on the border with Egypt, the dropper of humanitarian aid for Gaza

Waltz of planes at Al Aris airport, about fifty kilometers from Rafah: humanitarian aid from the United Arab Emirates and Romania landed on Wednesday November 15 to be transported to Gaza. “What we mainly send is food and packages, food or non-foodexplains Lotfy Gheith, director of operations of the Egyptian Red Crescent. The situation is changing day by day and the needs for Palestinians are changing by the hour.”

At the Rafah border post, dozens of trucks cross the border. A few hours earlier, the UN succeeded, for the first time since the start of the war, in transporting fuel into the Gaza Strip. Mahmoud El Sherif, director of an Egyptian NGO close to the government, is relieved: “We hope that there will be more fuel trucks passing through because we had problems with them. Everything was there but then we couldn’t transport them.”

“Terrified” and “tired” evacuees

If trucks enter, buses of foreign and dual nationals leave the Gaza Strip. There have been 2,700 of them since November 1, according to the Egyptian authorities, out of the 7,000 who were present at the start of the war. “Most of them don’t want to talk. They are terrified, tired”says Karim Ali, who came to welcome Austrian compatriots.

“They want to rest. They really don’t want to talk about who happened. They’re traumatized.”

Palestinians are also welcomed in hospitals in North Sinai, as Amin Wagdy, the director of Al Arish hospital, which received 72 wounded, explains: “We are receiving cases that have already been treated on the Palestinian side and we are continuing treatment. We started receiving cases since November 1, and we have the capacity to still receive people.”

While the UN Security Council called on Wednesday 15 for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” for a few days in the Gaza Strip, more than a million Gazans have been displaced and are still trying to survive without water or electricity.