Raquel Martí: "Citizens are showing that they no longer want to see Israel massacre Palestinians."

BarcelonaThe executive director in Spain of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)Raquel Martí visited Barcelona on Monday to formalize the €500,000 support the organization will receive from the Barcelona Provincial Council, as confirmed by the organization's sixth vice president, Maria Eugenia Gay. UNRWA works "as one" paragovernment", in Martí's words: offers all social services, education and healthcare, to the Palestinian refugee populations in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Israel banned UNRWA's presence in the Palestinian territories last year., but he hasn't left. How has your work been hampered since then?

— We continue to work despite many difficulties and are still the largest UN agency operating in the West Bank and Gaza. The biggest obstacle is that Israel has not renewed the visas of international staff, who have had to leave Gaza and the West Bank and now operate from Amman. But in total, we are 150 people out of a total of 30,000 staff members we have across the Middle East, the vast majority of whom are local residents, because UNRWA prioritizes hiring Palestinian refugees. We continue to work in Gaza despite everything. We now have 11,000 staff members, down from the 13,000 we had before the Israeli offensive: 360 have been killed, and the others have been forcibly displaced and are unable to work. We are the largest health provider inside Gaza, providing between 14,000 and 16,000 consultations daily, even though the hospitals are practically destroyed. We still have 100,000 people in Gaza sheltered in our schools and clinics. All of them have been attacked at least once, but people continue to live in the ruins of these buildings.

They have obeyed theIsraeli order to evacuate Gaza City?

— In the last four days, 10 of our buildings in Gaza City and northern Gaza, seven schools, and two clinics have been attacked, all of which were home to refugees, primarily women and children. We don't force staff to stay; it's obviously a personal decision, and most of our employees remain at their jobs until they are forcibly displaced. They then move to another area where they return to their jobs with a different population.

UNRWA is also responsible for measuring child malnutrition in Gaza. What is the situation now?

— The Famine has been declared in Gaza City and northern GazaAnd if the situation doesn't change, and it doesn't seem likely to, by the end of September it will spread to Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah. As of yesterday, the figures were 440 deaths from starvation, including 140 children. And an average of 5 to 7 people die every day. This will only increase because Israel has created all the conditions that make it impossible to survive in Gaza: it has destroyed the entire healthcare system, prevented the entry of medicines for the treatment of chronic illnesses such as cancer or diabetes, destroyed the entire sanitation and drinking water system, and allowed the garbage it spreads to accumulate. It's obvious that Israel's intention is to perpetuate hunger in Gaza.

Right now, the only food distribution points are those run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Is there any connection between them?

— No. The Gaza Humanitarian Fund is an organization created by Israel with US support. It's a group of mercenaries and gangsters who use humanitarian aid to lure people into death traps where they are being murdered. They've already killed more than 2,400 people and injured more than 16,000, so it's obvious that no United Nations agency or international NGO is collaborating with them; we have refused from the beginning.

Would you define what is happening in Gaza as genocide?

— I am not the one to define genocide because that's what it's for International Court of Justice investigating itBut the ICJ has accepted South Africa's complaint for alleged genocide, saying there is sufficient evidence. And the leading expert right now on what's happening in the occupied Palestinian territory is Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur and expert in international humanitarian law, and she published a book last year explaining why genocide is being committed in Gaza. Many experts, many of them Jewish, have concluded that Israel is committing genocide. But the United Nations generally doesn't take a position until the ICJ issues its verdict.

But the whole situation that you yourself have just described, and which you say demonstrates certain concrete intentions, could that be evidence for this trial?

— When you're banning the entry of humanitarian aid, you already have an intention. When you're preventing UN agencies from working, you already have an intention, and it's not just UNRWA they're banning from working at, but also other agencies like OCHA, which coordinates all humanitarian aid within Gaza. It's an attempt to destroy the organizations that are providing humanitarian aid to Gaza to create these conditions, the result of which we're seeing is hunger.

The main argument of Benjamin Netanyahu's government is that it is doing everything to destroy Hamas.

— Nothing justifies the massacre Israel is carrying out in Gaza. Nothing justifies attacking hospitals, nothing justifies attacking schools full of civilians. It's collective punishment to prohibit the entry of humanitarian aid. It could be a war crime to force the population to move. So, I believe that what Israel is doing is crossing many red lines of violations of international humanitarian law without any justification.

How do you rate the events of the weekend at the Vuelta?

— I think the public is constantly showing that it doesn't want to continue watching Israel massacre the Palestinian population, and they're clearly doing everything they can to draw attention and demand that governments take action and try to end the suffering of the Palestinian population. What I would ask is why a team like the Russian team could be banned, but a team like Israel can't. What the public is saying is that allowing Israel to participate in sporting events that give such visibility is a way to whitewash its image and hide what it's doing. Therefore, what we should all ask ourselves is whether we want to continue supporting this whitewashing and perpetuating the situation in Palestine.