UN halts aid shipments through Gaza’s main crossing after looting
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Sunday it is halting aid deliveries through the main cargo crossing into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip because of the threat of armed gangs who have looted recent convoys. It blamed the breakdown of law and order in large part on Israeli policies.
The decision could worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the cold, rainy winter sets in, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in squalid tent camps and reliant on international food aid. Experts were already warning of famine in the territory’s north, which Israeli forces have almost completely isolated since early October.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the main aid provider in Gaza, said the route leading to the Kerem Shalom crossing is too dangerous on the Gaza side. Armed men looted nearly 100 trucks travelling on the route in mid-November, and he said gangs stole a smaller shipment on Saturday.
Kerem Shalom is the only crossing between Israel and Gaza that is designed for cargo shipments and has been the main artery for aid deliveries since the Rafah crossing with Egypt was shut down in May. Last month, nearly two-thirds of all aid entering Gaza came through Kerem Shalom, and in previous months it accounted for an even larger amount, according to Israeli figures.
In a post on X, Lazzarini largely blamed Israel for the breakdown of humanitarian operations in Gaza, citing “political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid,” lack of safety on aid routes and Israel’s targeting of the Hamas-run police force, which had previously provided public security.
Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza via an unfamiliar route ordered by Israel, say UNRWA and the World Food Program.
COGAT, the Israeli military department responsible for aid transfers, denies it is hindering humanitarian relief into Gaza, saying there is no limit on supplies for civilians and blaming delays on the United Nations, which it says is inefficient.
Israel accuses UNRWA of having allowed Hamas to infiltrate its ranks — allegations denied by the UN agency — and passed legislation to sever ties with it last month.
Israeli strikes overnight
Israeli strikes in Gaza, meanwhile, killed at least six people overnight, including two young children, ages six and eight, who died in the tent where their family was sheltering, medical officials said Sunday.
The strike in the Muwasi area, a sprawling tent camp housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people, also wounded the children’s mother and their eight-month-old sister, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital saw the bodies.
The search for food in Gaza has grown more difficult as the Israel-Hamas war drags on, and as the potential for famine sets in, the rush toward aid packages dropped from planes can potentially be lethal. One man told a freelance videographer for CBC News that there are families sheltering in the fields where some drops happen, and if boxes land nearby, they are claimed and those families will shoot anyone who comes near them.
A separate strike in the southern city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, killed four men, according to hospital records.
The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in either location. Israel says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its daily strikes across Gaza often kill women and children.
In a separate development, a projectile fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen set off air raid sirens in central Israel. The Israeli military said it intercepted the projectile before it entered Israeli territory.
Ethnic cleansing accusation
A former top Israeli general and defence minister has accused the government of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been waging the latest in a series of offensives against Hamas since early October.
The army has sealed off the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and the Jabalia refugee camp, and allowed almost no humanitarian aid to enter. Tens of thousands of people have fled, while the United Nations estimates up to 75,000 remain.
Moshe Yaalon, who served as defence minister under Benjamin Netanyahu before quitting in 2016 and becoming a fierce critic of the prime minister, said the current far-right government is determined to “occupy, to annex, to ethnically cleanse.”
Pressed by an interviewer with a local news outlet on Saturday, he said: “There is no Beit Lahiya. No Beit Hanoun. (They are) operating now in Jabalia, and (they) are actually cleaning the territory of Arabs.”
Yaalon doubled down on the remarks Sunday in an interview with Israeli radio, saying “war crimes are being committed here.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party criticized his earlier remarks, accusing him of making “false statements” that are “a prize for the International Criminal Court and the camp of Israel haters.”
The ICC has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu, another former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas commander, accusing them of crimes against humanity. The International Court of Justice is investigating allegations of genocide against Israel.
Israel rejects the allegations and says both courts are biased against it.
No end in sight to Gaza war despite ceasefire with Hezbollah
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around people 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials. Some 100 captives are still being held inside Gaza, around two-thirds of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of the coastal enclave and displaced 90 per cent of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Israel reached a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants last week that has largely held, but that agreement, brokered by the United States and France, did not address the ongoing war in Gaza. Iran — which supports Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and armed groups in Syria and Iraq — has exchanged fire with Israel twice this year.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent much of the past year trying to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages, but those efforts stalled as Israel rejected Hamas’s demand for a complete withdrawal from the territory. The Biden administration has said it will make another push for a deal in its final weeks in office.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end the wars in the Middle East, without saying how. He was a staunch defender of Israel and its policies toward the Palestinians during his previous term.
