US efforts to boost humanitarian aid to Gaza have drawn criticism from a UN expert. Plans for a temporary port amid recent airdrops are "absurd" and "cynical" methods as long as military aid to Israel continues, they said.
As famine threatens the population of Gaza, Israel's campaign against the group Hamas is now in its fifth month. The US military has issued meal air drops into Gaza and is planning for a temporary port for aid imports on its Mediterranean coast.
Airdrops specifically "will do very little to alleviate hunger malnutrition, and do nothing to slow down famine," Michael Fakhri, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told reporters in Geneva.
He warned of extreme turmoil as starving people struggle for supplies. As for the port, he said no one had asked for it. He called the port and airdrop methods a "last resort."
"The time when countries use airdrops, and these maritime piers, is usually if not always, in situations when you want to deliver humanitarian aid into enemy territory," he said.
Fakhri is a Lebanese-Canadian law professor mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to document and advise on global food security. He reveals such methods make little sense if Washington continues to supply military support to Israel.
"It's Almost Incomprehensible"
Reuters reported US legislation predicts an additional $17.6 billion in renewed military assistance to Israel as its war against Hamas progresses.
"That's more than allyship. That's a marriage ... It's almost incomprehensible," he said of US support to Israel, calling the recent aid measures a "performance to try to meet a domestic audience with (US presidential) elections around the corner."
"That's the only rational coherent interpretation (for these aid announcements) because ...from a humanitarian perspective, from an international perspective, from a human rights perspective, it is absurd in a dark, cynical way," he said.
On Thursday, Fakhri, who remains critical of Israel, told the Geneva Human Rights Council that Israel is destroying Gaza's food system as part of an expansive "starvation campaign." In response to an obvious humanitarian crisis, Israel's envoy called this a lie and denied restricting aid into Gaza."
