A UN expert described US President Joe Biden’s statement on the construction of a port in Gaza to facilitate food aid, as “cynical”.
The announcement was made during his annual State of the Union address on Thursday. US President pleaded with Israel to let more aid into the blockaded territory. “A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting in Gaza,” Biden told the US Congress.
But Michael Fakhri, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, dismissed the measure. “No-one has asked for a maritime pier — not the Palestinian people, not the humanitarian aid community,” he told a briefing in Geneva.
More than five months into the war in Gaza, the UN has repeatedly argued that only massive and sustained aid delivery over land can help calm the ballooning humanitarian catastrophe.
Neither a pier, nor the increasing airdrops over Gaza would “prevent starvation and famine by any definition”, Fakhri said.
Such methods of aid delivery were normally only used as a last resort to get aid into enemy territory, he added.
That Israel’s main ally is resorting to such a measure “is absurd in a dark, cynical way”, he said.
He suggested the move was likely “a performance to try to meet a domestic audience, with elections around the corner”.
Fakhri is an independent expert mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, but does not speak on behalf of the United Nations.
With AFP
