Gaza charity warns 'there's nowhere safe left to go'

MSP John Mason had the whip withdrawn by the SNP after saying the country "would have killed ten times as many" if it wanted to commit genocide against the Palestinian people.

First Minister John Swinney then met with Dr Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestine Mission to the United Kingdom, to discuss the humanitarian situation in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Amid the political back and forth, the current conflict has been ongoing for more than 10 months, with over 40,000 Palestinians killed and ceasefire talks seemingly at an impasse.

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The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) has worked in the region for decades, engaging with partners on both sides of the conflict.

The charity this week warned that the situation is "increasingly dire" for the people on the ground, urging the UK government to use its diplomatic power to call for a ceasefire.

Elizabeth Funnell, country programme representative for the Middle East said: "It’s one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an aid worker, and lots of people have tragically lost their lives in Gaza while trying to deliver aid to others.

“The safety and security of staff is a real challenge, but also the challenges around delivering aid which has been very difficult.

“The entry points open and close at different times, and even if aid is allowed in it’s often subject to stringent checks which can delay the entry of aid even if it is permitted to enter.

“Some of the infrastructure such as roads has been so badly damaged in the fighting it can be very difficult to transport the aid to the people who need it, there’s a severe lack of fuel so there might not be the fuel to transport aid on trucks.

“There are huge challenges, and not enough aid entering to meet them.

“The other thing we’ve seen an increase in over the last couple of days is just a lack of space for humanitarian agencies to operate.

The body of a Palestinian child is carried to their funeral (Image: AP)

“Because of the intensity of the fighting many areas have been put under evacuation orders, so people are told the area they’re living will no longer be safe and are told to move to, for example, the west.

“But now the vast majority of the Gaza Strip is under evacuation order and there’s simply nowhere safe left to go.

“Even places that are declared safe, or declared humanitarian zones, come under fire. One of our partners delivering mental health support to children in a humanitarian zone had one of the tents they were working in struck by an Israeli airstrike and we were very fortunate no-one was killed.

“If humanitarian agencies can no longer access warehouses, if their staff have nowhere safe to live, if people are being displaced time and time again the delivery of humanitarian aid is slowly becoming more and more challenging.

“The impact of that is that the really vulnerable people who need those essentials just won’t be able to receive them.

"We have to be very clear that even before October 7, the situation in Gaza was very desperate.

“Even before this particular crisis, 80% of Gazans were reliant on humanitarian aid, youth unemployment was among the highest in the world, the long-term political challenges have devastated Gaza’s economy over a number of years.

“People living in Gaza have lived through a number of successive crises, and what we’re seeing now is trauma on top of trauma and crisis on top of crisis.

“What we’re calling for is an immediate and permanent ceasefire so we can make sure the Israeli hostages are released, we can increase aid into Gaza and we can start to think about long-term solutions and a future in which all the people, be they in Gaza or Israel, can really flourish.”

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip fleeing from Hamad City

Both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are defined as occupied territories by the United Nations and the UK Government.

The latter has seen an expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, as well as violence against Palestinians by settlers.

The Norwegian Refugee Council reported this week that three communities, comprising 119 Palestinians, had been forced out by settlers.

The Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission states that 18 Palestinians have been killed by settler violence sinc October 7 and 785 have been injured.

Ms Funnell said: "We’ve been working in the West Bank for decades, and what we’re seeing there isn’t necessarily new but it’s definitely an intensification.

“Settler violence has been happening for a very long time but we’ve seen that increase, along with the level of violence against Palestinians, whether they’re farmers or just people on the road trying to get to work having stones hurled at their vehicles or whole villages being set on fire by mobs of settlers.

“We’ve also seen an increase in Israeli military activity in the West Bank and activities like airstrikes on refugee camps.

“We’ve called on the UK government to do what it can to urge the Israeli government to act to prevent these acts of violence, and our partners are doing great work in documenting the impact of violence and offering legal aid and a protective presence to vulnerable communities wherever we can.”

The October 7 attacks left 1,180 Israelis dead, 797 of them civilians and 36 children. More than 250 were taken hostage.

In the Israeli offensive that followed, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and close to 100,000 wounded.

South Africa has brought a case against Israel before the International Court of Justice, accusing the nation of genocide, a charge denied by Israel.

A verdict is not expected for several years, but with a ceasefire still looking like a distant prospect, what realistic hope is there of peace in the region?

Ms Funnell said: "I was talking to an Israeli partner this morning, we were talking about hope and how we can have optimism for the future.

“She was personally affected by the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, she lost a very close relative which, obviously, was absolutely devastating for her.

“But she continues to work for peace, and a lot of that is supporting Palestinian communities affected by settler violence.

“Those people who continue to strive for peace, even under these most challenging circumstances, are what we have to keep drawing on, that sense of hope and optimism for a better future.

"In some ways peace seems further away than ever, we had a lot of hope and optimism for an imminent ceasefire and the hopes of that do seem to be fading.

“In the last couple of days I’ve spoken to colleagues in Beirut, in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel and the common thing you hear from everyone is about how long the fighting has gone on.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to shares a desire for peace, nobody – that I speak to – wants to see an escalation in violence.

“The UK government needs to be using all the diplomatic leverage it has to push for that urgent ceasefire in Gaza, both for the people of Gaza and the wider region.

“We don’t know the details of the agreements they’re trying to work out but I hope our government can do what it can to make sure what’s being proposed is a fair and equitable deal that will lead to a sense of justice for all.”