Doctors Without Borders chastises Israel, accuses it of using aid as ‘bargaining chip’

The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical charity claims Israel has “instrumentalized humanitarian needs” in Gaza, with its decision to halt aid and cut electricity into the Strip.

“Israeli authorities are yet again normalizing the use of aid as a negotiation tool,” MSF emergency coordinator Myriam Laaroussi says in a statement. “This is outrageous. Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip in war.”

The group’s statement makes no mention of the Hamas terror group’s use throughout the war and before it of civilian hostages as bargaining chips.

Israel has halted aid deliveries to Gaza to pressure Hamas to agree to release more of the 59 hostages it is still holding amid fragile ceasefire, which since January 19 has reduced hostilities after more than 15 months of fighting since the Palestinian terror group’s murderous onslaught on October 7, 2023.

Ahead of a current round of talks in Doha, Israel ramped up the pressure, halting the supply of electricity to a desalination plant in the Strip.

Describing the move as “collective punishment,” MSF demands Israel “end this inhumane blockade of the Strip.”

It warns that with the suspension of electricity supply, the water desalination plant in Khan Younis in the south of the territory has already run out of fuel.

“The plant has dropped its production from 17 million to 2.5 million liters per day,” its statement says. “This decision to cut electricity will gradually severely impact the public water supply” to Gaza’s some 2.4 million people, who are already caught in a dire humanitarian crisis, it adds.

“The blockade on all supplies is inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people and is having deadly consequences,” Laaroussi claims.

MSF says its last delivery into Gaza took place on February 27, when it sent in three trucks carrying mostly medical supplies. It asserts that even before the blockade, people on the ground were facing critical shortages.

“Although more trucks have entered during the ceasefire, the Israel authorities’ goods entry system, systematically used to obstruct humanitarian aid, has made it impossible for us to scale up properly, even before this blockade,” Laaroussi says.

The system has consistently obstructed and restricted “the entry of lifesaving supplies including scalpels, scissors, oxygen concentrators, desalination units and generators,” MSF says. “Even when approved, the process takes a long time and continues to be a complex bureaucratic impediment.”