The English-language paper noted that the seige has taken a significant toll on the city’s ability to provide medical and humanitarian services to those in need, describing the illegal Zionist seige as callous', 'inhumane', 'tragic' and 'unlawful'.
Even James Rowley, the UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories, called for the Zionist regime’s siege to be lifted to allow the delivery of proper medical care and end patients' suffering, underscored the paper in its Viewpoint column.
It is also necessary that the Egyptian government must simultaneously open the Rafah border crossing to allow the transfer of patients and medical supplies into the besieged city, added the paper.
It’s a wake-up call to the international community to come to their senses and realize that the suffering of Palestinians cannot go on forever while they sit and watch. The city has been under siege since 2007, which has cut off the territory from the outside world, and has led to a humanitarian crisis, criticized the daily.
During last summer’s Israeli war on Gaza, over 2,130 Palestinians lost their lives and some 11,000 were injured. The victims included 578 children and nearly 260 women, recalled the paper.
According to the international aid agency Oxfam, 'under current restrictions it could take more than 50 years to build the 89,000 new homes, 226 new schools, as well as the health facilities, factories and water and sanitation infrastructure that people in Gaza need”, underscored the daily.
So no matter how much money international donors raise for reconstruction, it’s never enough. The criminal regime of Israel determines what gets in and out. The truth is that the priority is no longer the survivors. Tel Aviv is the true beneficiary of the international aid, criticised the paper.
The self-declared international community has once again abandoned Gaza as it arms Israel with the weaponry and ensures it the impunity that only rewards its brutal onslaught and essentially guarantees repetition, it added.
It is about time the international civil society condemned the failure to bring meaningful pressure on Israel to end the siege that had brought the economy to its knees even before the destruction it wrought on Gaza last summer, it said.
What’s more, donor money pledges are no substitute for holding Israel accountable for its grave violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, and achieving justice for the Palestinian victims.
Worse yet, international agencies including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross are still operating within the confines of Israel’s policy of separation and collective punishment, wrote the paper.
Without adopting a comprehensive and binding military embargo on Israel, donor states, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations are complicit in this unjust and illegal policy of collective punishment that has been going on with great impunity for years.
Under international humanitarian law, there should be a mechanism of accountability to the Palestinian public at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That dignity should be restored now, stressed the paper.
Lifting the illegal siege could be a starting point but never enough, it pointed out.
The least that can be done is to prove beyond any doubt that there still exist some conscientious souls in this unjust and undignified world, wrote the paper in conclusion.
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Publish Date: 12 February 2015 - 12:26
Tehran, Feb 12, IRNA - 'Kayhan International' on Thursday called for the immediate lift of the Zionist seige on Gaza to not only allow humanitarian services to the oppressed and needy people, but also to restore dignity to the beseiged city.