The Gaza Strip, threatened with famine, was still plunged into a humanitarian catastrophe on Wednesday which particularly affected the overpopulated town of Rafah, in the south, but also the north of the territory, while new talks for a truce began in Cairo.
Israeli bombings and fighting between the army and Hamas continue unabated across the Palestinian territory, where 118 people have been killed in 24 hours, according to the Islamist movement’s Health Ministry.
According to the UN, 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, are threatened with famine in the Gaza Strip, besieged by Israel since the start of the war on October 7.
The situation is particularly alarming in the north of the territory, prey to “chaos and violence” according to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which suspended the distribution of its aid in this sector on Tuesday.
The director general of the World Health Organization said Wednesday that the situation was “inhumane.” “Gaza has become a death zone,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Humanitarian aid, still insufficient and subject to the green light from Israel, enters Gaza mainly through Rafah via Egypt, but its delivery to the north is made almost impossible by the destruction and fighting which isolate this region from the rest of the territory.
The Israeli authorities announced on Wednesday the entry the day before of 98 trucks with humanitarian aid into Gaza, while a group of international NGOs (AIDA) deplored the slowness of the inspection process and the blocking of dozens of trucks for several days at the border.
The Palestinian Red Crescent called on Wednesday “UN agencies to step up their aid, particularly for areas in the north of the Gaza Strip, where 400,000 people are threatened with famine.”
Talks in Cairo
According to witnesses, fighting took place on Wednesday in the south, in Khan Younes, but also in two sectors of Gaza City, in the north of the country.
“We can’t take it anymore. We don’t have any flour. We don’t even know where to go in this cold weather, said Ahmad, a resident of Gaza City. We demand a ceasefire. We want to live. »
In Rafah, images shot by AFP showed Palestinians inspecting the ruins of a house after a strike.
Nearly a million and a half people, according to the UN, are massed in this city located on the closed border with Egypt.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an upcoming ground offensive on Rafah, in order to defeat Hamas in its “last bastion” and free the hostages held in Gaza.
However, according to a poll published Wednesday, a majority of Israelis (55.3%) do not believe in a “total victory” for the army against Hamas.
The prospect of an offensive in Rafah worries the international community, at a time when Egypt hosts new talks for a truce.
The head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismaïl Haniyeh, based in Qatar, was to discuss Wednesday in Cairo with the head of the Egyptian intelligence services, Abbas Kamel, in particular the “first phase” of a plan drawn up in January by the mediating countries : Qatar, the United States and Egypt, a Hamas source told AFP in Gaza.
This first phase provided for a six-week truce, associated with an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the entry into Gaza of a large quantity of humanitarian aid.
The American president’s Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk, was traveling to Egypt on Wednesday and will be in Israel on Thursday.
“We want an agreement to be reached […] as quickly as possible,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
Hamas is demanding a ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, an end to the Israeli blockade and safe shelter for the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the war.
Israel, for its part, affirms that its offensive will continue as long as Hamas has not been eliminated and the hostages freed.
For its part, the Israeli Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday for a resolution proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu opposing any “unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state”, which would amount, according to the text, to rewarding the “unprecedented terrorism” of Hamas .
This vote comes a few days after the Washington Post said the United States and several Arab allies were working on a comprehensive plan to establish lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace after the end of the war between Israel and Hamas, including a timetable for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Green light” to Israel
On Tuesday, the United States, Israel’s ally, vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution that demanded an “immediate humanitarian” ceasefire, saying the resolution would have endangered the delicate negotiations underway on a truce.
Hamas denounced a “green light” given to Israel to carry out more “massacres”.
In the occupied West Bank, where the war in Gaza has caused an outbreak of violence, Israeli forces announced Wednesday that they had killed three suspected Palestinian fighters during a nighttime raid in the Jenin sector.
Exchanges of fire have become daily on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border, between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. On Wednesday, an Israeli strike left two people dead in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese media.