“Our hearts are breaking”
US Vice President speaks of humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza
March 4, 2024, 12:25 a.m
So far, there is no ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in sight. Many civilians in the Gaza Strip are currently struggling with inadequate medical care and food shortages. US Vice President Harris is calling for more support from the Israeli government.
US Vice President Kamala Harris has described the conditions for the people in the embattled and sealed-off Gaza Strip as inhumane and spoken of a humanitarian catastrophe. “Our hearts break (…) for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Harris in Selma, Alabama, where they were marking the anniversary of the bloody, racially motivated attacks during the police crackdown on a civil rights demonstration in 1965. “The people in Gaza are starving, the conditions are inhumane.”
Harris called on the Israeli government to allow significantly more aid into the coastal area and to open new border crossings. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid, there are no excuses,” she said, expressing dismay at the disaster surrounding an aid convoy a few days ago. According to the health authority controlled by the Islamist Hamas, more than a hundred people were killed and several hundred injured on Thursday as they tried to access aid supplies.
Reference to threat from Hamas
Too many innocent Palestinians have already been killed, Harris said. At the same time, she emphasized that, from the US government’s perspective, Israel has the right to defend itself against the threat from Hamas. Terrorists from the Palestinian Organization and other extremist groups carried out the most devastating massacre in Israel’s history at the beginning of October. It was the trigger for the Gaza war that had lasted around five months.
Because of the high number of Palestinian victims in the Gaza Strip and the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the war zone, pressure is growing to decide on a ceasefire. The USA is also pushing for an agreement. “The threat that Hamas poses to the Israeli people must be eliminated,” Harris said, adding, referring to the ongoing negotiations: “And given the immeasurable extent of the suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six months.” weeks give what is currently on the table.”