AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As northern Gaza remains under a brutal Israeli siege for over a month, Al Jazeera reports at least 17 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the north since dawn. This follows Israeli attacks on at least two schools turned shelters for displaced people in Gaza City Thursday. Survivors said the bombing came without warning.

UMM HANI: [translated] We were baking bread, and our children were sitting around us. And we were at the bottom, and we saw nobody, and the floor shook. The bomb hit, and all the tents were destroyed. People ran. Some people were martyred on the floor. Rubble fell on us, and people were torn to pieces. Where is the humanity? Where is the rest of the world? Where is the mercy? We have never seen any nation waging war on children. I am 65 years old, and I’ve never seen any nation waging war on children.

AMY GOODMAN: Over 1,800 Palestinians have have been killed since Israel launched its deadly onslaught on the northern Gaza in October, many of them children, though that figure is likely a vast undercount, saying something like 70% of the population that has died are women and children.

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks have also continued near central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp and in Gaza City, where Israel has issued a new forced displacement order for Palestinians who have nowhere safe left to go.

Top U.N. officials have again warned the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza, quote, “is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” unquote, while UNICEF and other groups describe the conditions in northern Gaza as “apocalyptic.” For at least the past seven weeks, Israel has persistently blocked lifesaving humanitarian aid and food convoys from entering north Gaza, leaving families and children to starve. The last few operational hospitals in northern Gaza are on the brink of collapse, lacking critical supplies, while also coming under repeated Israeli attacks and raids, with many doctors and medical workers killed or detained.

We go now to Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He’s joining us from Amman, Jordan. He just left Gaza.

Can you tell us what you saw with your own eyes, Jan?

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, I spent three days in Gaza, and I’m shattered, really, as a human being, by seeing so much suffering. From Rafah in the south to Gaza City in the north, it’s devastation beyond belief. This is a small territory where there are 2.2 million people crammed together with no escape and under the most intense and most indiscriminate bombardment anywhere in the world in recent memory, and while they’re also starved because very little aid is coming in, and the little aid which is coming in has enormous problems in being distributed. And in northern Gaza, just next door to Gaza City, where I was, there is the besiegemeant, which is a deliberate starvation of the population there, while they’re being bombarded, to depopulate the area. This is unlawful also beyond belief. Every rule in the Geneva Conventions are being trampled on in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you comment on what’s called the General’s Plan, drafted by Israeli military officers calling for the systematic denial of humanitarian aid in the north, which has basically been labeled as ethnic cleansing?

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, I mean, this — a lot of people fear this plan, have heard about this plan. And I don’t know whether it is official Israeli policy. But what I know is that the effect of the Israeli military campaign is that people are driven out of northern Gaza systematically. And the settlers — these are the criminal gangs in the West Bank that are colonizing the land of the Palestinians — they are celebrating the Trump victory, because they want to go back also and colonize Gaza, especially the north, where people are driven out. The Israeli Defense Forces have said that it is a deliberate campaign to drive people out with no return. And that is called, under the Geneva Convention forcible transfer of people, and it’s an atrocity crime. And there will be justice for this.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the significance of Israel formally notifying the United Nations it’s canceling the agreement with UNRWA? What does that mean for aid organizations like your own, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees?

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, what’s important to convey here is that when Israel, which itself is a product of a General Assembly resolution in 1948 — Israel was created by the United Nations in the General Assembly resolution. Many Palestinians were driven out then of their ancestral land. The U.N. saw that, and therefore, a second resolution came for the Palestinians, and that was UNRWA, 1950. It was created to provide relief and work and opportunities for the Palestinian refugees. So now the product of the first resolution is killing the product of the second resolution, and it would lead to even more suffering for the Palestinian population, both in the West Bank and in Gaza in particular.

And my organization, which has courageous humanitarian work on the ground, we provide water, shelter, education, relief, food for as many as we can. We’re not able to take over what UNRWA is doing. They are the backbone of the relief to the Palestinian people. On the contrary, we would also be set back, because they provide many of the logistic services. It’s their schools, it’s their fuel services, etc., that we, the nongovernmental organizations, rely on.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Jan Egeland, let me ask you. Haaretz recently reported a senior Air Force official told Haaretz that without the American supply of weapons to the Israel Defense forces, especially the Air Force, Israel would have had a hard time sustaining its war for more than a few months. Now a leaked letter to Israel from Blinken, the secretary of State, and Defense Secretary Austin demanding Israel immediately allow U.S. humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza or face an interruption of arms shipments, they gave Israel until November 13th, unclear why they have that grace period, but that’s coming up. What would it mean if the U.S. stopped arming Israel?

JAN EGELAND: I think it would be real leverage on this extreme policy, which is not self-defense. I mean, of course Israel has a right of self-defense. All nations have that. And what they suffered on the 7th of October were terror and massacres beyond belief, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the others that were behind that has to be brought to justice.

But what America has given indiscriminate arms to — and 2,000-pound bombs is no precision arm to go after terrorists. It is to level entire civilian neighborhoods. What the U.S. has fueled is an indiscriminate military campaign that is destroying Gaza, which is filled to the brim with women and children that have no escape. So, that the U.S. has not even been able to get Israel to provide the relief that we need to get in is beyond belief. It’s been a diplomatic impotence that is astounding.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you have President Biden, that has given billions of dollars in aid — military weapons to Israel. Then you have incoming President Trump, whose son-in-law Jared Kushner talked about Gaza as valuable waterfront real estate. You are not only the head of a large refugee agency, but you are a seasoned diplomat. You were involved with, one of the initiators of the peace talks that led to Oslo ’93. What needs to happen now? Biden is still in office until January 20th, and then Trump takes over, expected to be even fierce as an even closer ally to Netanyahu.

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, but he also wants to be close to the Gulf countries. And his son-in-law tried to negotiate this Abraham Accord, which was won between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries. So —

AMY GOODMAN: Which left out the Palestinians.

JAN EGELAND: Which left out the Palestinians, but now the Gulf countries cannot accept any deal with Israel without some justice for the Palestinians. At that time, they could neglect the Palestinians. Not anymore. The public opinion in the Arab world would not accept it.

So, Trump says “America first.” The present policy is Israel first, America second and humanity third. Perhaps there could be some leverage now on Israel as the strongest party here: a ceasefire, end to this slaughter of civilians, a release for the hostages in exchange for the release of the arbitrarily detained Palestinians, and that that could be the beginning of some peace process that could give justice and security to both sides. We cannot have wars every second year. It’s not in Israel’s interest to destroy its neighborhood in Gaza and in Lebanon. It will create new generations of hatred, and that is bad also for Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, your final comment right now, just after the U.S. election has taken place? The role that the U.S. plays when it comes to what Israel is doing? And what at this point, as endless U.N. and humanitarian organizations saying all of northern Gaza is on the verge of death — what Israel is trying to accomplish here?

JAN EGELAND: Well, Israel has a cruel military logic, which is similar to that of President Assad of Syria when he starved out besieged areas that were filled with civilians, but also with extremist militants inside. It’s the same logic now for northern Gaza, where there’s total besiegements of 100,000 people. I met some women who had come out with children, and they said, “We were starving. We were being bombed. We left. And when we left, we were chased by Israeli tanks.” I mean, this is the reality of this area. And the U.S., that has helped us in so many countries, from Sudan to the Sahel to Colombia to Myanmar, has —

AMY GOODMAN: Jan, we have three seconds.

JAN EGELAND: — not been able to help us in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, just out of Gaza.

That does it for our show. A happy birthday to Diana Parra! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.