Tunisian president shows photos of starving Palestinian children to US envoy during visit
Tunisian President Kais Saied greeted the US senior adviser for Arab, Middle Eastern and African affairs at Carthage Palace in Tunis with photos of starving Palestinian children in Gaza, saying it was "time for all of humanity to wake up".
In a video posted by Tunisian news network Carthage, a sombre-looking Saeid can be seen welcoming and shaking hands with a smiling Massad Boulos, declaring in Arabic: "Now my conversation is with you and directed to you about a number of issues that concern us and the whole world", in a short clip of the video translated by Middle East Monitor.
"I believe you know these photos well," he said, showing the Lebanese-American Boulos a photo of a toddler holding a silver bowl of sand. "A child crying, eating sand in occupied Palestine.
“This is one image among many others,” Saied added. “Eating sand in the 21st century. He found nothing to eat. And with sand in his hand."
He then showed billionaire businessman Boulos an image of an emaciated child, whose neck and head are being supported by someone’s hand.
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“Another image of a child on the verge of dying because he couldn’t find anything to eat. And surely, you have many other images. This is absolutely unacceptable. This is a crime against humanity.”
The camera then cut to a third image of a child with sunken eyes who was also emaciated.
'Another image of a child on the verge of dying because he couldn’t find anything to eat...This is a crime against humanity'
- Tunisian President Saied Kais
“A child on the verge of death, also nearly dying of hunger. And he may already have passed away.”
Saied continued to show more harrowing photos to Boulos - including three Palestinian men carrying children wrapped in white shrouds - while Boulos stood with his hands clasped, silently nodding.
At one point Saied told Boulos that "international legitimacy was crumbling day by day".
Boulos - whose son is married to US President Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany - is in the region to make his first official visit to Libya on Wednesday, amid rising tensions in the capital city Tripoli and neighbouring Sudan, as reported by Middle East Eye earlier this month.
Mass famine
More than 100 humanitarian organisations warned on Wednesday that "mass famine" was spreading in the Gaza Strip after Israel blocked humanitarian aid from entering in early March and has been providing woefully inadequate aid via the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund since the end of May.
MEE reported on Tuesday that renowned expert on famine, Professor Alex de Waal, accused Israel of “genocidal starvation” of Palestinians in Gaza with its continued deadly siege on the enclave.
At least 101 Palestinians, including 80 children, have died of starvation since Israel’s blockade resumed in March, including 15 who died of malnutrition on Monday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at distribution sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in place since May and manned by Israeli soldiers and US security contractors.
De Waal told MEE’s live show on Tuesday that the UN is not in a position to declare famine due to Israel’s obstruction of access to humanitarians and investigators who could gauge the extent of hunger.
However, he said, “it is actually relatively straightforward if you are perpetrating a famine to shut out access to essential information and then say no one has declared famine”.
“Concealment of famine is an instrument of those who perpetrate it,” he added.
De Waal said that famine is unfolding in Gaza in “a wholly predicted manner”.
De Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, affiliated with the Fletcher School of Global Affairs at Tufts University, and the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
He explained that a healthy adult will take 60 to 80 days of total deprivation of food to die of starvation. With semi-starvation, it would take a lot longer.
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