(Rafah) The United Nations is preparing on Friday the passage to Gaza of international aid desperately awaited by the Palestinians of this small besieged territory deprived of everything, on the 14e day of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas.
More than 1,400 people were killed on October 7 on Israeli territory by Hamas men, the majority of them civilians who were shot, burned alive or died of mutilation on the day of the deadly Hamas attack, according to the Israeli authorities. Around 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in the counter-offensive which allowed Israel to regain control of the attacked areas, according to the Israeli army.
Hamas kidnapped 203 hostages, including foreigners from more than 20 countries. The Israeli army estimated in a statement on Friday that “the majority” of these hostages “were alive”.
On the Palestinian side, 4,137 people including at least 1,524 children were killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. Entire neighborhoods have been razed and are left without water, food or electricity, and more than a million people have been displaced after the siege imposed by Israel on October 9 on the Gaza Strip, already subject to a land blockade. , maritime and air since Hamas took power there in 2007.
“Drop of water in the ocean”
The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, went there on Friday to facilitate this passage, which he wanted as quickly as possible. “These trucks are not just trucks, […]they represent the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza,” Mr. Guterres said.
Israel refuses to open its border crossings with Gaza. But the United States managed to convince the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to give the green light to sending aid from Egypt, via the Rafah crossing. Israel clarified that it would ensure that aid did not reach Hamas but only to “civilians” in the “south of the Gaza Strip.”
Martin Griffiths, in charge of emergency humanitarian situations at the UN, told him on Friday that “the first shipment was supposed to arrive tomorrow [samedi] as soon as possible “.
Dozens of trucks have been waiting for days at the Egyptian border, near the Rafah crossing point, to go to the Gaza Strip, where 2.4 million Palestinians live. On Friday, concrete blocks installed by the Egyptians after Israel’s bombings on this border with Gaza were removed.
PHOTO ARCHIVES REUTERS
Dozens of trucks waiting at the Egyptian border, near the Rafah crossing point
In Geneva, the emergency director of the World Health Organization (WHO) described the agreement reached by US President Joe Biden and Egypt as a “drop in the ocean of needs”. authorize the entry of 20 trucks. “It would take 2,000 trucks,” Michael Ryan said.
Israel is still preparing for a ground offensive in Gaza after the deadliest attack in its 75-year history. Wearing a bulletproof vest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops on the front lines near Gaza, urging them to “fight like lions” and “win with all the force necessary.”
“Gaza from within”
“You now see Gaza from afar, soon you will see Gaza from within,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant added Thursday during an inspection of troops stationed near Gaza.
This military escalation risks being “simply catastrophic,” warned the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, on Friday.
The horrors of the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 and the following days are still emerging, as traumatized residents tell their stories.
Shachar Butler, security chief of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where Hamas men killed or kidnapped a quarter of the 400 residents, remembers more than a dozen gunmen firing bullets indiscriminately and throwing grenades on the houses. “It’s unimaginable,” the forty-year-old told AFP, as part of a trip organized by the Israeli army.
PHOTO FRANCISCO SECO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
On Kibbutz Nir Oz, Hamas men killed or kidnapped a quarter of the 400 residents.
After a whirlwind trip to Israel on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden hopes to rule out the possibility of an extension of the conflict in the Middle East. The United States has already deployed two aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean, in order to deter Iran or Lebanese Hezbollah, both allies of Hamas, from getting involved in the conflict.
An American destroyer “operating in the northern Red Sea” on Thursday shot down three surface-to-surface missiles and several drones “potentially heading towards targets in Israel” and launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Pentagon announced.
Fears of regional conflict
In northern Israel, soldiers are everywhere, preparing for the possibility of a second front, after the increase in exchanges of fire on the border between Israel and pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
In an extremely rare measure, the authorities announced on Friday the evacuation of Kiryat Shmona, a town bordering the Lebanese border which has around 25,000 inhabitants, many of whom have already left.
PHOTO JALAA MAREY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Members of Israeli security forces inspect a site where a rocket launched from Lebanon fell in the town of Kiryat Shmona, near the border in the north of the country, on October 19.
And on this Friday, a day of prayer in the Muslim world, tens of thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in support of the Palestinians in Gaza and thousands in Jordan.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, two key players in the Middle East, have warned that the conflict could spread and condemned what they called “collective punishment” for residents of Gaza.
Fadwa Al-Najjar, 38, told AFP on Friday that she had walked 30 kilometers on foot with her family after an order from Israel to evacuate Gaza City and the north of the small territory particularly targeted by bombings: “ We tried to rest on the way but the shelling was intense, so we started running.”
Egypt will host a summit on the Palestinian question on Saturday attended by several heads of state or government, as well as the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Israel and Hamas continued to blame each other for deadly strikes, the latest of which hit a church in Gaza late Thursday. The Hamas-controlled Palestinian Interior Ministry said people sheltering in the church were killed and others injured, blaming an Israeli strike.
“It is unacceptable to bomb churches,” his priest said, according to a video published on X.
The Israeli army admitted on Friday to having carried out an air raid in the area the day before, adding that it had “attacked the command and control center of a Hamas terrorist involved in firing rockets and mortars towards Israel”.