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Editorial丨Humanitarian crises must not be ignored

CHINADAILY · 公众号 · 时评 · 2024-12-27 10:06

正文

That the military conflicts in the Middle East are still ongoing has, to some extent, distracted the world's attention from the widespread humanitarian crises that they have caused, particularly in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.

Israel has not only continued its attacks on the Palestinian enclave but also weaponized hunger against the 1.8 million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip.

Deaths from starvation will likely pass famine levels in northern Gaza as soon as next month owing to Israel's "near-total blockade" of food and other aid, a US-created global food crisis monitor, the Famine Early Warning System Network, said on Tuesday.

▲ People try to receive food relief at a food distribution center in Gaza City, on Dec 23, 2024. Photo/Xinhua

The United Nations and aid groups say Israel has recently blocked almost all aid to the worst-hit northern Gaza again. Only nine UN trucks have been able to bring in food and water over the past two and a half months.

Although the regime change in Damascus earlier this month seemed to be realized within a short time, hundreds of thousands of Syrian people have been displaced in the process, and up to 1.6 million people in the country are suffering from hunger. This is on top of the over half a million people who have been fleeing into the country from war-torn Lebanon.

Even before the latest events, more than half the population in Syria — 12.9 million people — were facing food insecurity, with 3 million people in the grip of severe hunger conditions, according to the UN World Food Programme.

Meanwhile, escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, inflation and poverty have subjected 2.5 million people in Lebanon to a shortage of food, among whom about 1 million people affected by the conflict are facing the threat of hunger.

In the face of the widespread humanitarian crises on its doorstep, Israel, backed by the United States' Joe Biden administration, has only accelerated its attempt to annex Gaza and the whole of the Golan Heights and expand the buffer zone on its border with Lebanon, while relentlessly trying to expel and defunctionalize UN bodies in the zones of its neighbors it has occupied, be they providing aid or peacekeeping.

The US, which benefits directly from the weakening of Iran's proxies Hamas and Hezbollah and the fall of the Moscow- and Teheran-friendly Bashar al-Assad government of Syria, has turned a blind eye to the mayhem and humanitarian crises that have been primarily caused and aggravated by Israel, taking them as the collateral costs of its geopolitical game in the Middle East.

The fundamental way out of the chaos in the Middle East is through political settlements to the conflicts reached by means of dialogue and negotiation, and to build a new sustainable Middle East security framework on the basis of consensus that takes into account the concerns of all parties. The international community should not let the Palestinian issue be marginalized again. The two-state solution should be put in place as soon as possible.

The basic principle for ending the current conflicts and preventing any future chaos in the Middle East is to avoid external interference. The destiny of the Middle Eastern countries should be in the hands of their people.

To relieve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, China started providing humanitarian aid "to the best of its ability" via Egypt on Monday. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a responsible major country, China will always stand on the side of peace and justice, and continue to play a constructive role in cooling down the situation in the Middle East and promoting regional peace and stability.