SIMON HARRIS HAS called on Israel to end its two-month blockade of aid entering the Gaza Strip as the Red Cross warns the region is on “the verge of total collapse”.

The Tánaiste released a statement today, exactly two months into the blockade which has been described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an “abomination”.

Harris posted the strongly-worded message to X where he urged Israel to bring an end to the “unconscionable” suffering of people in Gaza.

“No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza in over eight weeks as a result of the Israeli blockade,” he began.

“Children are starving. Hospitals are running out of basic painkillers. The World Food Programme has said that its food stocks are now depleted. Life-saving aid is available and urgently needed, but trucks cannot cross into Gaza.”

An aid delivery truck in Gaza during the ceasefire, January 2025. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Branding the resumption of bombing in the enclave as “disastrous”, Harris urged Israel to obey international law by ending the impasse.

“Ireland calls on Israel to immediately lift the blockade and allow for unimpeded access to humanitarian aid.”

Israel strictly controls all inflows of international aid vital for the 2.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

It halted aid deliveries to Gaza on 2 March, days before the collapse of a ceasefire that had significantly reduced hostilities after 15 months of war.

Since the start of the blockade, the United Nations has repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.

‘Breaking the bodies and minds of children’

“We have to ask ourselves: How much blood is enough to satisfy whatever the political objectives are,” WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan told reporters in Geneva.

“We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza, because if we don’t do something about it we are complicit in what is happening.”

Speaking to reporters in Geneva today via video link from Gaza City, Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said food stocks “have now mainly run out”. 

“Community kitchens have begun to shut down (and) more people are going hungry,” she said, pointing to reports of children and other very vulnerable people who have died from malnutrition and … from the lack of food. The blockade is deadly.”

Water access was also “becoming impossible”, Cherevko warned. “There’s a water truck that has just arrived, and people are killing each other over water,” she said, describing a scene below her window.

She also slammed decision-makers who “have watched in silence the endless scenes of bloodied children, of severed limbs, of grieving parents move swiftly across their screens, month after month after month”.

How much more blood must be spilled before enough become enough?

Amnesty International said that Israel’s blocking of aid to Palestinians is “calculated to bring about their physical destruction”, adding that “this constitutes an act of genocide”. 

“The international community must not continue to stand by as Israel perpetrates these atrocities with impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy, and Campaigns at Amnesty International. 

“States, especially Israel’s allies, must act now and take concrete measures to pressure Israel into immediately lifting its total siege and allowing the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid and its safe distribution across all of Gaza. A sustained ceasefire is essential to ensure that can happen.”

UNICEF Ireland said yesterday that Israel’s maintenance of the current aid blockade into Gaza is “a clear breach of humanitarian law” which it says is causing “unimaginable horror”.

Pascal Hundt of the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement today: “Civilians in Gaza are facing an overwhelming daily struggle to survive the dangers of hostilities, cope with relentless displacement, and endure the consequences of being deprived of urgent humanitarian assistance,”.

Supplies are dwindling and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) last Friday said it had sent out its “last remaining food stocks” to kitchens.

With reporting from AFP.