On Monday, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, stated that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, despite the region being ensnared in the midst of a conflict between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Israeli military.
Asked on her view of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza since Israel enacted a siege and launched a bombardment campaign, Hotovely said in an interview with Sky News: “There is no humanitarian crisis.”

She said: “Israel is in charge of the safety of Israelis, Hamas is in charge of the safety of the Palestinians. Hamas abused every single support of the international community… This is the time that Hamas needs to pay the price for killing Israelis.”

For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

The Israeli ambassador argued that Hamas was preventing its own people from evacuating, and that Palestinians had been given the chance to leave by Israel.

“People [in Israel] weren’t given opportunity to be safe… they were slaughtered in their beds,” she said and added: “[Hamas] executed children in front of their parents, they fired on babies and beheaded them, they hurt pregnant women, raped young women.”

“Those atrocities are the type that no Western leader can stand and say ‘we can just carry on.’”

Israel has pledged to wipe out Hamas in retaliation for the militant group’s unprecedented incursion into Israeli towns backed up with a barrage of rockets. Israel responded to the surprise attack with a total siege around the Gaza Strip and bombarded the enclave with an unparalleled barrage of air strikes. Thousands have died and scores more were injured among Palestinians and Israelis.

On Sunday, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Philippe Lazzarini, said the situation in the Gaza Strip was dire and stressed the severity of the critical humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

“Gaza is running out of water and electricity. In fact, Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity,” he said in a statement shared by the UNRWA.

Lazzarini added: “If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life. Soon, I believe, with this there will be no food or medicine either.”

The UNRWA chief stressed: “There is not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a liter of fuel that has been allowed into the Gaza Strip for the last eight days.”