A ceasefire is nowhere on the horizon. Nor is any real commitment to get aid into Gaza, particularly in the north where hunger has taken the greatest toll (on 28 February, UN World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told<\/a> the Security Council that there is a \u2018real prospect of famine [in northern Gaza] by May, with over 500,000 people at risk if the threat is allowed to materialise\u2019). Around 155 trucks of aid are entering<\/a> Gaza per day \u2013 well below the 500-truck daily capacity at the crossing \u2013 with only a few of them going to northern Gaza. Israeli soldiers have been ruthless. On 29 February, when aid trucks arrived at the Al-Nabulsi roundabout (on the southwestern edge of Gaza City, in northern Gaza) and desperate people rushed to them, Israeli troops opened fire<\/a> and killed<\/a> at least 118 unarmed civilians. This is now known as the Flour Massacre. Airdrops of food are not only inadequate in volume, but they have resulted in their own heartbreaks<\/a>, with some parcels landing in the Mediterranean Sea and others crushing at least five people to death.<\/p>\n As if from nowhere, US President Joe Biden announced<\/a> in his State of the Union address on 7 March that his country would build a \u2018temporary pier\u2019 in southern Gaza to facilitate the entry of aid through the sea. The context for this decision, which Biden omitted, is clear: Israel is not permitting the bare minimum of humanitarian aid to pass through land crossings, Israel destroyed<\/a> the Gaza harbour on 10 October, and Israel pulverised the Gaza airport at Dahaniya in 2006. This decision is certainly not from nowhere. It also comes in the midst of the campaign<\/a> for democrats in the US to vote \u2018uncommitted\u2019 in the ongoing primaries to make it clear that the US\u2019s complicity in the genocide will negatively impact Biden\u2019s re-election effort. Although one loaf of bread is better than none, these loaves of bread will come to Gaza stained in blood.<\/p>\n There is a hollowness to Biden\u2019s pronouncement. Once aid arrives at this \u2018temporary pier\u2019, how will it be distributed? The main institutions in Gaza capable of any mass-scale distribution are UNRWA \u2013 now defunded by most Western countries \u2013 and the Hamas-led Palestinian government \u2013 which Western countries have set out to destroy. Since neither will be able to distribute humanitarian aid on the ground (and, as Biden said<\/a>, \u2018no US boots will be on the ground\u2019), what will become of the aid?<\/p>\n Fathi Ghaben (1947\u20132024), Ray of Glory<\/i>, n.d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n UNRWA has been at work since shortly after UN resolution 302 (IV)<\/a> was passed in 1949, since which time it has been the main organisation to provide relief to Palestinian refugees<\/a> (of which there were 750,000 when UNRWA began its operations and of which there are 5.9 million today). UNRWA\u2019s mandate is precise: it must ensure the well-being of Palestinians but cannot operate to permanently settle them outside their homes. That is because UN resolution 194<\/a> affords Palestinians the \u2018right to return\u2019 to their homes from which they were ejected by the Israeli state. Although UNRWA\u2019s main work has been in the field of education (two thirds of its 30,000 staff work for UNRWA schools), it is also the organisation most equipped to handle aid distribution.<\/p>\n The West allowed for the creation of UNRWA not because of any particular concern for Palestinians, but because \u2013 as the US Department of State noted<\/a> in 1949 \u2013 the \u2018conditions of unrest and despair would provide a most fertile hotbed for the implantation of Communism\u2019. That is why the West provided funds for UNRWA (although, since 1966, this has come with severe restrictions). In early 2024, most Western countries cut<\/a> their funding to UNRWA based on an unsubstantiated accusation tying UNRWA employees to the 7 October attack. Though it has recently come to light<\/a> that the Israeli army tortured UNRWA employees, such as through waterboarding and beatings, and forced them to make these confessions, most of the countries that cut their funding based on these grounds have failed to reinstate it (with the exception of Canada and Sweden, which have recently resumed<\/a> their funding). Meanwhile, several Global South countries \u2013 led by Brazil<\/a> \u2013 have increased their contributions.<\/p>\n Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who ran UNRWA from 2010 to 2014, recently said<\/a> that if \u2018UNRWA is not permitted to work, or is defunded, I can hardly see who can substitute [it]\u2019. No humanitarian relief programme for Palestinians in Gaza is possible in the short run without UNRWA\u2019s full partnership. Anything else is a public relations sham.<\/p>\n Majd Arandas (1994\u20132023), My Grandmother<\/em>, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Reading about the famine in Gaza, I remembered a poem written by Wis\u0142awa Szymborska (1923\u20132012) about the Szebnie concentration camp in Jas\u0142o (southern Poland), which held Polish Jews, Romani people, and Soviet prisoners of war from 1941 until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in September 1944. Brutal, horrible violence was inflicted by the Nazis at Szebnie, particularly against the thousands of Jews who were killed there in mass executions. Szymborska\u2019s poem, \u2018Starvation Camp Near Jas\u0142o\u2019 (1962), does not flinch from the wretchedness surrounding her, nor from the possibility of humanity for which she yearned.<\/p>\n Write it down. Write it. With ordinary ink It became flesh right here, on this meadow. At night a sickle glistened in the sky ****************************************<\/p>\n The paintings and photograph were created by Palestinian artists killed in Gaza during the ongoing Israeli genocide. They have died, but we must live<\/a> to tell their stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n _______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Gaza-Peace-2021-Heba-Zagout-israel-genocide-palestine.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\non ordinary paper: they weren\u2019t given food,
\nthey all died of hunger. All. How many?<\/em>
\nIt\u2019s a large meadow. How much grass<\/em>
\nper head?<\/em> Write down: I don\u2019t know.
