Derry condemnation of Gaza siege as water runs out and UN warns of descent into ‘abyss’

The SDLP MP said the conflict has left communities across the region, particularly in Gaza, devastated.

“The appalling scenes of violence in Gaza and southern Israel have horrified the world. The indiscriminate murder of civilians and aid workers on a horrific scale, the abduction of women and children, the blatant breaches of international law and the imposing of collective punishment on the people of Gaza are indefensible.

"There is nothing that can justify what we’re seeing unfold in the region and there is no excuse for the weak, partisan international response.

“The crimes committed by Hamas have been met by crimes committed by the state of Israel. The cycle of violence and atrocity cannot continue without an intervention from the international community aimed at securing a ceasefire and, ultimately, a peaceful two state solution,” he said.

Mr. Eastwood was speaking after UN Secretary-General António Guterre on Sunday appealed to Hamas to immediately release all hostages and to Israel to grant ‘unimpeded access for humanitarian aid’ into the Gaza Strip warning the Middle East was on the ‘verge of the abyss’.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said: “UNRWA operations are the largest United Nations footprint in the Gaza Strip, and we are on the verge of collapse.”

On Sunday he said ‘not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel’ had been allowed into Gaza for the preceding eight days.  

“Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity,” stressed Mr. Lazzarini, who said at least 400,000 displaced people are now in UNRWA schools and buildings, most of which are not equipped as emergency shelters.

Most of the 13,000 UNRWA staff in the Gaza Strip are now displaced, he said, while 14 of the agency’s staff have been killed in the Israeli bombardment. They were teachers, engineers, guards, psychologists, an engineer and a gynaecologist.

“Old people, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities are just being deprived of their basic human dignity, and this is a total disgrace!

“The siege in Gaza, the way it is imposed, is nothing less than collective punishment,” he declared.

Mr. Eastwood said: “The people of Derry know better than most that violence for political ends never works. It is a symptom of an entrenched conflict that can only be broken by dialogue.

"I know that people here feel powerless and are struggling to understand what they can do to help the situation. The solidarity of this city is with civilians facing the most horrendous conditions and living with the threat of extreme violence every day.

“I have written to the Mayor to request that civic buildings are lit white for peace as a visible sign of our solidarity.”

The United Nations (UN) Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel has said it is collecting evidence of war crimes committed by all sides since October 7, 2023.

On Monday, as the siege of Gaza continued, the UNRWA confirmed water is running out.

“Gaza is running dry. People across Gaza have severely limited access to clean drinking water. A quarter of a million people moved to shelters over the past 24 hours - the majority of which are in UNRWA schools where ‘clean water has actually run out’,” the agency said.

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People Before Profit Councillor Shaun Harkin called for mass protests against what he described as a ‘genocidal siege’.

"Global grassroots mobilisations on an unprecedented scale comprising mass protests, occupations and general strikes can stop the genocidal siege on Gaza and barbaric Israeli war crimes.

"If ever there was a time for civil society and unions to mobilise mass civil disobedience, the time is now.

"The only way we can stop this slaughter backed, funded and condoned by the most powerful governments in the world, US President Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, and the EU, is through mass action.

“Hamas' attacks are being used to justify Israeli devastation of Gaza and hide the complicity of Western powers, rather than understood as the consequences of a brutal occupation and apartheid regime,” he said.

Relatives of the 14 people killed by the British parachute regiment in Derry on January 30,1972, meanwhile, have reacted angrily to a post by the Israeli Defense Forces of a video which stated, in reference to the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, that, ‘This is Israel’s Bloody Sunday’.

Chairperson of the Bloody Sunday Trust, Tony Doherty, whose father Patrick was shot dead, said: “What happened in Derry can easily be compared to what the Israeli apartheid government and its armed forces have done to thousands of innocent people in Gaza and what they now plan to do.”

Kate Nash of the Bloody Sunday March Committee, whose brother William Nash, was shot dead in the Bogside in 1972, also criticised the IDF tweet.

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“This is beyond outrageous. To have the memory of our innocent dead sullied by the apartheid forces of the Israeli State will cause deep hurt and anger in Derry,” she said.

Ms. Nash criticised the UK Government for not offering even ‘the weakest of condemnation of the Israeli State’.

Mr. Doherty, meanwhile, said the Irish Government needed to be more vocal in its criticism of the ‘genocide’ in Gaza. He was particularly critical of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her forthright support for the Benjamin Netanyahu government.

"This will go down as a terrible stain on the European project. We need to push for peace, the end of all hostilities in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine/Israel and get all sides to commit towards peaceful methods of resolving political and historical differences," he said.

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