Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday that a "famine is unfolding" in Gaza and new Israeli restrictions will only make it worse.
Her comment followed a statement from her department on Monday condemning Israel's killing of several journalists in Gaza.
"The humanitarian suffering in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels," Anand wrote Tuesday on social media. "Urgent action is needed to halt and reverse starvation."
She was quoting from a joint statement authored by two dozen foreign ministers from Europe, Asia and Australia. It says the humanitarian suffering in the enclave will be made even worse by Israel's restrictions on international aid groups.
Israel denies widespread claims that starvation is taking place in Gaza as it imposes strict controls on aid entering the territory and how it is distributed.
Last week, a forum of UN organizations and partners operating in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip called for a halt to Israeli policies — set to take effect in September — which they say would require them "to share sensitive personal information about their Palestinian employees or face termination."
The statement says the new restrictions "include potential consequences for public criticism of policies and practices of the government of Israel." It said those not registered under the new system have been barred from sending Gaza "life-saving aid including medicine, food, and hygiene items."
Anand and her peers are calling on Israel "to provide authorization for all international NGO aid shipments, to unblock essential humanitarian actors from operating," and to use all possible routes to get food, water and medicine into Gaza.
Israel has blamed the UN for the failure to distribute aid from hundreds of trucks, while the UN says Israel took too long to inspect the trucks and placed them in areas that require lengthy and dangerous journeys.
Israel halted all food shipments into Gaza for nearly three months this spring, then introduced an aid distribution system involving U.S. contractors. Hundreds have been shot by Israeli troops as they sought food from the new aid program.
"Humanitarian space must be protected, and aid should never be politicized," reads the Tuesday statement from the foreign ministers. "Due to restrictive new registration requirements, essential international NGOs may be forced to leave the OPTs imminently which would worsen the humanitarian situation still further."
OPT is an acronym for Occupied Palestinian Territories, a term used by the United Nations and European governments to refer to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
The joint foreign ministers' statement came a day after Ottawa condemned the Israeli military's targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalists and rejected Israel's claim that the network's prominent reporter Anas Al-Sharif led a cell of Hamas.
"Canada condemns the killing (of) Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza. Journalists are civilians — targeting them is unacceptable," Global Affairs Canada wrote in a social media post. "We call for full accountability and for the protection of media everywhere."
Israel’s military targeted and killed Al-Sharif in a Sunday airstrike, after press advocates said an Israeli "smear campaign" stepped up when Al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.
The military has previously said it targeted individuals it described as Hamas militants posing as reporters. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.
Israel bars foreign journalists from entering Gaza if they aren't embedded with Israel's military, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for more foreign reporters to take part in these embeds.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says barring independent foreign reporting of an armed conflict is unheard of in modern times.
The group said Monday that at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel's war in Gaza began. It described Sunday's deaths as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza.
Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, said on July 31 that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”
Amnesty International called for an independent, impartial investigation of the killings of Palestinian journalists. "Starved and exhausted, they continued to bravely report from the front lines, despite death threats and immense grief," the group wrote Monday.
In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing. Al-Sharif and his employer called the allegations baseless.
Janina Dill, a professor of global security at the University of Oxford, told The Associated Press that "even disseminating pro-Hamas propaganda" is not grounds for a targeted killing under international humanitarian law.
Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a large team of reporters inside the besieged Gaza Strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighbourhoods.
Israel blocks Al Jazeera from broadcasting there, and soldiers raided the network's offices in the occupied West Bank last year.
In a social media post that Al Jazeera said was written to be posted in case of his death, Al-Sharif bemoaned the devastation and destruction and bid farewell to his wife, son and daughter.
“I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.
In a July broadcast, Al-Sharif cried on air as a woman behind him collapsed from hunger. "I am talking about slow death of those people," he said at the time.
Picture Courtesy: AP Photo/Nasser Nasser
