NEW YORK, June 19, 2026 (WAFA) – An Oxfam official stated on Thursday that blocking principled humanitarian aid is part of Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Addressing the UN Security Council in New York, Oxfam’s Global Humanitarian Policy Lead Bushra Khalidi, a Palestinian mother from Jerusalem living in the West Bank, warned: “The ceasefire is failing. Israeli forces continue to kill Palestinians. Gaza is being carved up again, with more of its entire population squeezed into a shrinking fraction of the Strip. Civilians remain trapped, displaced, hungry, unprotected.”
She noted that Israel, the occupying power, continues to block credible humanitarian actors, including UNRWA, from doing their jobs, although such actors are “being audited, transparent, accountable, bound by humanitarian principles.”
“Yet, they are obstructed, restricted, deregistered, killed in shocking numbers. These are the experienced professionals that parties should want in a response. Blocking principled humanitarians is part of a wider collective punishment. When they are blocked, opaque and unaccountable actors fill the vacuum. Prioritization collapses, coordination erodes, communities are left to navigate scarcity and survival on their own,” she added.
She urged the UN Security Council (UNSC) to “hold the parties accountable now. Not after further political negotiations, not after disarmament, not as a reward for compliance. Now.”
She also urged the UNSC to “act by using all available political, diplomatic and legal tools to end atrocities, to end the occupation.”
“History will not remember how many reports were filed, or how many meetings were convened. It will judge whether, when confronted with lives and futures being obliterated, this Council acted with urgency, with courage, with humanity,” she concluded.
K.F.
