World outrage grows as Israel continues to weaponise aid to Gaza

The tide of international public opinion turning against Israel’s reportedly indiscriminate 19-month slaughter and starvation of Gaza’s population of more than two million – trapped inside the world’s largest open-air prison of 41km by 6km to 12km – has swelled into a tsunami as Israel’s strongest allies collectively turn on its government.

Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza for decades but a complete two-month blockade of aid convoys with rotting food on Gaza’s borders, the UN issuing dire warnings of mass starvation and the growing illegal settlements and settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, appear to have forced their hand.

Following pressure from Israel’s strongest ally, the US, which provides the Jewish state with nearly $4-billion in aid annually as well as several other military packages worth billions, Tel Aviv allowed a small amount of aid into Gaza at the beginning of the week. The UN, however, has warned that 14,000 babies are at risk of dying in the next few days if significant aid isn’t let in.

Before Hamas’s attack on southern Israel in October 2023 up to 500 trucks of aid were entering the besieged territory daily.

On Monday, the UK, France and Canada threatened concrete action and targeted sanctions against Israel if it didn’t stop its renewed military offensive and continued to block significant aid from entering Gaza. 

“We will not stand by” while the government of Benjamin Netanyahu pursues those actions, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a joint statement.

The statement also reiterated support for a ceasefire and a “two-state solution”, whereby a Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel, reported Euro News.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said “immediate and massive aid was needed” in Gaza.

On Monday, during an interview with France’s Inter Radio, Barrot said Israel’s partial lifting of the blockade on Monday was “totally insufficient”.

Following the threats, Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, lashed out at the leaders of France, the UK and Canada, calling them antiSemites and hypocrites and accused them of “morally aligning themselves with a terrorist organisation”.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu remained defiant and stated that Israel would not bow to any international pressure and that its military campaign to control all of Gaza would continue.

The UK then followed up with its threats and suspended new trade talks with Israel and imposed sanctions on several settlers and settler organisations that have been involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and the destruction of their homes and livestock, which has led to the displacement of dozens of communities, comprising thousands of people.

Simultaneously the European Union (EU) decided to review its trade agreement with Israel in light of its blockade preventing humanitarian aid getting into Gaza.

Dutch diplomats led the charge following a huge demonstration over the weekend outside The Hague, where the International Court of Justice is investigating charges of alleged genocide by Israel.

Read more: Israel-Palestine War

A joint donor statement by the European Commission on Tuesday said: “Israel’s security cabinet had reportedly approved a new model for delivering aid into Gaza, which the UN and our humanitarian partners cannot support.”

At the beginning of the week Israel allowed about five trucks of aid to enter, a number that was ridiculed by Amnesty International as insignificant.

The human rights group said “it was outrageous and morally reprehensible that it took the world nearly 80 days of starvation in Gaza to exert enough pressure on Israel to let some aid in”.

And still, “letting in a handful of aid trucks – a drop in the ocean, while simultaneously intensifying military operations is a cynical attempt to sugarcoat Israel’s ongoing genocide,” Amnesty said.

The European Commission statement clarified that they would not “participate in any arrangement that does not fully respect humanitarian principles”. 

“Humanitarian principles matter for every conflict around the world and should be applied consistently in every warzone.” 

The UN raised concerns that the proposed Israeli model cannot deliver aid effectively, at the speed and scale required. 

“It places beneficiaries and aid workers at risk, undermines the role and independence of the UN and our trusted partners, and links humanitarian aid to political and military objectives. Humanitarian aid should never be politicised, and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change,” the commission said. 

Critics of Israel’s proposed new aid policy to Gaza argued that its delivery mechanism was a “political farce and a military tool” since it would force Gazans, including the elderly, sick, injured and those missing limbs to make the journey to the south of Gaza where they would be screened by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as to who could and could not receive aid. 

They also stated that forcing Gazans south was part of Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and drive out as many Palestinians as possible, as outlined in an Israeli Intelligence Ministry plan issued shortly after the Hamas attack and investigated by Israeli journalists.

Israel has argued that Hamas diverts much of the aid, a claim rejected by the UN, with further reports that aid convoys, escorted by Hamas personnel to ensure protection from looters, had come under repeated attacks from the IDF.

In early May, in another incident, a humanitarian flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza was attacked by a suspected Israeli drone off the coast of Malta, following Israeli military flights over the area.

While Israel has repeatedly denied that it limits aid to Gaza, some officers in the Israeli military have concluded that Gaza could face widespread starvation if the delivery of food aid was not restored in the coming weeks, The New York Times reported, citing three Israeli defence officials familiar with conditions in the strip.

Former Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon also accused his country’s military of carrying out war crimes in Gaza.

Another former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, and head of the Israel Democratic Party, Yair Golan, admitted to committing war crimes in Gaza: “A sane country does not kill infants as a hobby. Israel is on its way to becoming a pariah like South Africa in the past.

“These things are simply appalling,” he continued. “It cannot be that we, the Jewish people – who have suffered persecution, pogroms and genocide throughout our history, and who have served as a moral compass for Jewish and human values – are now taking actions that are simply unconscionable,” the right-wing Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying.

As some dissenting voices in Israel have started speaking out, the very recent change of heart from some of Israel’s staunchest international supporters has moved beyond the pearl-clutching and handwringing lip service.

Despite suspending some arms export licences, mouthing calls for ceasefires and other humanitarian platitudes at various UN meetings, Britain’s support of Israel hitherto had been largely unquestioning while it continued to send arms to Israel and provide military intelligence flights over Gaza.

However, the UK parliament has been in an uproar recently over humanitarian developments in Gaza and Israel’s renewed military attacks, with even some former strong supporters of Israel from the Conservative Party slamming Israel’s behaviour and vowing to recognise a Palestinian state.

Israel is slowly losing the narrative despite spending millions on its Hasbara, or propaganda campaign, with online social media posts and comments critical of Israel censored and monitored by Meta, which controls Facebook and Instagram, according to Human Rights Watch.

Israeli campaigns to influence social and political opinion have also been exposed.

While international disfavour against Israel continues, Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, warns that Israel has become the Middle East’s new destabiliser-in-chief. 

“From Gaza to Syria, its expanding military interventions and annexation of foreign territory are undermining Western-friendly governments, and threatening core European interests,” he said.

He further argued that while EU members hesitated to confront Israel directly they did possess significant leverage to challenge Israeli behaviour. 

“Even without the unanimous consent needed to suspend the European Union’s association agreement with Israel, a qualified majority of member states could nevertheless suspend key trade provisions and freeze Israel’s participation in flagship EU projects such as Horizon Europe,” Lovatt said. 

“The EU has taken similar action on 26 separate occasions in the past, in response to human rights breaches by other countries. Israel deserves no exception.”

However, back in Washington, even as the American public’s support for Palestinian human rights has grown significantly and criticism of Israel has spiked, the majority of American politicians are politically supported and funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the country’s strongest Israel lobby groups, to the tune of billions of dollars. DM