Published at Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:02:24 +0000
No global treaty reached on cutting plastic production, talks to resume next year
Negotiators working on a treaty to address the global crisis of plastic pollution for a week in South Korea won’t reach an agreement and plan to resume the talks next year.
They are at an impasse over whether the treaty should reduce the total plastic on Earth and put global, legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastics.
The UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting in Busan, South Korea, was supposed to be the fifth and final round of negotiations, to produce the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans, by the end of 2024. But with time running out early Monday, negotiators plan to resume the talks next year.
More than 100 countries want the treaty to limit production as well as tackle cleanup and recycling, and many have said that is essential to address chemicals of concern. But for some plastic-producing and oil and gas countries, that crosses a red line.
For any proposal to make it into the treaty, every nation must agree to it. Some countries sought to change the process so decisions could be made with a vote if consensus couldn’t be reached and the process was paralyzed. India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and others opposed changing it, arguing consensus is vital to an inclusive, effective treaty.
On Sunday, the last scheduled day of talks, the treaty draft still had multiple options for several key sections. Some delegates and environmental organizations said it had become too watered-down, including negotiators from Africa who said they would rather leave Busan without a treaty than with a weak one.
Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says he’s disappointed that no agreement was reached on Sunday, but he added he is still hopeful a deal can be struck as negotiators make plans to meet again next year.
Guilbeault says he would plan to use next year’s G7 summit set be hosted in Alberta as a platform to advance the issue.
Production expected to sharply increase
Every year, the world produces more than 360 million tonnes of new plastic. Plastic production could climb about 70 per cent by 2040 without policy changes.
Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, and microplastics have been found in air, fresh produce and even human breast milk.
In animals such as fish, these broken-down bits of larger plastics have been linked to lower levels of growth and reproduction, among a host of other issues. Researchers are still trying to determine more conclusively whether microplastics carry a direct risk to human health, and at what level.
In Ghana, communities, bodies of water, drains and farmlands are choked with plastics, and dumping sites full of plastics are always on fire, said Sam Adu-Kumi, the country’s lead negotiator.
“We want a treaty that will be able to solve it,” he said in an interview. “Otherwise we will go without it and come and fight another time.”
At Sunday night’s meeting, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the committee chair from Ecuador, said that while they made progress in Busan, their work is far from complete and they must be pragmatic. He said countries were the furthest apart on proposals about problematic plastics and chemicals of concern, plastic production and financing the treaty, as well as the treaty principles.
Valdivieso said the meeting should be suspended and resume at a later date. Many countries then reflected on what they must see in the treaty moving forward.
Thousands of delegates are in Ottawa trying to hammer out an historic treaty to end plastic pollution, but the road to get there is littered with hurdles. CBC’s Susan Ormiston examines why it’s so hard to curb the problem and what it will take for the world to agree on a plan.
Rwanda’s lead negotiator, Juliet Kabera, said she spoke on behalf of 85 countries in insisting that the treaty be ambitious throughout, fit for purpose and not built to fail, for the benefit of current and future generations. She asked everyone who supported the statement to “stand up for ambition.” Country delegates and many in the audience stood, clapping.
Panama’s delegation, which led an effort to include plastic production in the treaty, said they would return stronger, louder and more determined.
Saudi Arabia’s negotiator said chemicals and plastic production are not within the scope of the treaty. Speaking on behalf of the Arab group, he said if the world addresses plastic pollution, there should be no problem producing plastic. Kuwait’s negotiator echoed that, saying the objective is to end plastic pollution, not plastic itself, and stretching the mandate beyond its original intent erodes trust and goodwill.
In March 2022, 175 nations agreed to make the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans, by the end of 2024. The resolution states that nations will develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution based on a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic.
Stewart Harris, a spokesperson for the International Council of Chemical Associations, said it was an incredibly ambitious timeline. He said the ICCA is hopeful governments can reach an agreement with just a little more time.
Most of the negotiations in Busan took place behind closed doors. Environmental groups, Indigenous leaders and others who travelled to Busan to help shape the treaty said it should’ve been transparent and they felt silenced.
“The voices of the impacted communities, science and health leaders are silent in the process, and to a large degree, this is why the negotiation process is failing,” said Bjorn Beeler, international co-ordinator for the International Pollutants Elimination Network. “Busan proved that the process is broken and just hobbling along.”
South Korea’s Foreign Affairs Minister Cho Tae-yul said that though they didn’t get a treaty in Busan as many had hoped, their efforts brought the world closer to a unified solution to ending global plastic pollution.
Published at Sun, 01 Dec 2024 18:44:57 +0000
