PALESTINIANS IN WAR-torn Gaza are awaiting the arrival of emergency aid promised in a deal struck by US President Joe Biden, as Israel’s military kept up its bombardment of targets in the Hamas-run enclave.
Cargo planes delivered stocks including food and medicine, water purifiers and hygiene products to Egypt’s El Arish airport, awaiting the opening of the Rafah border crossing to Gaza.
Egyptian state-linked broadcaster Al Qahera News said the crossing – the only one into and out of the besieged enclave not controlled by Israel – would open tomorrow.
On a visit to Cairo, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there needed to be “rapid, unimpeded humanitarian access” after dire warnings about the impact of the sustained Israeli blockade.
“We need food, water, medicine and fuel now. We need it at scale and we need it to be sustained, it is not one small operation that is required,” he added.
In Geneva, the emergencies director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Michael Ryan, said aid needed to get in “every day”, calling the deal struck by Biden with Israel and Egypt to allow in 20 trucks “a drop in the ocean of need right now”.
“It shouldn’t be 20 trucks: it should be 2,000 trucks,” he said.
Gaza has been hit by a relentless barrage of Israeli fire in retaliation for a Hamas militant attack on 7 October, which Israel said killed at least 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
Some 1,500 Islamist fighters were killed in clashes before the army regained control, the Israeli military said.
Israeli bombing in turn has killed at least 3,785 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Entire city blocks have been levelled, displacing more than one million of the 2.4 million population, the UN has said.
“The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction … cannot be exaggerated,” said UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths.
There are fears of worse to come if Israel launches an expected ground invasion to destroy Hamas and rescue more than 200 Israeli and foreign hostages.
Biden, on a flying visit to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet on Wednesday, reiterated strong US support for its long-time ally but also stressed the need to address the plight of Palestinian civilians.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II today condemned what they said was the “collective punishment” of Gazans.
They also warned about the conflict spreading, with anger across the Middle East at Israel and its Western allies.
“If the war does not stop”, it threatens “to plunge the entire region into catastrophe”, a statement from the Jordanian royal court read.
Sisi and Abdullah, whose countries were the first Arab states to make peace with Israel in 1979 and 1994, are seen as key mediators between Israel and the Palestinians.
They had been due to have four-way talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Biden. But Amman cancelled the summit.
Cairo has so far kept the Rafah crossing closed, pointing to repeated Israeli strikes near the checkpoint and voicing fears that Israel may be hoping to permanently drive Palestinians out and into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The UN World Food Programme said it has 951 tonnes of food at or on the way to Rafah – enough to feed 488,000 people for one week, a spokesperson said.
On the Gaza side of the border, scores of people waited, desperate to flee but mindful of any new Israeli shelling.
“We’re ready with our bags,” said one man who gave his name only as Mohammed, 40, and said he works for a European institution.
He said he had been waiting “for three days with my family, in a house 10 minutes away from the crossing” but had received no information so far.
Biden, who will make a televised address tonight about the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, announced the aid deal after what he called “blunt” talks in Israel and a phone call with Sisi.
Israel consented to the deal while pressing on with its military campaign.
Its army reported today that it had destroyed hundreds more Hamas targets, including a missile launch site and tunnels, and that “more than 10 terrorists were eliminated”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to crush Hamas after the worst attack in the country’s 75-year history.
Biden strongly backed Israel but warned it not to overreact, cautioning that Washington made mistakes as it sought to avenge 9/11.
Netanyahu today called Israel’s fightback a “just war”, adding: “I’ve never seen the people of Israel as united – more united – than they are now.”
But intensifying cross-border fire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon is stoking fears of a potential second front.
As tensions mounted, the United States, UK and Germany today advised their citizens to leave Lebanon while flights were still available.
The US State Department also issued a rare “worldwide caution” advisory for its citizens, citing terrorism and the potential for anti-American protests.
Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida called for protests at Israeli and US embassies, “to have them closed and their ambassadors expelled from all Arab and Muslim countries”.
The Arab world has been united in anger and condemnation of Israel since a deadly strike hit a Gaza hospital compound on Tuesday.
Israel temporarily recalled its diplomats from Turkey as a security precaution and called on citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.
Both sides in the war have traded blame for the bloody carnage, but neither the provenance of the strike nor the death toll could immediately be independently verified.
The strike left scores of bodies and charred cars at the Ahli Arab hospital compound in northern Gaza, AFP images showed.
Hamas accused Israel of hitting the hospital during its massive bombing campaign and Gaza’s health ministry put the death toll at 471.
Israel blamed a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket – a claim backed by Biden – pointing to the lack of a large impact crater typical of its air strikes, and said fuel from the errant rocket exploded.
A senior European intelligence source told AFP that he believed a maximum of 50 people were killed.
Hamas has dismissed Israel’s position, saying its “outrageous lies do not deceive anyone”, and slammed the United States, accusing it of being complicit in the ongoing strikes on Gaza.
The Hamas-controlled interior ministry this evening said several displaced people who had taken shelter at a church compound in the Gaza Strip have been killed and injured after what it says was an Israeli strike this evening.
The strike left a “large number of martyrs and injured” at the compound of the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, the ministry said.
Witnesses told AFP the strike appeared to have been aimed at a target close to the place of worship where many Gaza residents had taken refuge as the war raged in the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli army when contacted told AFP it was checking the reported strike.
Witnesses said the strike damaged the facade of the church and caused an adjacent building to collapse, adding that many injured people were evacuated to hospital.
Saint Porphyrius is the oldest church still in use in Gaza and is located in the city’s historic neighbourhood.
The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed its “strongest condemnation” of the strike at its church compound.
“Targeting churches and their institutions, along with the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children and women who have lost their homes due to Israeli airstrikes on residential areas over the past 13 days, constitutes a war crime that cannot be ignored,” the Patriarchate said in a statement.
The church is not far from the Al-Ahli Arab hospital.
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