UN must act against israel over Gaza: Lawyer

An international lawyer says Israel’s blocking of aid supplies to the Gaza Strip is in violation of international humanitarian law, urging the UN and the global community to take action against Tel Aviv, Press TV reports.

“This process of squeezing and putting the people of Gaza on a diet, this is violation of international humanitarian law clearly,” Franklin Lamb said.

“You cannot starve the people, you cannot prevent their development … This is an assault in a sense on the people of Gaza and there is international responsibility for this,” he added.

The analyst said the UN and the global community need to act and put pressure on Israel to loosen the noose around the Gaza Strip, which is in dire straits.

The UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said on Tuesday that Israel has blocked humanitarian aid worth USD 110 million from reaching Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

Feltman said that Palestinians in the besieged strip are living in harsh conditions and warned that the humanitarian situation for Palestinians is deteriorating as it is becoming “harder and harder for the UN to help the population of Gaza because of limited access.”

Meanwhile, Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said on Thursday that the besieged Gaza Strip is in “bad shape,” adding that the situation has actually deteriorated in the coastal sliver.

Israel imposed an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade on Gaza in June 2007. The siege has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the impoverished enclave, turning the territory into the world’s largest open-air prison.