\nHistory rounds off skeletons to zero.
\nA thousand and one is still only a thousand.
\nThat one<\/em> seems never to have existed:
\na fictitious foetus, an empty cradle,
\na primer opened for no one,
\nair that laughs, cries, and grows,
\nstairs for a void bounding out to the garden,
\nno one\u2019s spot in the ranks.<\/p>\n
\nBut the meadow\u2019s silent, like a witness who\u2019s been bought.
\nSunny. Green. A forest close at hand,
\nwith wood to chew on, drops beneath the bark to drink \u2013
\na view served round the clock,
\nuntil you go blind. Above, a bird
\nwhose shadow flicked its nourishing wings
\nacross their lips. Jaws dropped,
\nteeth clattered.<\/p>\n
\nand reaped the dark for dreamed-of loaves.
\nHands came flying from blackened icons,
\neach holding an empty chalice.
\nA man swayed
\non a grill of barbed wire.
\nSome sang, with dirt in their mouths. That lovely song<\/em>
\nabout war hitting you straight in the heart.<\/em>
\nWrite how quiet it is.
\nYes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a> Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at<\/em> Globetrotter. He is the director of <\/em>Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research<\/em><\/a> and a senior non-resident fellow at <\/em>Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies<\/em><\/a>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations<\/a> and <\/em>The Poorer Nations<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Washington Bullets<\/a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/a>Heba Zagout (1984\u20132023) – Gaza Peace<\/p><\/div>\n
\nIn the face of looming famine, Biden\u2019s promise to build a \u2018temporary pier\u2019 to allow aid into Gaza is hollow and\u00a0 hypocritical, undermined by his country\u2019s complicity in Israel\u2019s genocide against the Palestinians.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n14 Mar 2024<\/em> – On 4 March, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini presented his startling report<\/a> on the situation in Gaza (Palestine) to the UN General Assembly. In just 150 days, Lazzarini said, Israeli forces have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them children. Those who survive continue to face Israel\u2019s attacks and are afflicted with the traumas of war. The four horsemen of the apocalypse described in the Bible\u2019s Book of Revelation \u2013 Conquest, War, Famine, and Death \u2013 are now galloping from one end of Gaza to the other.\u2018Hunger is everywhere\u2019, Lazzarini said. \u2018A man-made famine is looming\u2019. A few days after Lazzarini made his blunt assessment, Gaza\u2019s Ministry of Health reported<\/a> that child malnutrition levels in the northern part of the strip are \u2018particularly extreme\u2019. The UN\u2019s Humanitarian Coordinator for Palestine Jamie McGoldrick said<\/a> that \u2018hunger has reached catastrophic levels\u2019 and \u2018children are dying from hunger\u2019. By the end of the first week of March, at least twenty children had died due to starvation. Among them was ten-year-old Yazan al-Kafarna of Beit Hanoun (northern Gaza), who died<\/a> in Rafah (southern Gaza) on the same day that Lazzarini spoke at the UN. The image of Yazan\u2019s emaciated body tore into the already battered conscience of our world. Story upon ugly story pile up alongside the rubble produced by Israeli bombing. Dr Mohammed Salha of Al-Awda hospital, where Yazan died, says<\/a> that many pregnant women suffering from malnutrition have birthed stillborn foetuses or have required caesarean operations to remove them \u2013 without anaesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n