Israeli strikes and ground fighting continue on Saturday (local time) in the Gaza Strip, where the suffering Palestinian population is hoping for an increase in humanitarian aid following the adoption of a resolution to this effect by the Security Council of the UN.
What there is to know
- The UN Security Council on Friday demanded the “large-scale” delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
- 390 Palestinians have been killed in the last 48 hours, including “dozens” on Friday before dawn and in the morning in Rafah, Khan Younes, Gaza City and Jabaliya, according to the Hamas government’s Health Ministry.
- An Israeli army spokesperson issued an evacuation order to residents of the Bureij refugee camp and other surrounding neighborhoods.
- The World Health Organization estimated Thursday evening that “the deadly combination of famine and disease could cause more deaths in Gaza.”
- More than 21,000 people have died on both sides since the Hamas attack on October 7.
After five days of laborious negotiations to avoid a veto by the United States, the Council finally adopted a text on Friday calling for the “immediate” and “large-scale” delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The resolution refrains from calling for a “ceasefire”, an unacceptable condition for Israel and its American ally. It calls for “creating the conditions for a lasting cessation of hostilities”.
The adoption of this text, thanks to the abstention of the United States and Russia, is seen as a diplomatic success within an institution widely criticized for its inaction since the start of the war.
But its real scope on the ground is still uncertain: humanitarian aid, which is already trickling into Gaza, is currently very far from meeting the immense needs of a population largely threatened by famine, according to the ‘UN.
PHOTO THAIER AL-SUDANI, REUTERS ARCHIVES
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
Before this vote, Israel, which controls trucks entering Gaza, was already suing the UN agencies responsible for distributing aid for incompetence. A position maintained by Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Friday.
“The Security Council’s decision highlights the need to ensure that the United Nations is more effective in transferring humanitarian aid and to ensure that aid reaches its destination and does not end up in the hands of Hamas terrorists,” he reacted on X.
” Good direction ”
On the Palestinian side, UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour welcomed “a step in the right direction”, while insisting on the need for an “immediate ceasefire”.
But Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, deemed the resolution “insufficient” and considered that it “does not respond to the catastrophic situation created by the war machine Zionist (Israeli, Editor’s note).”
Israel has promised to destroy Hamas, after the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by the Islamist movement on its soil, which left around 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli toll. . Palestinian commandos also kidnapped around 250 people, 129 of whom are still being held in Gaza, according to Israel.
Israeli military operations carried out in retaliation left 20,057 dead, mostly women, adolescents and children, and more than 50,000 injured, according to the latest report from the Hamas government.
PHOTO ALBERTO PIZZOLI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A truck driver unloads his humanitarian aid shipment for inspection upon arrival from Egypt on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with the southern Gaza Strip on December 22.
In addition to the aerial bombardments, the Israeli army launched a ground offensive on October 27 in the north of the territory which allowed it to advance towards the south and take several sectors. Israel lost a total of 139 soldiers in Gaza.
On Saturday, the army again announced that it had killed “terrorists” and discovered tunnels used by Hamas in Gaza City.
During the night from Friday to Saturday, a strike on the town of Deir el-Balah (center) left several injured, according to the Al-Jazeera channel.
“My message to the world is that they look at us, that they see us, that they see that we are dying. Why don’t they pay attention to it? “, protested to AFP Walaa Al-Medini, a displaced Palestinian-Egyptian evacuating the Bureij refugee camp (center), after a preventive warning from the Israeli army.
Risk of starvation
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Rescue workers inspect the site of an Israeli strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on December 22.
The conflict has reduced a large part of Gaza, a small, overpopulated territory of 362 km, to rubble.2 led by Hamas since 2007.
Israeli bombings have forced 1.9 million people to flee their homes, or 85% of the population according to the UN.
After more than two months of war, only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and international agencies are now warning emphatically of the risk of famine which threatens the population.
Despite the new resolution adopted by the Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres blasted the “massive obstacles” to aid distribution created by the way Israel is carrying out its “offensive”.
He recalled that “136” United Nations employees “were killed in 75 days”, “unheard of” according to him. Only a ceasefire can “begin to address the desperate needs of the people of Gaza” and allow necessary aid to be distributed, he added.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian woman prepares food in front of a house in the southern Gaza Strip on December 22.
“The most pressing demand for the population of Gaza is an immediate ceasefire,” added the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recalling that “hunger, famine and the spread of diseases”, greatly threaten the Palestinian enclave.
In the coming weeks, “10,000 children under the age of five will suffer from the deadliest form of malnutrition,” UNICEF insisted in a press release.
Mediation
In this context, the efforts of Egyptian and Qatari mediators continue to try to reach a new truce, after that of a week at the end of November which allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians detained by Israel and the transport of more help.
But the belligerents remain intransigent: Hamas demands an end to the fighting before any negotiations on the hostages. Israel is open to the idea of a truce, but rules out any ceasefire before the “elimination” of Hamas.
In the meantime, the families of the hostages live in anguish.
On Friday, Kibbutz Nir Oz and the army announced that a 73-year-old Israeli-American hostage had died during his October 7 kidnapping. His remains are still in the Gaza Strip.
US President Joe Biden said he was “heartbroken by the news” and said he was “praying” that the wife of this man, also a hostage, is in good health.
“We will not stop working to bring them home,” he promised in a statement.