Over 100 Humanitarian Organizations Urge Immediate Action to Open All Gaza Crossings

More than 100 international humanitarian organizations have called on governments around the world to immediately open all land crossings into Gaza, restore full access to food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter materials, and fuel, and to support a UN-led humanitarian mechanism, alongside an immediate and lasting ceasefire.

In a joint statement issued Wednesday, humanitarian organizations said that aid workers are now standing in food lines, risking gunfire, just to feed their families, while the Israeli government's blockade continues to starve Gaza's population.

Organizations report witnessing the rapid physical deterioration of colleagues and partners, as aid supplies run critically low.

The statement highlights the near-daily massacres at food distribution points. According to UN figures, as of July 13, 875 Palestinians had been killed while searching for food — 201 on aid routes and the rest at distribution centers, with thousands more injured.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have forcibly displaced nearly 2 million exhausted Palestinians, with the last mass evacuation order issued on July 20, confining the population to less than 12 percent of Gaza's territory.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the current conditions make humanitarian operations "unsustainable" and reiterated that starvation as a weapon of war constitutes a war crime.

Despite massive stocks of aid sitting undelivered both inside and outside Gaza, organizations say distribution is blocked by Israeli-imposed restrictions, delays, and fragmentation. "These obstacles have created chaos, hunger, and death," the statement says.

The humanitarian organizations emphasized the urgent need for governments to stop waiting for permission to act and instead take decisive measures, which include: demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lifting all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; opening all land crossings; ensuring access to all areas of Gaza; rejecting distribution models subject to military control; restoring a principled humanitarian mechanism led by the United Nations; and continuing to fund neutral and principled humanitarian organizations. Additionally, countries must take concrete steps to end the blockade, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.

Earlier, Palestinian medical sources reported the deaths of 21 children from hunger across various areas of the Gaza Strip over the past three days, noting that 900,000 children in Gaza suffer from hunger, including 70,000 who have entered a stage of malnutrition.

Various areas across the Gaza Strip, especially displacement camps, are experiencing intense and repeated shelling amid catastrophic humanitarian conditions and severe shortages of food, medicine, and water.

(QNA)