2023-11-25 21:12:34
A large humanitarian aid convoy arrived in Gaza City on Saturday, November 25. MAHMUD HAMS / AFP
After forty-nine days of bombing, at least two hundred trucks filled with water, food and medicine entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing point, in the south, on Friday November 24 and Saturday November 25, in the first days of a truce concluded between Hamas and Israel. It is the largest humanitarian convoy authorized since the start of the war in a territory where half of the buildings have been destroyed and 1.7 million inhabitants out of the 2.4 million in the enclave have been displaced. At least 129,000 liters of gasoline were also distributed so that infrastructures such as hospitals could supply themselves with electricity thanks to generators.
Read also: Live, Gaza: 13 Israeli hostages and 7 foreigners, as well as 39 Palestinian prisoners, will be released this evening, say Hamas and Qatar
Aid, however, remains suspended from the fragile truce negotiated between Hamas and Israel. On Saturday evening, the Islamist movement suspended the expected release of hostages in Gaza after demanding in a statement “the entry of humanitarian aid trucks into the north of the Gaza Strip” and respect for ” selection criteria “ for the release of Palestinian prisoners. After mediation by Egypt and Qatar, he then announced that the hostages would be released on Saturday evening.
When Israel decided to cut off access to water, electricity, fuel and medicine in Gaza on October 9, the enclave was already in bad shape due to a blockade imposed since 2007. Just a few weeks before the Hamas attack on October 7, the World Bank called for a “urgent action” to get the Palestinian territories out of economic stagnation. The Washington Institution, which no longer wishes to communicate on the situation on the ground, listed the alarming indicators in a report published on September 18: an unemployment rate of 25%, a poverty rate of 24% and health infrastructure in escheat as well as shortages of medicines.
Since the indiscriminate bombings of the Israeli army on Gaza, the economic slump is about to turn into “health tragedy”, warned UNICEF on November 21, which is concerned about the emergence of epidemics due to lack of sufficient sanitation. Nearly half of the buildings are in ruins, according to United Nations estimates, some 43,000 homes completely demolished and 225,000 partially. “The destruction is of considerable magnitude, testifies Abdallah Al Dardari, head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for the Arab States, half of the buildings were destroyed in just one month, while in Syria, it took 4 to 5 years of war for losses to reach the same proportions. » The Gazan economy is on the ground and that of the West Bank is on borrowed time.
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