Responding to the announcement of a four-hour daily humanitarian pause in Gaza, Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communication Coordinator ActionAid Palestine, said:
“Today’s announcement offers precious little to the two million people in Gaza, displaced, injured, and traumatized, who have faced a month of relentless bombardment and seen critical infrastructure across Gaza all but destroyed.
What use is a four-hour pause each day to hand communities’ bread in the morning before they are bombed in the afternoon? What use is a brief cessation in hostilities when hospital wards lie in ruins and when roads used to deliver medical supplies and food are destroyed? With over half of Gaza’s hospitals closing due to fuel shortages or constant bombardment, there will soon be nowhere to deliver medical supplies to at all. Without fuel in any aid packages, a humanitarian pause does nothing to repair Gaza’s destroyed health system or allow families to cook themselves a meal or power water to their homes to shower. While a humanitarian pause might offer a brief respite for a few days, it is nowhere near enough time to repair the damage to Gazan communities and their homes and lives.
Over 10,000 people have been killed in one month alone, with so many children tragically making up this gruesome number – more than those that have been killed in Ukraine since the war began over a year ago. A child’s life is worth the same no matter where they live – but for children in Gaza, this seems far from reality.
Only a permanent ceasefire can put an end to all hostilities and help those whose lives are hanging on by a thread.”
[ENDS]
For media requests, please email Christal.James@actionaid.org or call 704 665 9743.
The following spokesperson is available:
- Riham Jafari, Coordinator of Advocacy and Communication for ActionAid Palestine
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 15 million people living in more than 40 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.