A first boat loaded with 200 tonnes of food is slowly progressing towards the Gaza Strip on Thursday as efforts accelerate to try to deliver more humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory threatened with famine. The distribution of aid within this Palestinian territory remains hazardous. On Wednesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced that one of its warehouses in Rafah, in southern Gaza, had been hit by a strike that killed at least one of its employees and injured several others, with Hamas citing four deaths.
Information to remember:
- A first boat loaded with 200 tons of humanitarian aid advances towards the Gaza Strip
- A UN warehouse was hit by a strike that killed at least one of its employees and injured several others
- The Israeli army announced that it had “eliminated” a Hamas cadre in a targeted strike in Rafah
After more than five months of war between Israel and Hamas, the UN fears widespread famine in the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of people have already been killed and where Israeli bombardments continue without respite. “Today’s attack on one of the few UNRWA distribution centers still operational in the Gaza Strip comes at a time when malnutrition, even famine in certain areas, is spreading,” he said. the director of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini.
The Israeli army announced that it had “eliminated” a Hamas cadre in a targeted strike in Rafah. This man, Mohammad Abou Hasna, is among the four deaths recorded by the Islamist movement, which presented him as a manager responsible for the security of the warehouse. Late Wednesday, Hamas also reported seven dead and many injured in Israeli fire on a gathering at the “Kuwait” roundabout, an intersection south of Gaza City where food aid distributions take place.
Earth and sea
Aid by land only enters sparsely in the Gaza Strip, subject to the control of Israel which has imposed a total siege on the territory since the start of the war triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7. A first boat loaded with 200 tonnes of food left Cyprus for Gaza on Tuesday. This boat from the Spanish NGO Open Arms, which tows a barge, was traveling at low speed Thursday morning off the coast of Israel, according to the specialist site Marine Traffic. Cyprus, about 370 kilometers from Palestinian territory, announced that a second boat was ready to leave with a larger cargo.
Four American army boats also left the United States on Tuesday with around a hundred soldiers and the equipment necessary to build a pier and a dock in Gaza to unload humanitarian aid. ‘within 60 days’, according to the American authorities.
These efforts are, however, only stopgap measures, points out the UN, according to which neither sea shipments nor airdrops can replace land transport for the delivery of aid, a widely shared observation. “There is no viable alternative to land routes through Egypt and Jordan and Israel’s entry points into Gaza for large-scale aid deliveries,” the United States stressed, Cyprus, the Emirates, the EU and Qatar in a joint statement. They also judged that opening the Israeli port of Ashdod to humanitarian aid “would constitute a welcome and significant addition” to the system.
For now, aid by land is mainly transported from Jordan or Egypt to two Israeli checkpoints in southern Gaza where goods are extensively inspected. On Tuesday, for the first time, the Israeli army authorized the entry of World Food Program (WFP) trucks into northern Gaza, raising hopes of an acceleration of deliveries to meet the immense needs of some 2.4 million inhabitants of the territory.
What operation for Rafah?
The Hamas attack on October 7 left at least 1,160 dead in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count established from official Israeli sources. According to Israel, 130 hostages are still in Gaza, 32 of whom are believed to have died, out of around 250 people kidnapped that day. In retaliation, Israel promised to “annihilate” the Islamist movement, in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched an offensive which left 31,272 people dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, Hamas said on Wednesday. Early Thursday reported 79 deaths in Israeli strikes during the evening and night.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to push the ground operation to Rafah, a town adjoining the closed border with Egypt and where, according to the UN, around 1.5 million Palestinians are massed, which worries the international community, including the United States, Israel’s main ally. Israel must make the protection of civilians and humanitarian aid in Gaza its “number one” priority, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.
According to the Politico website, the Biden administration has also informed Israel that it would support targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah, but not a large military operation. Washington is still trying, with Qatar and Egypt, the two other mediator countries, to reach an agreement for a truce of several weeks between Israel and Hamas. During the night, Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh ruled that an agreement was still possible, calling on Israel — which refuses a definitive ceasefire and instead pleads for a pause in the fighting while demanding proof of lives of his hostages — “to abandon his intransigence”.