“Tactical pause” in bombing on Gaza road is just a local adaptation of the siege imposed on the enclave
There “tactical break” in the bombings on a Gaza road, announced in a rather vague manner by the Israeli army on Sunday morning, in no way signals a possible truce: it is only a local adjustment of the siege imposed on the enclave.
The army promises to stop its bombings for twelve hours a day, on a road which leads from the border post of Kerem Shalom (South) to the European hospital in Rafah. It thus intends to remove some of the obstacles it imposes on the delivery of humanitarian aid by UN agencies.
Since May 6, Israel has closed the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza and alone controls all aid delivery in the enclave, mainly distributed via this route. Since then, driving there has regularly been like Russian roulette.
The army publicly mocked the UN, accusing her of not delivering to Gazans the aid she lets pass to Kerem Shalom. It recognizes today that its own shots hampered these deliveries, as did attacks by armed gangs, which have become more and more numerous since the Israeli assault on Rafah. This closure displaced a million people, pushed the embryonic Hamas administration that survived there underground, and shattered the international aid architecture built over the months in the south of the enclave.
For a month, Israel gave priority in Kerem Shalom to convoys of food transported by Gazan entrepreneurs and sold on the markets, without cooperation with humanitarians or the Palestinian Authority. For two weeks it has brought thousands of trucks into Gaza that had been stuck under the sun on the Egyptian border since May 6, rerouting them through Kerem Shalom.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, criticized the army’s announcement on Sunday, saying that any notion of ” break “, “especially for humanitarian deliveries”, risked undermining the war effort. At the head of the police, a supporter of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, Mr. Ben Gvir supported Israeli highway robbers who attack trucks in the West Bank transporting food to the besieged Palestinian enclave. The army immediately announcedafter these criticisms, that “The fighting in Rafah continues. »
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