Suspension comes as UN agencies join call for safe humanitarian access and new analysis confirms worst fears.
A family who fled Sabra for Deir El Balah cook bread outside a leaky tent with ingredients supplied by WFP. They have barely any clothes or water and share one mattress between eight people. Photo: WFP/Ali Jadallah
(WFP)*, 21 February 2024 —Hungry, thirsty and weak, more and more Gazans are falling sick, according to a report published this week.
At least 90 per cent of children aged under 5 are affected by one or more infectious diseases, with 70 percent having had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, according to analysis from the Global Nutrition Cluster.
— “Here are the choices: ethnic cleansing, apartheid or genocide,” said Palestine’s foreign minister at the opening of public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this week, with a record 52 States and three international organizations providing comments and presentations on a case based on the UN General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion on legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Filed before the ongoing four-month-old war in Gaza began, the case has triggered heated commentary even before the court’s president, Judge Nawaf Salam, opened the hearings. This recap provides snapshots of the first days of hearings, from 19 to 21 February. The hearings will close on 26 February. Israel chose not to participate.
(UN News)* —The UN agency serving Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has reached breaking point due to Israeli calls for its abolition and the associated funding freeze, just when it is needed most, said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
In a letter addressed to the President of the UN General Assembly, which provides the agency with its mandate, he said the agency’s ability to fulfil that mandate “is now seriously threatened”.
“In just over four months in Gaza there have been more children, more journalists more medical personnel and more UN staff killed than anywhere in the world during a conflict”, he said.
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 19 2024 (IPS)* – Imperialism continues to dominate the world. Globalisation is losing to some of its anti-theses, but imperialism still rules, increasingly by law, albeit in changing even contradictory ways.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Hence, we live in challenging times. It is often difficult to see the main challenges we face as there seem to be so many. Also, the new or the unusual gains far more attention than what appears commonplace.
Power and empire Our histories and cultures are often quite different despite our common, but varied experiences of foreign domination, even rule. Such power involves varied mixes of socioeconomic and political relations, involving governance and even the rule of law.
(UN News)* —The UN emergency food relief agency (WFP) warned that Gaza is “hanging by a thread”, calling for urgent access to allow it to reach the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on the verge of famine.
In a statement, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it has reluctantly had to pause aid deliveries to north Gaza until conditions are in place that allow for safe distributions.
“The decision to pause deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip has not been taken lightly, as we know it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger,” the agency said.
There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. Its operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the U.S. interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Its unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public scrutiny. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow.
As a recent CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said of his time at the CIA: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had performed two distinct roles in World War II, intelligence and subversion.
(The Hague) – An unprecedented number of countries and international organizations are expected to participate in the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) oral hearings on Israel’s occupation beginning February 19, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today [16 February 2024].
(UN News)* — The largest remaining hospital in southern Gaza is “barely functional”, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Friday [] amid reports of intense attacks by Israeli forces.
There have been reports of damage to Nasser Hospital’s orthopedic unit, reducing its ability to provide urgent medical care, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević told correspondents at a press briefing in Geneva. “More degradation to the hospital means more lives being lost,” he said.
SYDNEY, Feb 14 2024 (IPS)* –Israel continues to defy its strongest backer the US and its western allies in its quest to control the land from the “River to the Sea”, and in the process ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Anis Chowdhury
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe.
He also snubbed the US on the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt. The interim order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take all effective measures to stop “plausible” genocide in Gaza seems irrelevant to Israel.
On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also including ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and the U.S. and U.K.’s bombing of Yemen.
Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Rafah, the last refuge in southern Gaza, Feb 2024. Photo credit: MENAFN
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 