it would reopen two distribution centres – despite the Israeli military previously declaring that the routes leading to them were 'considered combat zones'. An open letter signed by 11 charities in May called the GHF a 'sham', while UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher described it as a 'cynical sideshow'. The letter, published before people were killed trying to access GHF centres, said: 'Despite branding itself as 'independent' and 'transparent', the GHF would be wholly dependent on Israeli coordination and operates via Israeli-controlled entry points, primarily the Port of Ashdod and the Kerem Shalom/Karem Abu Salem crossing. 'This entrenches and legitimises the very structures of control that are responsible for cutting Gaza off from food, fuel, and medicine.' Amnesty International has accused the organisation of 'inhumane and politically motivated methods of aid delivery'. The US and Israeli governments were approached for comment.
Saba Yemen
03-06-2025
- General
- Saba Yemen
Palestinian body warns of severe famine crisis in Gaza Strip
Gaza - Saba: Amjad Al-Shawa, Director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO), stated that famine is worsening at an extremely dangerous rate in the Gaza Strip, warning of its catastrophic effects on the lives of children, women, and the elderly. In a press statement on Tuesday, Al-Shawa added that the Israeli enemy is systematically targeting schools, particularly those affiliated with UNRWA, which have served as shelters for displaced Palestinians amid repeated forced evacuation orders imposed by the enemy's military. He pointed out that 90% of UNRWA schools have been targeted, along with government schools, resulting in the deaths and injuries of thousands of Palestinians. Entire families have been killed in areas where civilians sought refuge, with the Israeli enemy attacking nearly 300 schools in Gaza since the start of the aggression. Al-Shawa emphasized that the Israeli enemy continues to escalate its killing operations against the Palestinian people, whether through bombardment or the humanitarian catastrophe it has imposed on the residents of Gaza. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print more of (International)
Kuwait Times
10-05-2025
- General
- Kuwait Times
Hunger, lack of supplies in Gaza as 105 martyred
GAZA: Dozens of community kitchens in Gaza shut their doors on Thursday due to a lack of supplies, closing off a lifeline used by hundreds of thousands of people in a further blow to efforts to combat growing hunger in the enclave. The move followed hours after the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity announced that it had run out of the ingredients necessary to provide much-needed free meals and had been prevented by the Zionist entity from bringing in aid. Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) in Gaza, told Reuters that most of the enclave's 170 community kitchens had shut down after running out of stock due to the Zionist entity's continued blockade on Gaza. Shawa said the decision by the WCK, announced late on Wednesday, and the closure of community kitchens on Thursday would cause a drop of between 400,000 to 500,000 free meals per day for the 2.3 million population. 'Everyone in Gaza today is hungry. The world must act now to save the people here,' said Shawa, speaking to Reuters by phone from Gaza. 'The remaining kitchens will be closing soon. The hunger catastrophe is beyond words. People are losing their lone source of food,' Shawa added. Meanwhile, first responders in Gaza said Thursday that their operations were at a near standstill. 'Seventy-five percent of our vehicles have stopped operating due to a lack of diesel fuel,' the civil defense agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. He added that its teams, who play a critical role as first responders in the Gaza Strip, were also facing a 'severe shortage of electricity generators and oxygen devices'. Those Gazans trying to cook independently meanwhile complain that flour still available on the market is contaminated. 'The flour is full of mites and sand ... We sieve it three, four times, instead of once, so we can bake it,' said Mohammad Abu Ayesh, a displaced father of nine from northern Gaza.'We don't want to eat from it, but we feed the children, for the children. You can't tolerate its smell, cattle and animals would not eat it, we are forced to eat it against our will, we are helpless,' he told Reuters. On Thursday, the Gaza health ministry said Zionist military strikes across the enclave killed at least 105 people in the past 24 hours, in one of the biggest death tolls in a single day in two months. It added that more than 52,700 people have been killed by the Zionist entity since the war began on Oct 7, 2023. Senior civil defense official Mohammad Mughayyir told AFP that Zionist bombardment across Gaza on Thursday killed 21 people, including nine in a strike that targeted the Abu Rayyan family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia. In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian woman Huda Abu Diyya has just returned from a visit to a community kitchen where she received what the owners told her would be her family's last meal. 'If it weren't for the community kitchen, we would have died. For the sake of our children, what shall we do? ... What should I feed them tomorrow?' the woman told Reuters. 'Nothing is available here. Everything became so expensive, we have nothing here. The situation is below zero. A bit more like this and we will die of hunger,' she added. Two weeks ago most of the population relied on one and a half meals per day, but in the past few days that has dropped to one meal a day, and even that will lack meat, vegetables or the necessary healthy components, said Shawa. 'The free meals are usually rice or lentils, that is now also at risk of being suspended within the next week. I am afraid that we may begin to witness deaths among elderly, vulnerable children, pregnant women, and the ill,' said Shawa. 'It is unacceptable that humanitarian aid is not allowed into the Gaza Strip,' Pierre Krahenbuhl, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told reporters in Geneva Thursday. The situation in Gaza is on a 'razor's edge' and 'the next few days are absolutely decisive', he added. The UN's agency for children, UNICEF, warned that Gaza's children face 'a growing risk of starvation, illness and death' after UN-supported kitchens shut down due to lack of food supplies. Over 20 independent experts mandated by the UN's Human Rights Council demanded action on Wednesday to avert the 'annihilation' of Palestinians in Gaza. On Thursday, Palestinians waited in line to donate blood at a field hospital in Gaza's southern city of Khan Yunis, an AFP journalist reported. 'In these difficult circumstances, we have come to support the injured and sick, amid severe food shortages and a lack of proteins, by donating blood', Moamen Al-Eid, a Palestinian waiting in the line, told AFP. Hind Joba, the hospital's laboratory head, said that 'there is no food or drink, the crossings are closed, and there is no access to nutritious or protein-rich food'. 'Still, people responded to the call, fulfilling their humanitarian duty by donating blood' despite the toll on their own bodies, she added. 'But this blood is vital, and they know that every drop helps save the life of an injured person.' – Agencies
