Gaza needs aid to avert catastrophic situation: UN

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Thousands of tonnes of “life and death” aid for Gaza should be delivered soon, the United Nations said Friday, to relieve a “beyond catastrophic” situation after unrelenting Israeli bombing in response to an unprecedented Hamas attack.

Some 175 lorries stuffed with vital medicines, food, and water stretched into the distance at the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which has removed concrete roadblocks and is scrambling to repair the route into besieged Gaza, the only one not controlled by Israel.

Overseeing operations personally, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters: “These trucks are not just trucks, they are a lifeline, they are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza.”

The UN chief said it must be “a sustained effort” with not just one convoy crossing but for many “to be authorised in a meaningful number to have enough trucks to provide support to Gaza’s people”.

“It is essential to have fuel on the other side... to be able to distribute humanitarian aid for the population in Gaza,” Guterres said, warning against the use of aid deliveries as bargaining chips.

The United Nations, he said, was “actively engaging with all the parties”, including Egypt, Israel and the United States, to get the trucks moving as quickly as possible. “To see (the aid trucks) stuck here makes me be very clear: what we need is to make them move... to the other side of this wall... as quickly as possible and as many as possible,” Guterres told reporters at the crossing. UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the first aid delivery through Rafah would take place “in the next day or so”.

The Hamas-run health ministry said 4,137 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the onslaught. Israeli jets pounded more than 100 Hamas targets in Gaza overnight, the army said, with AFP reporters hearing loud explosions and witnessing plumes of smoke billowing from the northern Gaza Strip. The Hamas-controlled interior ministry said several people sheltering at the church were killed and wounded, blaming an Israeli strike. The Israeli army acknowledged a church wall had been damaged in one of its air strikes targeting a “command and control centre belonging to a Hamas terrorist” and said the incident was “under review”.

Also Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Cairo, where the two agreed on the need to “avoid a contagion of conflict in the region”, according to a Downing Street statement. At the same time, Gulf and Southeast Asian leaders have condemned attacks on civilians in the Gaza Strip and called for a permanent ceasefire, according to a statement published after a summit meeting.

Israeli officials have confirmed to the BBC that two American hostages, Judith and Natalie Raanan have been released by Hamas. The mother and daughter were taken hostage by Hamas at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, in southern Israel, on 7 October. Biden said he was overjoyed and thanked Qatar and Israel.

KSA Crown Prince MBS reiterated the Kingdom’s rejection of Israeli forces targeting Palestinian civilians in a speech during the GCC-Asean summit in Riyadh. The Crown Prince called for an end to the fighting and said “we are pained by the escalating violence that Gaza is witnessing.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) expressed shared concerns over the escalating situation in the Middle East, particularly in Gaza. The leaders expressed their support for the initiative led by Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with the European Union and the League of Arab States. This initiative, in cooperation with Egypt and Jordan, aims to revive the Middle East peace process and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in alignment with international law and all UN resolutions pertaining to the conflict.

The leaders strongly condemned all attacks against civilians and advocated for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. They emphasized the need for all parties involved to facilitate efficient access for humanitarian aid, relief supplies, and essential services. Additionally, the statement called for the restoration of critical infrastructure, including electricity and water supply, and urged unimpeded delivery of fuel, food, and medicine throughout Gaza.

In an analysis, CNN said the missiles fired towards the US navy by Houthi rebels, drones from Iraq attacking US forces and as the two American bases in Syria come under fire are indicative that the US is dangerously close to being pulled into a Middle East war. US President Joe Biden spent seven hours in Israel Wednesday, voicing full support for Israel’s campaign against Gaza has brought the United States closer to the very real possibility of direct involvement in a regional Middle Eastern war.

It said as the war in Gaza rages, the Middle East is seething with anger directed against Israel’s most vocal, persistent backer, the United States. The US can still count allies among the region’s autocrats but the streets are a whole different matter. The Ameri-can carrier groups just over the horizon are there to deter Iran, Hezbollah and others from going too far. If they do, and the US responds, then all bets are off. All the pieces are now in place for Israel’s decades-old quarrel with the Palestinians to explode into a regional cataclysm. And the US may be in the middle of it.

On the other hand, the Foreign Policy magazine said “Biden’s emotional and barely nuanced support for Israel may also come to be seen as a costly error for the United States. That is not because Hamas’s tactics were in any way just. They were not... Rather, this potential criticism is because of Biden’s complete unwillingness thus far to discuss how Israel’s own behavior toward Palestinians living under its direct control, or on contested territory, has played a role in fueling violence in that region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s successive governments have presided over a steady expansion of Israeli settlements in lands claimed by Palestinians, and they have permitted countless and almost constant acts of small-scale violence, discrimination, and degrading arbitrary impositions against Palestinians.”

The magazine said: “Yet even within Biden’s own administration, some of the president’s aides have complained of the impossibility of raising such matters in internal conversations about U.S. policy since the war began. The damage that may accrue to the United States as a result of this could come from two quarters. The first is that, at a time when the Middle East needs a diplomatic and honest broker more desperately than ever, the United States is seen evermore as an outright partisan in the region’s conflicts. The best that Biden has been able to do thus far is to issue a vague call for Israeli restraint.

“The second source of damage to the United States is closely related to the first and has to do with Washington’s diplomatic standing both in the Middle East and in the broader world. Not a few observers have begun to note that the biggest collateral damage to the United States in the recent violence between Israel and Hamas is to Washington’s image in the world. This is about far more than the already widely noted fury toward Israel and the United States that has been seen in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world in recent days. Beyond those regional confines, perhaps the most immediate impact will be to support in the global south for the United States’ position in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”

It added: “A graphic symbol of this shift came in the wake of the Gaza hospital bombing with the abrupt reversal in the willingness of Arab leaders from Egypt and Jordan (two of the United States’ closest quasi-allies in the region), as well as the head of the Palestinian Authority, to meet with Biden after his visit to Israel. Sure, this meeting seems to have been made impossible by the hospital bombing itself, but being convoked as a group to meet with the U.S. president as an afterthought or aside after Biden spent time in Israel also seems to have finally rubbed leaders in the Arab world the wrong way.