The United States said Monday it was ready to “continue supplying” weapons to Israel, while calling for more aid to be delivered to Gaza, where Israeli strikes have still killed dozens of Palestinians and the humanitarian situation remains catastrophic.
Visiting Israel on Monday, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States would continue to “provide Israel with the equipment it needs […]including critical munitions, tactical vehicles and air defense systems.”
The United States does not wish to “impose a timetable” on Israel for the continuation of hostilities, he said again as Washington recently began to show signs of impatience with its Israeli ally, in a context marked by growing international indignation at the very heavy civilian losses in the Palestinian territory, managed by the Islamist movement Hamas.
While international aid, entry of which is subject to Israeli authorization, still arrives in very limited quantities, the American minister thus highlighted the need to “provide increased humanitarian aid to the nearly two million of displaced people in Gaza.
American diplomacy reported on Monday the entry into the Gaza Strip of private sector trucks, not part of a humanitarian convoy, a first since the start of the war, according to Washington.
Since Sunday, convoys have entered the territory through the Rafah crossing points, via Egypt, and Kerem Shalom, in southern Israel, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees recalled in a statement. (Osha).
“But the conditions necessary to carry out humanitarian operations at the level necessary for the populations are still not met,” lamented the agency.
On October 7, Hamas commandos launched an unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip, killing around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the latest official Israeli figures. Some 250 people were taken hostage, 129 of whom are still being held in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
In retaliation, the latter promised to destroy Hamas, the army relentlessly shelling the Gaza Strip and carrying out ground operations there since October 27.
Since October 7, 19,453 people – mostly women, children and adolescents – have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest report announced Monday by the Hamas government.
” Famine “
New Israeli strikes caused dozens of deaths on Sunday and Monday, according to Hamas, which also broadcast images presented as those of an Israeli military vehicle hit by a missile, in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army lost two soldiers on Monday, bringing the toll of soldiers killed since the start of the conflict to 128.
Considerable destruction, massive displacements of civilians, hospitals out of service, in a territory subjected by Israel to a siege since October 9: on the ground, the humanitarian situation remains disastrous.
The organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel on Monday of using “the starvation of civilians as a technique of war […]which constitutes a war crime,” accusations to which the Israeli government responded by calling HRW “an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli organization.”
Around 1.9 million residents, or 85% of the Gaza Strip’s population, have been displaced by the war.
“This life is sad”
In a tent camp in Rafah, in the south of the territory, displaced people tried to warm up around makeshift braziers on Monday. “We just have light blankets, and I swear we sleep on the ground,” explains a Gazans who did not wish to give his name.
“Winter is so cold, the worst part is when you have to go to the toilet. There is no service, no water, no garbage collection, the smell of sewers is everywhere,” this man described to an AFP journalist. “This life is sad, sadder than you can imagine.”
Several hospitals were also caught in the fighting. Israel accuses Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, of using them as bases and of using civilians as “human shields”, which the Palestinian movement denies.
The Al-Chifa hospital in Gaza City and the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes were again targeted on Sunday and Monday by deadly strikes, according to Hamas.
Hostage negotiations
On the diplomatic front, 10 days after an American veto, the UN Security Council is expected to vote on Tuesday on a new text calling for an “urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities” in Gaza, a vote initially scheduled for Monday.
At the same time, negotiations are continuing for the implementation of a new truce.
According to the Axios news site, CIA boss Bill Burns met with Israeli and Qatari officials in Warsaw with a view to new negotiations on the release of hostages.
A seven-day break allowed the release of 105 hostages in Gaza at the end of November, including 80 in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
On Monday, Hamas released a video of three living elderly Israeli hostages, three days after the Israeli army admitted to mistakenly killing three other hostages, aged 25 to 28.
Region under tension
In the region, there are numerous sources of tension and concerns about an extension of the conflict are strong.
In the occupied West Bank, four Palestinians were killed in a new Israeli raid, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
In Beirut, the head of French diplomacy, Catherine Colonna, urged Lebanon on Monday to show restraint, after a similar appeal the day before to Israeli officials.
The head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, for his part called on Lebanese Hezbollah not to “provoke a wider conflict”.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah has increased its firing from southern Lebanon bordering Israel to support its Palestinian ally, and the Israeli army is responding with bombings.
Finally, in the Red Sea, the Houthi rebels of Yemen, close to Iran, claimed responsibility on Monday for new attacks against two ships according to them “linked to Israel”, “irresponsible” attacks for the head of the Pentagon, who announced the upcoming implementation of an “international coalition” to deal with it.