World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that Israel’s proposed “full-scale invasion on Rafah” would be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
“We appeal to Israel not to proceed. We urge all parties to work for a ceasefire and lasting peace,” Tedros said in a statement on Twitter.
In another post on Tuesday, Tedros said he and Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the W.H.O. Health Emergencies Program, met with Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to “discuss the dire and extremely worrisome health and humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
The U.S. and many of its allies suspended funding to UNRWA, the U.N.’s Palestinian relief organization, in January after Israeli intelligence revealed that UNRWA employees actively participated in the Hamas atrocities of October 7. Several of those allies have since resumed funding, citing the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, even though the U.N. has not completed its investigation of how Hamas operatives came to be employed by the relief agency.
“The ongoing man-made starvation and blockade of humanitarian aid and basic services is increasing the risk of epidemics that can be deadly,” Tedros said, once again demanding an immediate ceasefire on humanitarian grounds.
Like many other international officials who have called for a humanitarian ceasefire, Tedros did not address the fact that Hamas is the party that keeps walking away from negotiations, essentially scuttling every round of ceasefire talks when the smallest compromise to its maximalist demands is proposed.
Hamas is, of course, also the party that started the war in Gaza, and one of the positions it refuses to compromise on is releasing the hostages it took during the outrageous crime against humanity it perpetrated against Israeli civilians on October 7.
It should be noted that Tedros did criticize Hamas for taking hostages in October and called for their “immediate release, on health and humanitarian grounds.” Hamas did not respond to this demand.
American mediators said on Wednesday that Hamas is preparing to blow up another ceasefire negotiation, even though the proposal was “extremely generous” to the terrorists. In fact, it was so generous that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition was threatening to come apart at the seams over what some denounced as a “dangerous” set of concessions.
Among those concessions was allegedly a significant reduction of the number hostages Israel wants Hamas to release, in part because the number of living hostages is feared to have dwindled.
The Biden administration has been leaning hard on Israel to make a deal, under heavy pressure from the terrorist-sympathizing wing of the Democrat Party, but on Tuesday an exasperated Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted Hamas intransigence is the major obstacle to a deal.
“Israel has made very important compromises. There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there. They should take it,” Blinken said, meaning Hamas.
Blinken’s comments enraged Hamas leaders, who accused him of using public statements that “contradict reality” to pressure the terrorist gang.
Netanyahu told Blinken on Wednesday he is not willing to permanently end the war in Gaza as part of a hostage deal and the invasion of Rafah is now inevitable.
“We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice. We will destroy the Hamas battalions there, we will complete all the objectives of the war, including the return of all our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
Blinken seemed to accept that, even as the Biden administration continued to portray the invasion of Rafah as a “red line” Netanyahu must not cross.
“We cannot, will not support a major military operation in Rafah absent an effective plan to make sure that civilians are not harmed and no, we’ve not seen such a plan,” Blinken said at a press conference on Wednesday.
“There are other ways, and in our judgment better ways, of dealing with the … ongoing challenge of Hamas that does not require a major military operation in Rafah,” Blinken added, without offering any details on what those “better ways” might be.
Rafah is the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza and it is also bulging with refugees from across the region, creating humanitarian complications for any military operation there. The current population of the city is estimated at roughly 1.5 million. According to Israeli intelligence, 18 of Hamas’ 24 armed battalions have been destroyed, and four of the remaining six are hiding in Rafah, along with some senior leaders of the organization.
One of the major humanitarian complications from the prospective Rafah operation is that refugees from an attack might head for the Egyptian border and Egypt has warned that its decades-old peace agreement with Israel would be jeopardized by a flood of Palestinians coming over the border – or any aggressive Israeli military operation to seize control of that border from Egypt.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has suggested humanitarian “islands” could be created elsewhere in Gaza for civilians fleeing Rafah, but human rights groups insist there are no such safe areas remaining after months of aerial bombardment and ground action.
Tedros and other international officials are implicitly shifting the entire burden of humanitarian concern to Israel by demanding an unconditional end to Israel’s successful campaign against Hamas, rather than telling Hamas to end the war by surrendering its leaders to justice for the October 7 atrocities. Hamas could have avoided every death in Gaza over the past six months by doing so.
As the clear aggressors and perpetrators of horrific crimes against humanity, the burden should have resolutely been placed on them by organizations nominally concerned with peace, justice, or world health.
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