Red Line Cymru: Dignity not dehumanisation
Bushra Khalidi, policy lead for Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Imagine being forced to choose between staying alive and risking death to feed yourself and your starving children.
This is not a thought experiment. This is daily life for people in Gaza – walking kilometres through militarised zones, risking death from sniper fire, just to fight for scraps of aid that is their human right.
Imagine yourself as a young pregnant mother in Gaza, your children are hungry, your husband may have been killed or crippled in an airstrike, you are starving and desperate. You have no access to clean water, no power, no way to prepare hot food, you have been displaced and forced to move on multiple occasions. To seek out aid you must leave your children at home and walk for kilometres, through militarised zones in which you may come under Israeli fire, to an aid distribution point at which you will have to compete with thousands of other hungry and desperate people in a scramble for the inadequate supplies on offer.
Dread
Every day we wake up with dread, bracing for the news of the day – has one of my nieces gone to bed hungry, or not at all? Has a hospital been hit? Has a relative been buried under the rubble? This is every day for Palestinians outside Gaza with relatives trapped in this man-made disaster zone.
Meanwhile, the reality of life for those inside Gaza is that they have been dehumanised, deliberately corralled into ever smaller ‘safe’ zones, actively blocked from accessing the aid which is essential to their survival.
Gaza is a graveyard and a prison.
Almost all of Gaza is subject to active Israeli military action or evacuation orders, corralling the people of Gaza into an area smaller than a fifth of the entire strip.
Recent increases in aid are welcome, but this is nowhere near enough to address the scale of need in Gaza.
- During the last ceasefire, over 600 trucks of aid a day were entering Gaza to be distributed from over 400 centres run by experienced humanitarian organisations with decades of experience in ensuring the right aid gets to the right people at the right time.
- Tokenistic and random air drops are a mockery of adequate aid delivery.
- The so-called distribution hubs of the GHF are little more than deathtraps and outposts manned by mercenary forces where aid is quite literally thrown out and dumped for the starving and desperate to scramble for whatever they can acquire.
- The most vulnerable have little if any chance of securing any of these limited supplies.
The model of humanitarian aid this represents is a militarised, privatised and politicised one, which undermines and runs counter to all the core principles of humanitarianism.
Twisted
The very idea of humanitarian aid is being twisted.
Air drops that scatter food randomly over the rubble of danger zones; privatised aid hubs guarded by mercenaries; aid delivered not with care, but contempt – all as though dignity is too much to ask for people already starved of everything else.
This is a model which is neither safe, nor accountable, nor ethical – it dehumanises those who are most in need, it circumvents international norms, ignores civic society, and operates outside the rigorous controls of the UN and existing humanitarian INGOs.
- Aid must be rooted in humanity, in impartiality, in independence and in dignity.
- Aid must be delivered locally, fairly, safely and transparently, not in militarised zones guarded by foreign contractors.
- Aid must not humiliate, must not be used an agent of control, must not kill those who seek it out.
- Gaza must not be a testing ground for a model of aid which condones, perpetrates and accepts these outcomes.
- Aid must be allowed to flow freely, in quantity, and through well established and effective organisations designed to deliver aid effectively, safely, with humanity and dignity.
Recently announced pauses to allow more aid to enter Gaza mean that, for the time being at least, there is at least some aid entering and being distributed by humanitarian organisations.
This is not anywhere near enough for the population of 2m.
Starvation
Malnutrition and starvation have taken hold and nothing less than opening the gates to Gaza to allow aid to flood the entire area will prevent the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our very eyes.
Military action from Israel continues, people are still being shot and killed. Every day we hear of people dying of starvation. Critical infrastructure, water, power, communications, have completely collapsed.
Literally and figuratively, Gaza is being pushed into darkness.
Only a permanent ceasefire and a concerted international effort, immediately, can prevent this catastrophe from continuing to escalate. Every day of delay means more children will die, many of them from starvation. Every day of delay means that more innocent people in Gaza will lose their lives, must watch their children suffer, will see more family members lost forever.
This is a genocide.
It is being caused directly by the actions of Israel as an occupying force and in contravention of international law.
It must stop.
Complicit
The world must stand up and act without hesitation and regardless of politics. Nations who are silent are complicit in this genocide.
The world must not stand aside, watching on in silence, allowing atrocities to continue unchecked.
We must draw the line.
This must end.
Gaza must be fed, watered, and allowed to rebuild its shattered lives and shattered infrastructure. Anything less is inadequate, anything less is to condone the actions and intentions which seek to destroy the people of Gaza.
Oxfam Cymru’s Red Line Cymru campaign draws a clear and urgent line: Adequate humanitarian aid must be allowed to flow into Gaza now – freely, safely, and with dignity.
