Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former top UN humanitarian official, told FRANCE 24 on Tuesday that Gaza is "among the worst places in humanitarian history". He described a trapped population enduring "relentless" bombardment since October 2023. With regards to the southern city of Rafah, where an Israeli offensive appears imminent, he said some 1.4 million people were "engulfed in fear and desperation beyond belief".
Speaking from the Norwegian capital Oslo, Egeland said that while the situation was "terrible in Rafah", it was "even worse" in the northern part of the Gaza Strip because of the lack of humanitarian aid.
Egeland said the World Food Programme was "correct" in assessing that famine was now raging in northern Gaza, "because Israel has not opened the border crossings in the north, except now a trickle through Erez".
He said that Israel had been "indiscriminate" in its bombardment, but also pointed out that "the lack of access for humanitarian aid is in violation of international law".
Asked about the killing of seven aid workers from the NGO World Central Kitchen, Egeland said he believed this was "a mistake", but that "Israel is neither doing the distinction nor the precaution nor the assessment of proportionality that they are obligated to do under international law".
'Hypocrisy on an industrial scale'
Israel has "committed a lot of violations of international law: a world record in dead aid workers, [a] world record in dead doctors, in nurses, teachers, women and children in such a small period – it's unheard of," he said.
Egeland went on to say that Israel's Western allies "bear some of the blame", pointing to the US, Germany, the UK and France providing military aid used in indiscriminate bombings. "They have their fingerprints over in many ways a crime scene," he said. He also criticised countries for freezing assistance to UNRWA because of allegations of wrongdoing by a handful of its members, who are accused of involvement in the October 7 attacks on Israel. "This is hypocrisy on an industrial scale," he declared.
Finally, asked about the situation in southern Lebanon, Egeland warned that he was "very concerned" and that he had witnessed a "countdown to catastrophe" there. Pointing out that Lebanon already hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees and over 500,000 Palestinian refugees, he called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
The former top UN official warned that Lebanon was on the verge of collapse and was not receiving enough aid for the country's many refugees.
