GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Palestinians in war-torn Gaza on Thursday eagerly awaited aid trucks promised in a deal struck by US President Joe Biden with Egypt and Israel, as the Israeli army struck more Hamas targets.
While the Rafah border crossing remained closed, the World Health Organization’s chief said he was worried about the chances of humanitarian aid reaching the Gaza Strip on Friday from Egypt based on the experience they had the last few days.
The war has set off fury across the Middle East against Israel and its Western allies. The conflict has claimed at least 3,785 lives in the Gaza Strip, its Hamas-controlled health ministry said Thursday, with entire city blocks levelled, water, food and power cut off, and more than one million displaced.
On the Israeli side 1,400 people have lost their lives until Thursday. “The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction... cannot be exaggerated,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said about the situation in the crowded territory of 2.4 million people.
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted Jordan’s King Abdullah II and both condemned the “collective punishment” of Gazans and warned about the conflict spreading. “If the war does not stop”, it threatens “to plunge the entire region into catastrophe”, a statement from the Jordanian royal court read.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Speaking alongside the Egyptian foreign minister in Cairo, Guterres urged the swift delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian enclave and for Hamas to release captives taken during its attack on Israel. “I am in the Middle East on a humanitarian mission at a moment of profound crisis – a crisis unlike any the region has seen in decades,” he said. “We need food, water, medicine and fuel now. We need it at scale and we need it to be sustained, it is not one small operation that is required,” he added. They needed to be allowed into Gaza every day as 20 trucks were a “drop in the ocean” of the assistance that was needed.
In Geneva, the WHO’s chief said he was worried about the chances of humanitarian aid reaching the Gaza Strip on Friday from Egypt, given the delays thus far. “We have been waiting for more than six days since the supplies were delivered to the border area... we hope there will be a crossing tomorrow, but for sure, based on the experience we had the last few days, we are also at the same time worried whether this will happen,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists, as Egyptian state-linked media said the Rafah border crossing into Gaza would open. The WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said that aid needed to be flowing through a corridor into Gaza on a daily basis, beyond the “gesture” of the first convoy of 20 trucks.
More than 100 trucks carrying aid goods have been queued for days on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, the only entry or exit point to Gaza not controlled by Israel. Cairo has so far kept it closed, pointing to repeated Israeli strikes near the checkpoint.
On the Gaza side, scores of people were again waiting, desperate to flee, but careful to keep about 100 metres away in case of new Israeli bombardment. “We’re ready with our bags,” said one man who only gave his name as Mohammed, 40, and who said he works for a European institution. He said he had been waiting “for three days with my family, in a house 10 minutes away from the crossing” but had received no information so far.
Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians in multiple clashes across the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said. Health officials identified one of those killed as a 16-year-old boy. The Israeli military said it carried out an air strike which killed “a number of terrorists” in Nur Shams. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics treated 25 people in Nur Shams, the majority for gunshot wounds. “Ambulances are being detained by occupying forces with injured people inside,” the organisation said in a statement.
In separate clashes earlier, the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces shot dead a 17-year-old in the Dheisheh refugee camp, near Bethlehem, and a 32-year-old in Budrus to the west of Ramallah. It also reported destroying hundreds more Hamas targets and that “more than 10 terrorists were eliminated”. Israeli air raids have bombed a number of bakeries in Gaza, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds who were queueing to buy bread, the Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pressed Israel to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza as he stepped up a campaign by Western leaders to reinforce support for Israel after attacks by Hamas. Sunak expressed strong backing for Israeli action. But he said after talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog that it was also important to get food, water and medicine to blockaded Gaza’s 2.4 million population. Neither Netanyahu nor Herzog mentioned aid in their comments after talks with the British prime minister. But Sunak said “it’s important that we continue to provide humanitarian access” and “protect civilian life.” Later he flew to hold a meeting with KSA Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said that attacks on civilians in Gaza were “heinous” and warned of “dangerous repercussions” should the war between Israel and Hamas expand, state media reported. Prince Mohammed “affirmed that the kingdom considers targeting civilians in Gaza a heinous crime and a brutal attack, stressing the necessity of working to provide protection for them,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported. He also “stressed the need to make all possible efforts to reduce the pace of escalation and ensure that the violence does not expand in order to avoid its dangerous repercussions on security and peace in the region and the world.”
The British prime minister “encouraged the crown prince to use Saudi’s leadership in the region to support stability, both now and in the long term.” Sunak and Prince Mohammed “agreed that the loss of innocent lives in Israel and Gaza over the last two weeks has been horrific,” according to a readout from Sunak’s office. They also “agreed on the pressing need for humanitarian access into Gaza to provide vital water, food and medicine,” it said.