We call on the Welsh public, civic leaders, and policymakers to stand with us. Join the Red Line Cymru campaign. Demand:
- A permanent ceasefire to allow unrestricted aid delivery through all land crossings into Gaza
- An end to militarised and privatised aid models that humiliate and harm civilians
- A return to UN-led, principled humanitarian aid channels delivering sustained predictable aid flows
- The protection of humanitarian workers and infrastructure
- The upholding of international law and the dignity of Palestinian life
History will ask what we did when Gaza starved. Let the answer be: we drew the line.
Join Oxfam Cymru’s Red Line Cymru campaign today. Add your voice, take action, and help us demand a future where aid is not a weapon, but a lifeline.
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
If the zionist government really cared about the hostages and I mean really deeply cared for the hostages, then how is this food and essential supply blockade allow the hostages themselves to receive nourishment?
If they really deeply cared for those remaining hostages, why are they bombing any part of Ghazza?
The evidence suggests that they don’t really care – at least, not enough to make the plight of the hostages their priority – and the families and friends of those hostages appear to be very much aware that they don’t.
Now the families of Hamas hostages are calling for a general strike in Zion. I copied this from Times of Israel: “Groups representing families of the hostages, slain soldiers, and victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre called Sunday for a general strike to be held August 17 to protest the continuation of the war and the government’s plan for a military takeover of Gaza City, which they fear could cost the hostages their lives and further IDF casualties. The planned strike, which received backing from leading figures in the opposition, is being organized by the October Council, which represents… Read more »
The relatives of the hostages – and an apparently significant number of their fellow-citizens who naturally feel for them – seem to have concluded for quite a while now that their government isn’t giving priority to seeking their release.
And it seems to me that the evidence that this is the case is by now quite conclusive.
Israel is using the excuse of totally destroying Hamas to totally destroy Gaza. Trump has shown he supports this action by wanting the entire population of Gaza moved to another country – undoubtedly so he and his cronies can turn the strip into an Israeli/Trump Riviera. His government attacks Starmer for trying to stop this genocide. The international community need one voice to force Israel to stop and if that means isolating the US to do it – so be it.
Not sure Oxfam has the right to comment on anything after what it did in Haiti.
Is the author one of those implicated in the Haiti debacle?
After what they did over there the organisation should have banned across the world. Awful.
You should be calling for the complete resignation of the zionist government after the genocide pulled off in Ghazza. Their numbers are nothing compared to anything Oxfam have done. Did you know that Netanyahu was fully aware that Hamas were receiving copious funding from Qatar and he did nothing?
Nah, I’ll stick with Oxfam. The organisation should have been disbanded.
The issue about Oxfan is irrelevant. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of a semitic Palestinian population is ongoing and perpetuated by an evil zionist government which has failed to safeguard its own people, it has failed to release all the hostages and it has failed in its own experiment on divide and conquer so it is just going for annihilation.
I got the following from CNN Dec 2023: “Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told CNN the plan was backed by the prime minister, but not by the Israeli intelligence community. There was also some belief that it would “weaken Palestinian sovereignty,” he said. There was also an illusion, he added, that “if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be tamed.” Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, told the New York Times that an empowered Hamas helped Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, saying the division of the… Read more »
Interestingly Hamas had released on August 18, 1988 their covenant stating their destructive intentions towards Zion. Despite that Netanyahu still allowed their funding. Indeed Netanyahu said in August 2018, “in coordination with security experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south, but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza)”. Is he still your hero , Pete?
Unfortunately, when you start wars it is the most vulnerable who pay the heaviest price.
Shouldn’t have let the settlers and IDF into West Bank and Jenin in June and July 2023 then. West Bank is Palestinians land, isn’t it? Is Hamas in charge in West Bank?
Irrelevant.
They started the war.
Indeed. On 7 October. And now innocent people are paying the price for what Hamas did.
No, the settlers and the IDF did in June and July 2023. But I agree, the genocide and ethnic cleansing of innocent semitic Palestinian population by a ruthless zionist government should be called out for what it is. Evil.
With the alarming news that Israeli Knesset has recently voted to push further into the Gaza Strip with the intention of taking it in its entirety, will mean tens of thousands more innocient Palestinians dying horrible deaths last seen in the Nazi death camps of Poland. Rabid Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu, embolden by American financial and military support, is basically sacrificing the lives not only of those Israeli hostages held captive, but he’s happy to thousands more innocent Palestinian men women and children die to save his own political skin sickening. Another reason for pushing further into Gaza, is that Netanyahu… Read more »
Re Oxfam at least they accepted rewsponsibility for what happened in Haiti and did soemething about it.
The organisation should have been disbanded. Saville-level stuff. Came right from the top. Shameful. No excuses.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing will always be the worst. Evil zionist government has to resign. No excuses.