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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed there is no starvation in Gaza.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza. What a boldface lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, today, the world’s leading hunger monitor issued a dire warning, saying, quote, “The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” unquote
To talk more about the humanitarian catastrophe, we’re joined by Jan Egeland, secretary general of Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest independent aid organizations in Gaza.
Jan, welcome back to Democracy Now! First, respond to the Israeli prime minister saying there is no starvation in Gaza.
JAN EGELAND: Well, he’s in a minority of one in this world, really — well, maybe together with his right-wing extremists in his government — to claim that. He hasn’t been in Gaza and seen the starving children. I’ve been there. I’ve seen them. So, people from all nations all over the world, including from Norway, my own country, who have gone there — we have had a historic relationship since we were campaigning for the creation of the state of Israel — we see the truth.
And I think it’s important for the American public to really understand that when I say the fingerprints of the U.S. policy and the other European countries that provide arms to Israel’s campaign in Gaza is contributing to war crimes — and I think your historically important interview with the lieutenant colonel from the Green Berets, Special Forces, who told
everything that he saw, which is a continued criminality on behalf of this so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — it’s important to know that this is funded by U.S. government, by U.S. taxpayers. It will not look good when history will judge this.
AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, you have the GHF four sites, where people are gunned down when they try to get food, replacing 400 sites coordinated by the United Nations. Gaza — your organization, Norwegian Refugee Council, has been on the ground for a long time in Gaza. Can you talk right now about Israel allowing airdrops? How effective is that? And how do you recreate this, these 400 sites?
JAN EGELAND: Well, yeah, there was indeed 400 sites, when there was the ceasefire, when Israeli hostages were released, and we were allowed to work. Israel broke off that in March. I hope you will all remember it was broken off by Israel itself after many hostages were released back into Israel. And we could feed the entire population in Gaza. Now, after all of these months of deliberate, systematic starvation of women and children in Gaza, even the U.S. government, the German government, the British government and the French government, those who have provided the arms to this indiscriminate bombing, say there is starvation.
Now Netanyahu’s government is saying, “OK, then, OK, then, we’re very afraid of sanctions now,” and then they allow airdrops, which is the worst possible way of providing assistance. Who likes airdrops? Well, TV journalists like it. Diplomats, politicians like it, because it’s very photogenic. But one airdrop is 25 tons. That’s two-and-a-half trucks. We need 60,000 tons of food per month in normal circumstances for more than 2 million people. Twenty-five tons just dropped at random, where anyone could pick them, and Hamas could pick them up, anyone could get them there in their heads.
Certainly, the people that we in the Norwegian Refugee Council were feeding, which were single mother-led families, widows with many children, the disabled, the elderly, they will get nothing of this, of this aid, as they will get nothing from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was conjured by Israeli military and some strange American people who were working with this most extreme government in the history of Israel to substitute the Norwegian Refugee Council and all of the other organizations which were there for a generation and have a proven track record. We were closed down by Hamas when they — when we yielded their pressure to influence our work. They invaded our offices. We have a track record of standing up against Hamas, as we have a track record in standing up to the kind of manipulation that is now undertaken by the Israeli war machine in Gaza. It’s we who have the professionality to be able to do this job.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you get food aid and humanitarian aid into Gaza now, outside of airdrops? How many trucks are needed per day?
JAN EGELAND: Well, we in Norwegian Refugee Council and nearly all other aid groups are still denied all access. There is a group of agencies, U.N. agencies, two or three nongovernmental organizations, health organizations mainly, that are now authorized to do some work. I believe they get in 100, 150 — it could be a little bit more today — trucks per day. The minimum is 600 trucks. So, after full starvation for many months and very little food coming in, some at these chaotic hunger games organized by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the south, but beyond that, very little aid. Now it’s one-sixth of what it would be normal times. It is — it’s an insult to Trump, to Starmer, to Macron and to Merz, these leaders who say that they want this to change. It’s Netanyahu who’s calling the shots. The tail is wagging the dog here, and everybody can see it.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump contradicted Netanyahu and said he saw the pictures, that these people look hungry, right? Palestinians look hungry. What can Trump do at this point as the major weapons supplier to Israel?
JAN EGELAND: Well, the case with the U.S. administration is very clear, really. If they tell the Netanyahu government to do the right thing, they will do so. What’s the right thing? It’s to open all of the border crossings so that all of the organizations that have a distribution apparatus on the inside, including us — but we are a hundred organizations that are present in Gaza, have trusted local staff — we can feed people in the 400 distribution points that we had before Israel closed everything down. That’s what Trump should be asking for.
And then he should take — or, rather, American forces or international forces should — control of the border crossings. I wrote a letter to the U.S. administration, to the European Union, to international leaders in October, after the horrific Hamas massacres in Israel, and said, “If you let one side control aid access to the civilians on the other side, you will ask for trouble.” I warned against it. You have to have an international control mechanism. I hope they will listen now, as I think they understand that their fingerprints — I mean, now talking about these Western powers’ fingerprints — is now all over a crime scene, and history will judge.
AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, we want to thank you for being with us, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to us from Oslo. Norway, Spain, Ireland have joined the majority of nations in the world in recognizing the state of Palestine. France will do so in September. There’s a U.N. conference going on right now, run by France and Saudi Arabia, around Palestine.
Coming up, two leading Israeli human rights groups have accused Israel of genocide. Back in 20 seconds.
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AMY GOODMAN: “The Healers” by the late Randy Weston, performed the song when he spoke with Democracy Now! in 2012. Check it out at democracynow.org.
