'Blood is on our hands,' US peace group says as Gaza marks 40,000 deaths
Aug 16, 2024
New York [US], August 16: The US-based peace organisation Fellowship of Reconciliation has criticised the Biden administration for paying "lip service" to ceasefire talks days after approving an additional $20bn in weapons sales to Israel as Gaza's Health Ministry says more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory.
"The blood is on all our hands around the world, but especially on ours here in the US, where we are supplying the tools of destruction and death," Executive Director Ariel Gold told Al Jazeera from New Jersey.
"As much as this is Israel's war and tragedy, this is America's war and tragedy," she added. Gold expressed hope that a new US administration led by Vice President Kamala Harris after November's election would break from Biden's policy of unconditional support for Israel.
"We are seeing very large shifts in public opinion towards Palestinian rights. The question is whether those shifts are large enough and will come soon enough to save lives," she said.
Israel's relentless war on Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, at least 16,456 of them children and over 11,000 women. Gaza's Health Ministry on Thursday announced the grim milestone, a figure that is likely an undercount as most of the missing 10,000 Palestinians are believed to be buried under mountains of rubble.
The United Nations says Israel's bombardment has damaged or destroyed two-thirds of buildings across the Strip.
"Today marks a grim milestone for the world," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. "This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the [Israeli military] to comply with the rules of war."
Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said the 40,000 figure is "a very conservative reading of the number of casualties across Gaza".
"There are still those who are missing and trapped under the rubble, [who] haven't been identified, haven't been collected, haven't been counted yet," he said. (Agencies)
Source: Qatar Tribune
