Senators say US is complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza | US Senate

Two Democratic senators claim to have reached the “essential conclusion” that Israel acts on a systematic level to destroy and ethnically clean the Gaza Palestinians to force the inhabitants to leave, and they say that the United States is accomplices.

Chris Van Hollen, from Maryland and Jeff Merkley de l’Oregon, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, published their conclusions in a report Thursday after his return from a delegation from the Congress to the Middle East where, they note, destruction goes beyond bombs and balls. They say they also found a systematic campaign to strangle humanitarian aid, which they call “the use of food as a weapon of war”.

“The government of Netanyahu went far beyond the targeting of Hamas to impose a collective sanction on all the inhabitants of Gaza,” said Van Hollen at a press conference on Thursday. “What they do and what we have witnessed is to put these objectives in action.”

At least a hundred people died from famine in Gaza, the United Nations said this week, citing the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Senators, who visited Egypt, Israel, occupied West Bank and Jordan, argue that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a deliberate strategy to ethnically clean the local population rather than the collateral damage to the war against Hamas. Their report is entitled The Netanyahu government implements a plan to ethnically clean Gaza of the Palestinians. America is an accomplice. The world must stop it.

During their visit to the Egyptian -Gaza border, they observed Rafah, the city of southern Gaza – which houses 270,000 Palestinians – reduced to rubble. Van Hollen described how the two legislators climbed an external getaway from the Egyptian side of the border to have a clear view of destruction.

The legislators also met with former soldiers of the Israeli defense forces who described participation in “systematic destruction of civil infrastructure”. Their report noted first -hand accounts of “how it was part of an intentional model to use explosives to explode blocks, houses, schools and other civil sites”.

Senators have documented arbitrary restrictions that have left aid groups unable to predict what will be refused entry. Jordanian officials told them that peanut butter, honey and dates had suddenly prohibited from convoys, with whole trucks refused for transporting a single limited article. Each truck, according to the report, is subject to new customs processing costs of $ 400, and when the truck is unable to go through the screening process, the $ 400 must be paid again to reach a subsequent convoy. Due to these restrictions and other restrictions from the Israeli government, humanitarian aid from Jordan currently operated under 10% of its capacity, according to the report.

In Egypt, according to the senators, the fleet of United Nations trucks “underwent serious damage”, the United Nations organizations showing the video of the senators of their convoys being under the fire of the FDI, “a regular event”. Senators have also visited a warehouse led by the Egyptian Red Red Crescent and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) with goods that had been prohibited by Israel, including solar water pumps, tents, wheelchairs and even spare parts for trucks under double -use restrictions, “the report.

At the Israeli Port of Ashdod, PAM officials told senators that 2,200 food shipping containers – enough to feed everyone in Gaza for three weeks – seated delayed by screening procedures requiring that each palette be verified individually.

Merkley described the two components of the strategy: “One is to destroy the houses so that they cannot be returned … This second strategy consists in depriving the Palestinians of essentials to live, food, water, medicine.”

Israel has replaced the hundreds of UN distribution sites with only four aid points for 2 million people, three located only in the south of Gaza. Senators have heard stories of mothers suffering from malnutrition unable to browse miles to distribution sites while transporting children, then lifting 7 lb food boxes for the return trip. From May 22 to July 31, 1,373 people were killed near these sites, according to the UN.

The fact that Israel and the United States call plans for the mass movement of Palestinians in Gaza A “voluntary exodus” is one of the “most fraudulent, sinister and twisted coverage,” said the report.

“There is nothing volunteer to want to leave when your home is gone, when your agricultural areas are no longer accessible,” said Van Hollen at the press conference.

The two senators accused the US government of allowing ethnic cleaning described. “We, the United States, are accomplices of all this,” said Van Hollen. “Because we provide taxpayers’ dollars to the Netanyahu government to use weapons in Gaza.”

The feeling at Congress with regard to long-standing United States for Israel has been slow, but it has changed. A recent vote in the Senate on arms sales in Israel saw 27 Democratic senators – more than half of the Caucus – oppose arms transfers.

“The same values ​​that made me a champion for Israel forcing me to say what they are doing to the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza, is absolutely false,” said Merkley.

The two legislators called for immediate action to ensure a ceasefire, noting that families in Israeli hostage had told them that Netanyahu “prioritized his political survival on the survival of our loved ones”.

“The world has a moral and legal obligation to stop the current ethnic cleaning,” concludes their report. “Strong words alone will not be sufficient. The world must impose penalties and costs on those who bring this plan. ”