While the intention to scale up and deliver aid is a welcome change from an otherwise all too quiet president, the decision to focus on a port construction in Gaza falls gravely short given the acute emergency state of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Sea routes, especially those involving the construction of new infrastructure, are notorious for their time-consuming setup. Biden’s failure to address the immediate needs of the people in Gaza, who are starving and in dire need of food, water, and medical supplies is a travesty. Setting up a temporary port could take weeks or even months, further delaying aid delivery. Coordination on the ground is still vital to allow trucks to transfer this aid from the costal to the inland areas. Its time for Biden to hold his ally to account for the acute humanitarian emergency in Gaza, demand that Israel ceases the punitive restrictions on aid and immediately scales up humanitarian support through the existing aid channels including reinstating funding to UNRWA. This is no time for elaborate schemes that skirt around the inevitable. Only a ceasefire can provide the urgent support needed to save the millions of lives at risk in Gaza.
The United States can and should do better. We call on the President to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and to stop supporting Israel’s military campaign.
ENDS
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About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 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.