By Palestine Chronicle Staff 
Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s Foreign Minister, says the world’s powerful armed forces should be instructed by their governments to escort all humanitarian aid trucks into the Gaza Strip.
South Africa’s Minister of International Relations, Naledi Pandor, has urged the world’s “powerful armed forces” to be sent to the Rafah border to escort humanitarian aid trucks into the besieged Gaza Strip.
“Those powerful armed forces of the world should be instructed by their presidents or prime ministers that they will go to the Rafah border and their soldiers will escort all those trucks into Gaza and the West Bank,” Pandor said in a press conference with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen in Pretoria this week.
“And since these are very close friends of Israel, surely they will be allowed safe passage. I can’t imagine them being fired upon by the Israeli forces,” she said.
Naledi Pandor, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa, proposes to facilitate the entry of humanitarian convoys currently stranded at Rafah Crossing. pic.twitter.com/ujaikPCH9w
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 7, 2024
Dozens of children in Gaza have died of hunger and more than half a million Gazans face starvation, the UN agency for Palestine, UNRWA, said on Saturday.
The agency reported that a 50 percent reduction of aid deliveries into Gaza “stems from a lack of political will and security assurances from Israeli military operations amid the collapse of civil order.”
Pandor said her proposal “seems to me is the only way that we might get aid in because otherwise it will be a trickle.”
“More children will starve, more babies will be born with very serious harm to their health,” the minister warned.
At least 15 children have died of dehydration and malnutrition in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.
Urgent ICJ Request
South Africa this week again filed an urgent request with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the provisional measures the Court ordered on January 26, to be strengthened to prevent a catastrophic famine in the besieged enclave.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Presidency said the urgent application “has been necessitated by widespread starvation in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 15 children in the past week alone, with the actual numbers believed to be much higher.”
“The situation is urgent. South Africa has no choice but to approach the Court for the strengthening of the Provisional Measures in place to try prevent full-scale famine, starvation and disease in the Gaza Strip, which experts predict may result in more than 85 000 deaths in the next six months, if nothing is done,” the statement read.
Also this week, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michel Fakhri, described Israel’s “intentional campaign of starvation” against the Palestinian people in Gaza as “genocide,” saying Israel is using food and hunger as a weapon.
“We see a campaign of starvation that started from the beginning of the war and continues to unfold today,” Fakhri said.
“There is no doubt that this is genocide and that this is a campaign and intentional campaign of starvation by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Staggering Death Toll
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 30,960 Palestinians have been killed, and 72,524 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’
(The Palestine Chronicle)
