By Alexia Cafetzis
An army ground offensive on Rafah would turn the town in the southern Gaza Strip into a vast “cemetery”, the head of the US branch of the non-governmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned on Tuesday, warning along with other NGOs that it would also increase the risk of famine in the Palestinian enclave.
“The consequences of a large-scale attack on Rafah would be truly unimaginable,” MSF US executive director Avril Benoit said during a digitally-broadcast press conference also attended by representatives of the non-governmental organizations Oxfam, Refugees International and Amnesty International.
“If there is a military attack on this site, it will turn it into a cemetery,” she said, referring to Rafah, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, on the closed border with Egypt, where they have some one and a half million people have taken refuge, according to UN estimates.
“That is where the last remaining health and humanitarian services for the people of Gaza are concentrated,” Ms Benoit added. “Attacking Rafah would in effect mean severing a vital link with people who have lost everything but their lives.”
Relentless Israeli shelling of the Palestinian enclave has made it “almost impossible” to distribution of humanitarian aid, Jeremy Konaidyk, the president of the NGO Refugees International, emphasized for his part.
According to the dialogue, “The danger, if a large humanitarian operation is not allowed, unhindered and in the whole of the Gaza Strip, is that famine will occur”, he added. This danger arises “not because of any natural phenomenon”, but because of “the refusal, permanent and deliberate, above all by the government of Israel, to allow humanitarian access”, he stressed.
Avril Benoit addressed for more once calling for a ceasefire, which is “the only solution to avoid new deaths and new suffering in Gaza”, on the day the US vetoed — for the third time since October 7 — a draft Security Council resolution UN which called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.
In recent days, international organizations and NGOs have been raising the alarm about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, besieged and largely leveled after twenty weeks of war, where 2.2 million people are facing the threat of starvation, as the UN keeps warning.
