With the start of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, Yemen, represented by the Sana’a government, which has more than 75% of Yemen’s population in areas under its control, rushed to support the Palestinian people and resistance against the Zionist entity, which commits daily massacres against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip. Yemen’s military contribution to supporting the Palestinian people was an attempt to relieve the Zionist military pressure focused on the Gaza Strip.
Follow-ups – Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni:
Yemen’s practical contribution came as a small and easy part in exchange for what Western countries, led by the US of America, provide in terms of military support with weapons, logistical information, and the deployment of American naval units around the occupied Palestinian territories in the Mediterranean and Red Seas to protect the Israeli entity from any attacks targeting it from outside occupied Palestine, in addition to the quantities of weapons that Washington has provided to Tel Aviv since the beginning of the bombing and aggression against the Gaza Strip with internationally banned bombs and missiles that are being used for the first time and tested on the defenseless Palestinian people in Gaza.
However, Western support for the killing of the people of Gaza, for which there was no ceiling, was not limited to countries and regimes only, as revealed by official documents indicating that international organizations working in the field of human rights and relief also support the Zionist entity and combat Palestinians and any other country that supports the Palestinian people. This was evident in the recent actions of the WFP in northern Yemen, which has the highest population density.
At the end of September, the WFP announced the necessity of reducing humanitarian and food assistance to Yemenis under the pretext of decreased funding from donor countries. The decision came as a great surprise to the Sana’a government, as there was no legitimate reason for such a move. Sana’a appealed the decision to the UN and its regional office, but to no avail.
After a few weeks of Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, the WFP announced the complete halt of its relief aid to Yemenis. It was evident that this decision came after the threats made by the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi, against the Zionist entity in his first speech delivered a few days after the “Flood of Al-Aqsa” operation on October 7th, carried out by the Palestinian resistance in several military sites of the Zionist entity in the Gaza envelope.
The UN programme claimed that it decided to halt aid due to a lack of financial funding. However, upon examining the programme’s documents and official reports, it becomes clear that the objective behind the suspension of aid was primarily political and directly linked to the stance of Sana’a and the Yemeni people in support of the Palestinian people.
According to official reports, the funding for the WFP last year in 2022 amounted to $1.1 billion, and the program did not announce the suspension of its assistance like it has now. The surprise is that the funding for the program in just nine months of the current year, 2023, exceeded its funding for the entire previous year. According to official documents, the program received $1.16 billion by the end of September, which means that the funding for the program for nine months of this year exceeded its funding for the entire previous year. The increase in funding between the two years was $60 million. However, the WFP in Yemen announced the suspension of its relief aid, citing a lack of funding as the justification for this.
A private source revealed to Al-Masa Press, works as a commercial partner for the WFP in Yemen, that the decision to suspend food aid to Yemenis was only implemented in areas under the control of the Sana’a government, while it still continues in areas controlled by the Saudi-Emirati coalition.
In a related context in this regard, an informed source also reveals to “Al-Masa Press” that “the WFP decision to reduce aid and halt aid to hundreds of thousands of affected families registered in the program’s records comes at a time when the presence of tons of food supplies in the program’s warehouses and those of its partners, not to mention the materials stored in its warehouses, will expire and be wasted.
In a letter sent by Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi, a member of the Supreme Political Council, to the program in protest against the reduction in food aid in Yemen, he said, “The decision was justified as a result of the funding constraints facing the WFP, but we believe that there are other options that can be taken to avoid the suspension of humanitarian aid. For example, it is possible to convert in-kind aid into cash, which would save operational expenses and allow beneficiaries to use the aid to purchase the food they need.” However, since the issue is not primarily related to funding shortages, the program did not agree to the logical proposal put forward by Al-Houthi.
It has become clear that Washington has pushed the WFP to make the decision to cut aid as an American pressure tactic against the Sana’a government. The goal is to force the political leadership and the Yemeni army in Sana’a to retract their decision to wage a declared war against the Zionist entity and to support the Palestinian resistance militarily in the battle against it, stopping the continuous bombing of areas south of the occupation entity with ballistic and winged missiles and drones, as well as cutting off navigation of it in the Red Sea.
Source: Al-Masa Press
