Attention to the Unseen

  Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, tells “Face the Nation” that claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others that the relief group UNRWA, which provides relief for Palestinian refugees, is a “proxy” for Hamas are “just flat-out lies.” The Hill reports: Funding for the United Nations (U.N.) agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, has emerged as a serious obstacle as congressional negotiators race to prevent a partial government shutdown at the end…

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Politico reports: Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned Israel on Saturday against using hunger as a “weapon of war” in the Gaza Strip, urging the Israeli government to open more access points for humanitarian aid. “I see today there is a very large population [in Gaza] at risk of famine,” the Belgian leader told journalists in Amman, Jordan, during a whistle-stop tour of the Middle East. “It’s up to Israel to prove that famine won’t be used as a…

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UN News reports: In a fresh alert about the disastrous humanitarian emergency still unfolding in the enclave, the UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, said on Friday that it will “take years” before the Strip is made safe again. The lives of more than two million Gazans have been devastated by daily Israeli bombardment, since Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October, the UN agency noted in a post on X, formerly Twitter. As the largest relief agency in Gaza,…

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  As the people of Gaza grow ever more desperate for food, pressure keeps growing on Israel. Top US Democrat Chuck Schumer has criticised Benjamin Netanyahu as an “obstacle to peace” and called for elections. A ship carrying food aid from charity World Central Kitchen is now approaching Gaza. The shipment from Cyprus is the first in a newly established maritime aid corridor. But the UN says the most effective way to get aid into the besieged Strip is still…

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The Times of Israel reports: The European Union’s foreign policy chief accuses Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war and of blocking overland routes that are the best way to get food to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing famine in the Gaza Strip. Josep Borrell tells the UN Security Council that humanitarian assistance must get into Gaza where there is no natural disaster, flood or earthquake. “This is a man-made crisis,” Borrell says. “And when we look…

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The Guardian reports: Twelve of Israel’s most prominent human rights organisations have signed an open letter accusing the country of failing to comply with the international court of justice’s (ICJ) provisional ruling that it should facilitate access of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The court in The Hague made a number of legal requirements of Israel when it issued a provisional ruling in late January in response to South Africa’s complaint accusing the state of committing genocide in its military campaign…

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Politico reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of U.S. President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a “red line.” Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president told MSNBC on Saturday that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept “30,000 more Palestinians…

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  We hear Abdullah a few moments before we see him. His distant screams are echoing down the corridor at the Turkish hospital in downtown Doha. “I am in pain” he shouts, in Arabic from afar. “I need painkillers.” We travelled with him to Qatar from Egypt’s border with Gaza four days earlier. It’s hard to comprehend the deaths of 12,800 children. We put up figures of children on our studio walls – one for each child killed in Gaza…

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In his State of the Union speech, President Biden presented a plan to deliver aid by sea to the starving population in Gaza as a demonstration of American leadership: Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters. No U.S. boots will be on the ground. This temporary pier would enable a massive increase…

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Middle East Eye reports: The British government has a plan in place to resume funding to the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, Middle East Eye has learnt from a parliamentary source with direct knowledge of the matter. A second source told MEE that a little over a week after the UK announced it was pausing its funding to the UN agency, Foreign Secretary David Cameron acknowledged the decision had been “too hasty” and was looking for face-saving measures…

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Devi Sridhar writes: The news from Gaza feels too painful to watch. Videos of immediate violence capture TV and social-media audiences: within seconds, entire hospitals are destroyed and buildings fall to the ground. We are watching death in real time. In my last piece on Gaza, I highlighted the records being set: considering its short duration, it has been the deadliest war in modern history for children, for journalists, for healthcare workers and for UN staff. But there are parts…

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CBC reports: The federal government is resuming funding to UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, CBC News has learned. In addition to going ahead with a scheduled payment in April of $25 million, Canada’s international development minister also intends to announce new funding, according to a senior government official. The Canadian government announced a pause on funding in January after Israel alleged that 12 employees of UNRWA were involved in some capacity in the Oct. 7 attack on…

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  Megan K. Stack writes: The threat of starvation is believed to be most intense in the bomb-scarred remains of northern Gaza, where by January, nutrition screenings found that more than 15 percent of children ages 6 months to 23 months were acutely malnourished, a condition rarely seen in Gaza before the current war. “Such a decline in a population’s nutritional status in three months is unprecedented globally,” UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the U.N. World Food Program said…

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HuffPost reports: Samira Thari recently told her six children still in Gaza that she doesn’t want to hear from them. She thinks of them constantly, especially those most hurt by the violence there ― like her 22-year-old son, who is in a wheelchair after being hit by shrapnel, and her 14-year-old daughter, who’s been rendered speechless by the shock of the war. But she knows that for the family to get cell service, they have to leave their tent shelter…

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The Times of Israel reports: Amid American opposition, Arab nations failed Thursday overnight to get immediate support for a UN Security Council statement that would have blamed Israeli forces for the more than 100 reported deaths as Palestinians in northern Gaza swarmed an aid convoy. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, told reporters after an emergency closed council meeting on the deaths, that 14 of the 15 council members supported the statement put forward by Algeria, the Arab representative on…

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