Hopes of seeing a truce agreement concluded in the coming days between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip faded again on Thursday, March 7, as the war, which has already left tens of thousands dead, entered in its sixth month in the Palestinian territory, besieged and struck by famine. Due to the humanitarian disaster and the heavy toll among the civilian population, the United States, Qatar and Egypt hoped to reach an agreement for a pause in the fighting before Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims, which will begin in Begining of the next week.
But the Hamas delegation which participated in these discussions in Cairo left the Egyptian capital for “consultations” with the political leadership in Doha, Qatar, a senior official of the Islamist movement told Agence France-Presse (AFP). . “The initial responses” provided by Israel “do not meet the minimum requirements” made by Hamas, the official said. The negotiations “are not broken” and the “differences are fading,” however, underlined the United States Ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, has increased pressure in recent days while China called on Thursday for an “immediate ceasefire”, calling the war in Gaza a “disgrace to civilization”. The Israeli bombardments, which continue without respite, have caused the deaths of eighty-three people in the Gaza Strip in twenty-four hours, according to the Hamas health ministry.
Humanitarian aid, subject to Israeli approval, only enters the Palestinian enclave in trickles, mainly from Egypt, even though the needs are immense. The situation is particularly serious in the north, where looting, fighting and destruction make the delivery of aid to around 300,000 residents almost impossible. According to the Ministry of Health, at least twenty civilians, most of them children, have already died of malnutrition and dehydration. “We believe that dozens of people are silently dying of hunger without reaching hospitals,” Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said.
US President Joe Biden will announce to Congress on Thursday that he has ordered the US military to establish a “port” in Gaza to transport more humanitarian aid into the territory by sea. Palestinian under siege by Israel, according to senior officials at AFP. It would in fact be less of a port than a temporary jetty, intended to unload aid, a senior American official explained to journalists. This access route will need to be able to accommodate large ships carrying “food, water, medicine and temporary shelter,” he said, and will provide the equivalent capacity of “hundreds of trucks extra help every day.”
The operation “will take a number of weeks to plan and execute,” and is expected to involve a maritime corridor bringing aid by sea from the island of Cyprus, senior U.S. officials said. They explained that this would not mean that American soldiers would be on site in Gaza. “The U.S. military has unique capabilities. And the U.S. military can do things from the sea that are extraordinary,” another official said.
The World Food Program (WFP) of the United Nations (UN) said it was lobbying for Israel to allow the port of Ashdod, located about 30 kilometers north of the Gaza Strip, to be used for deliver aid to the Palestinians. “We have presented several requests to the Israelis,” said WFP deputy executive director Carl Skau in an interview with AFPTV. “We want to use the port of Ashdod, which would be much more efficient than going through Jordan, or even Egypt,” he explained. In the past, Israeli forces have blocked UN aid at this port.
“We want to move more goods across the border into Gaza. We currently use Kerem Shalom, but we would also like to have a crossing point directly to the north, where the situation is most desperate,” he said.
The last WFP food convoy was blocked on Tuesday by the Israeli army inside the Gaza Strip and then looted by “a desperate crowd”. This was the first convoy destined for Gaza since the interruption declared on February 20 due to the security situation and looting. “Hunger leads to a catastrophic situation. People are desperate and tensions are high. There is also a complete breakdown of civil order,” lamented Mr. Skau.
Israeli tanks left the center of Khan Yunis, a few kilometers north of Rafah, this week, leaving behind immense destruction after weeks of fighting. AFP images showed residents who came to inspect the ruins of their homes, walking in a devastated landscape between piles of rubble and carcasses of buildings.
More than 1,500 houses and buildings as well as hundreds of shops were “destroyed or badly damaged”, Hamas civil defense said, adding that soldiers had also destroyed “all water, sewage, ‘electricity, communications and roads’. According to witnesses, fighting continued on Thursday in the north, in Zeitoun, a sector of Gaza City, and in the south, in Al-Shouka, a village near Rafah, as well as in the western part of Khan Younes. More than thirty Israeli strikes targeted Rafah and the Hamad neighborhood of Khan Yunis, as well as the center and north of the territory, according to Hamas authorities.
The United States and Jordan have carried out a third airdrop of aid to Gaza in a week, the Pentagon announced. “American C-130 planes dropped more than 38,000 meals” in northern Gaza, the American military command for the Middle East, CentCom, announced on X.
On Monday, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said that between thirty and one hundred and twenty trucks per day had delivered aid to Gaza over the past week. “It is clearly insufficient to feed the population,” she said, while specifying that the airdrops were intended to complement and not replace the aid delivered by land.
According to the UN, famine is “almost inevitable” for 2.2 million Gaza residents, the vast majority of the population, with humanitarian aid arriving only in trickles. The organization urged the world to “flood” Gaza with aid to save children “who are beginning to starve” in a territory where the health system has collapsed.
The Israeli government has accused South Africa of making a “cynical exploitation” of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), while Pretoria demanded that Israel impose new precautionary measures in the face of the major humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “South Africa continues to act as the legal arm of Hamas,” said Lior Haiat, the spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, in a message published on X.
South Africa on Wednesday asked the ICJ to impose new emergency measures on Israel in the face of what it described as “widespread famine” resulting from Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Pretoria urged the court to order an “immediate stop” to the fighting, the release of all hostages, an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the provision of emergency aid.