Leaders
08-05-2025
- General
- Leaders
Israel's Aid Blockade Forces Community Kitchens to Close in Gaza
Israel's total blockade on humanitarian aid entry into Gaza forced dozens of community kitchens in the Strip to end their operations on Thursday after they ran out of stock, reported Reuters. Late on Wednesday, the World Central Kitchen (WCK), a US-based charity, also shut its kitchens after it had run out of necessary supplies to provide free meals to the people of the war-battered enclave. Community Kitchens Closure The lack of supplies, resulting from Israel's aid blockade, has forced most of Gaza's 170 community kitchens to shut down, the director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) in Gaza, Amjad Al-Shawa, told Reuters. Al-Shawa warned that the closure of community kitchens in Gaza would cut daily free meals by 400,000 to 500,000 for the 2.3 million population. 'Everyone in Gaza today is hungry. The world must act now to save the people here,' he said. 'The remaining kitchens will be closing soon. The hunger catastrophe is beyond words. People are losing their lone source of food,' Al-Shawa told Reuters. Israel's Aid Blockade On March 2, 2025, Israel imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid entry into Gaza, before resuming its military operations in the Strip on March 18, to increase pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages. The blockade has exacerbated malnutrition and hunger, with rights groups warning that the blockade was a 'starvation tactic' and a potential war crime, according to the Associated Press (AP). Hunger Looming In April, the UN World Food Program said that it had run out of food stocks in Gaza under the Israeli blockade, ending a critical lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Moreover, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA warned that more than 2 million people face severe food shortages in Gaza. 'The free meals are usually rice or lentils, that is now also at risk of being suspended within the next week. I am afraid that we may begin to witness deaths among elderly, vulnerable children, pregnant women, and the ill,' Al-Shawa told Reuters. Short link : Post Views: 5
Arab News
01-05-2025
- Health
- Arab News
Looting of Gaza stores signals worsening hunger crisis
CAIRO: Increased looting of food stores and community kitchens in the Gaza Strip shows growing desperation as hunger spreads two months after Israel cut off supplies to the Palestinian territory, aid officials say. Palestinian residents and aid officials said at least five incidents of looting took place across the enclave on Wednesday, including at community kitchens, merchants' stores, and the UN Palestinian refugee agency's (UNRWA) main complex in Gaza. Israeli forces are continuing their aerial and ground offensive across Gaza in the war with Palestinian militant group Hamas that began nearly 19 months ago. Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed at least 12 people, the territory's health ministry said. The looting 'is a grave signal of how serious things have become in the Gaza Strip — the spread of hunger, the loss of hope and desperation among residents as well as the absence of the authority of the law,' said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) in Gaza. Thousands of displaced people broke into the UNRWA complex in Gaza City late on Wednesday, stealing medicines from its pharmacy and damaging vehicles, said Louise Wateridge, a senior official for the agency based in Jordan. 'The looting, while devastating, is not surprising in the face of total systemic collapse. We are witnessing the consequences of a society brought to its knees by prolonged siege and violence,' she said in a statement shared with Reuters. Hamas deployed thousands of police and security forces across Gaza after a ceasefire took effect in January, but its armed presence shrunk sharply since Israel resumed large-scale attacks in March. Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza Hamas-run government media office, described the looting incidents as 'isolated individual practices that do not reflect the values and ethics of our Palestinian people.' He said that despite being targeted, Gaza authorities were 'following up on these incidents and addressing them in a way that ensures the preservation of order and human dignity.' CHILD MALNUTRITION Thawabta said Israel, which since March 2 has blocked the entry of medical, fuel, and food supplies into Gaza, was to blame. Israel says its move was aimed at pressuring Hamas to free hostages as the ceasefire agreement stalled. Israel has previously denied that Gaza was facing a hunger crisis. It has not made clear when and how aid will be resumed. Israel's military accuses Hamas of diverting aid, which Hamas denies. The United Nations warned earlier this week that acute malnutrition among Gaza's children was worsening. Community kitchens that have provided lifelines for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are at risk of closure due to lack of supplies, and face an additional threat from looting. 'This is going to undermine the ability of the community kitchens to provide meals to a great number of families, and an indication that things have reached an unprecedentedly difficult level,' PNGO's Shawa told Reuters. More than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's campaign in Gaza, Palestinian officials say. It was launched after thousands of Hamas-led gunmen attacked communities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Much of the narrow coastal enclave has been reduced to rubble, leaving hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in tents or bombed-out buildings.
