2023-11-18 16:00:05
A truck carrying fuel prepares to enter Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on November 15, 2023. SAID KHATIB / AFP
The essence is the blood that has stopped flowing into the broken body of the Gaza Strip. It is missing more than anything, under the effect of the almost total blockade imposed by Israel on the enclave. Since the start of the war on October 7, the generators that supply buildings with electricity have gradually gone out. People now only flee Gaza City on foot or on carts pulled by donkeys – which are becoming rare and expensive. Ambulances have not been running in recent days and all the city’s hospitals are at a standstill, except one.
Residents keep a few liters at the bottom of their car’s tank to recharge a battery, into which neighbors plug a dozen phones, so as not to be cut off from the world. On November 16, the telephone network went out for the fourth time: there was a lack of gasoline in the generators which power the operators’ data and connection centers. Five days ago, the autumn rains began. The displaced people of Khan Younès, in the south, spread plastic sheeting over their makeshift camps. They are looking for the winter clothes they could not take with them in their flight.
Friday, November 17, Israel accepted, in extreme urgency and at the cost of political convulsions, the passage of four tankers into the enclave, via Egypt. A drop in the ocean, according to the national security advisor, Tzachi Hanegbi, himself. But Washington, like the army and domestic intelligence, have recommended to the government this exclusive concession to the United Nations agencies, so that they maintain the desalination and wastewater treatment plants in minimal activity: without them, the massive health crisis in which Gaza is already sinking would have suffered a brutal acceleration and hampered the military operation.
The promised gasoline must also feed the tanks of telephone operators, since the United Nations says it cannot distribute aid without communications.
Controversial delivery to Israel
On Wednesday, a tanker truck had already been able to pass the Rafah border post, so that United Nations vehicles can transport water and food, which also cross the border in minimal quantities (10% of needs since October 7, nothing for three days). The UN transports them to its schools, where Gazans seek refuge from the bombings, which have left 71 dead there, out of more than 11,000 in total, according to the Hamas-administered health ministry.
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