Jordan and four other countries carried out a new aid drop on Sunday March 10 on the Gaza Strip where war and famine threaten hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, according to the Jordanian army and a journalist from the Agence France-Presse (AFP) on board a Jordanian plane.
During this operation, which lasted three hours, the packages were dropped on several areas of the besieged Palestinian territory, where the destruction is clearly visible from the sky. The Jordanian army said in a statement that American, French, Belgian and Egyptian planes took part in the operation.
For the UN, which warns of an “almost inevitable widespread famine” in Gaza, airdrops, as well as sending aid by sea, cannot replace the land route.
Israel will ensure that humanitarian aid passing through a maritime corridor reaches residents of the Gaza Strip directly, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday. “We will make sure that aid gets to those who need it,” Mr. Gallant said from a military boat off the coast of Gaza.
On Friday, the European Union and the United States announced they were preparing a maritime humanitarian corridor from Cyprus, located some 370 kilometers from Gaza. A first ship loaded with 200 tonnes of food is ready to leave the Mediterranean island.
The aid will help “achieve one of the main objectives of the war: the collapse of Hamas’ power,” Gallant assured the X network, while Israel accuses the Palestinian movement, which took power in Gaza in 2007, to divert humanitarian aid into the territory.
Joe Biden, who has criticized the conduct of the war in Gaza, “is wrong,” the Israeli prime minister said in an interview Sunday with Politico newspaper. The US president said on Saturday that Benjamin Netanyahu was “doing more harm than good to Israel” through his conduct of the war in Gaza.
“I don’t know exactly what the president meant, but if he meant that I am pursuing a personal policy against the wishes of the majority of Israelis, and that I am going against the interests of Israel, then he is wrong on both points,” said Mr. Netanyahu.
“First, I don’t pursue a private policy, it’s a policy supported by an overwhelming majority of Israelis. They support the action we have taken to destroy the Hamas terrorist battalions,” the Israeli prime minister continued. “They also support my position that we must categorically reject the attempt to impose a Palestinian state on us,” he added, as the two-state solution is pushed internationally.
The Israeli army again dropped bombs on Gaza on Sunday, killing dozens on the eve of Ramadan. According to Hamas authorities, at least 85 Palestinians have died in the last twenty-four hours in more than sixty nighttime strikes which also hit homes in central and southern Gaza, especially in Khan Younes.
At least thirteen people died when shells fell on displaced people’s tents in the Al-Mawasi region, between Khan Younes and Rafah, said the health ministry of the Gaza Strip, administered by Hamas. Still according to this ministry, more than 31,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war.
The Israeli army, whose soldiers operate in large areas of Palestinian territory, reported around thirty Palestinian fighters killed in the last twenty-four hours in central Gaza and Khan Younes.
The Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah announced that it had launched dozens of rockets on a town in northern Israel on Sunday, after Israeli strikes the day before left five dead, including three members of the party. Exchanges of fire are almost daily between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas at war since October 7 against Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah said it had launched “dozens of Katyusha-type rockets” in the morning on the moshav (agricultural village) of Meron, eight kilometers from the border. Meron is home to a major military air traffic control base that the pro-Iranian party has targeted several times since the start of the year.
The formation said it had acted “in response to Israeli attacks against southern villages and civilian homes,” including the attack on the house of a party fighter in Khirbet Selm the day before. A woman and another person were also killed in this strike, according to the official Lebanese agency ANI.
“Around thirty-five launches from Lebanon have been identified towards Israeli territory, a number of which were intercepted,” the Israeli army said. The statement added that the Israeli air force targeted several party “infrastructures” during the night, including “a military structure where Hezbollah terrorists were identified in Khirbet Selm.”
