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'Insupportable' situation: UN humanitarian chief calls for 'humanitarian pauses' in Gaza
FRANCE 24 English
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11/9/2023
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Transcript
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00:00
The situation is very simply put, it is insupportable.
00:04
And to allow it to continue would be a travesty.
00:07
Civilians must be protected, their essential needs met,
00:11
wherever they are and wherever they decide to be.
00:15
The United Nations cannot be part of a unilateral proposal
00:21
to push hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians
00:26
in Gaza into so-called safe zones.
00:30
We cannot be part of this.
00:32
- We can now bring in our international affairs
00:34
commentator, Douglas Herbert.
00:35
Doug, you heard there from Martin Griffiths,
00:37
who said the situation is very simply insupportable.
00:41
He used the French word to drive his point across
00:44
to the French president, clearly making some in that room
00:47
quite uncomfortable with what he had to say.
00:49
- Well, not just what he has to say.
00:50
The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs
00:53
has just said earlier today that as of this Thursday,
00:57
all of Gaza's 120 municipal water wells
01:00
are expected to, are slated to shut down.
01:06
And they're slated to shut down
01:07
because they don't have fuel to run.
01:09
Not enough fuel, if any, is really getting to them.
01:12
Why is that a big deal?
01:13
That's a big deal because that's the UN saying it.
01:16
Now the World Health Organization takes that information
01:19
and is warning of, it's already seeing in fact,
01:22
a surge as they see it, a spike in diseases,
01:25
such as chickenpox, such as scabies, such as diarrhea,
01:29
especially in children under the age of five,
01:31
which is even more dangerous
01:32
when you're that very young age, and other diseases,
01:36
as you have deteriorating hygienic conditions,
01:38
lack of sanitation, overcrowded conditions,
01:42
all of it compounded by this lack of fuel
01:44
to have clean water, to treat water plants,
01:47
these water wells shutting down.
01:49
I will note that the Rafah border crossing,
01:51
we've been talking about that, the aid trucks coming in,
01:54
the Jordanian, I believe it was the Jordanian representative
01:57
at today's conference,
01:58
addressed the aid getting through Rafah.
02:01
Now he said that before,
02:02
we keep talking about this number before October 7th,
02:05
before this latest war,
02:07
about 500 humanitarian aid convoys
02:10
were getting through on average a day.
02:12
Now that's down to, if we're lucky, Delano,
02:15
if we're lucky, 100.
02:16
He said, but even before the conflict,
02:18
we're holding up that 500 number
02:20
as if it's an ideal target.
02:22
He said, even then, it was severely inadequate,
02:25
the 500 getting through.
02:27
And right now, as of the time I'm standing here
02:30
speaking to you, when we're talking about water,
02:31
going back to the question of life sustaining water,
02:34
we all need to drink water,
02:36
only 4%, 4%, that's less than 1/20th
02:40
of Gaza's water needs are being met at the moment
02:44
by water trucks and aid trucks coming through at Rafah.
02:48
That gives you just a little snapshot
02:49
of one aspect of the humanitarian calamity.
02:52
- I spoke to someone yesterday who said
02:54
we're wasting a space on those humanitarian convoys
02:57
with plastic water bottles
03:00
because they need them for Gaza.
03:02
Let's talk about, we're talking about the situation in Gaza,
03:05
which is very important,
03:06
the conference today happening in Paris,
03:09
but also the situation in the West Bank,
03:10
which continues to worsen.
03:13
Just today, we had five Palestinians killed in Jenin.
03:16
- It's hard to keep track, you know, the latest numbers,
03:20
and everyone risks just becoming another statistic, right?
03:22
We throw out a number here, a number there.
03:24
Look, since October 7th, the number of Palestinians,
03:28
and remember, there's millions of Palestinians
03:30
in the occupied West Bank,
03:32
more than actually the 2 1/2 million in Gaza.
03:35
Since October 7th, over 160,
03:38
at least 160 Palestinians have been killed,
03:41
killed in violence,
03:43
predominantly due to Israeli army raids,
03:47
raids that had been ongoing almost nightly
03:49
in various parts of the West Bank,
03:50
even before October 7th,
03:52
but which have become even more prevalent
03:54
or perhaps more noticeable since October 7th,
03:57
but also, and this is what's really attracted the attention
03:59
of a lot of the Europe and US
04:01
and the international community,
04:02
is these attacks by illegal Israeli settlers.
04:06
I'm using the word illegal because under international law,
04:08
they're not recognized, these settlements,
04:10
and the settlers are often armed,
04:12
and they are there illegally.
04:13
Most of them, perhaps not all of them,
04:15
but most of them are there for ideological reasons,
04:19
because they believe that that is their land
04:21
going back to biblical times.
04:23
They have a birthright to be there.
04:25
No one is going to force them to leave,
04:27
and they are willing to defend that right
04:29
as they see it to be there with arms,
04:31
and they've been using those arms,
04:33
according to the reports of Palestinians on the ground,
04:36
organizations on the ground, reporters on the ground.
04:39
So over 160 killed.
04:41
Joe Biden himself has warned
04:43
against this alarming spike in settler attacks
04:48
in the West Bank, and this is perhaps really
04:51
the focus of concern right now,
04:53
especially what the US has labeled.
04:55
Even the US has labeled this,
04:57
for all its pro-Israeli stance,
04:59
US alarmed at what it seems as extremist violence
05:03
by these illegal armed settlers in the West Bank
05:06
targeting Palestinians.
05:08
- We'll see if the Israelis actually act on that.
05:10
I wanna take you back to the conference,
05:12
because of course France is playing host
05:14
to this Gaza aid conference.
05:16
France has been in a tricky position
05:17
because at one point it is seeing
05:19
what is going on on the ground in Gaza, in the West Bank,
05:22
but at the same time, President Emmanuel Macron
05:25
reiterating Israel's right to defend itself.
05:27
- Yeah, listen, this conference, from Israel's standpoint,
05:31
Europe's voice is not that loud.
05:33
You know, at the end of the day,
05:34
we know it's become cliche to say
05:36
that all roads lead to Washington
05:38
when it comes to any chance,
05:40
however remote it might be of having an influence
05:43
on Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet
05:45
to at least rethink their course.
05:47
It's not Europe, it's not Emmanuel Macron sitting in France.
05:51
That's not to say it isn't an initiative,
05:53
an initiative perhaps that a lot of people
05:55
don't think absolutely needed to be taken.
05:57
There's never any harm talking about humanitarian aid,
05:59
given what we were talking about before.
06:00
It is a dire, calamitous need right now.
06:03
However, within France,
06:05
within the government itself, there are reports,
06:06
a lot of the French news outlets reporting,
06:09
there's friction within the French
06:11
foreign policy establishment
06:12
between those who see Macron's stance
06:14
as being too pro-Israel,
06:16
forcing him into this very, very untenable,
06:19
delicate tightrope act, this balancing act
06:21
between, as Washington's doing,
06:23
perhaps even more vocally,
06:25
defending Israel's right to defend itself
06:27
while at the same time stressing the absolute dire need
06:30
to protect civilians on the ground
06:31
and get humanitarian aid in.
06:32
A lot of people say,
06:33
in the France's foreign policy establishment,
06:35
not quoted, but off the record,
06:37
they'll say it's absurd not to call for a ceasefire,
06:40
as many of the Arab leaders
06:41
and people that Blinken was meeting with last week
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