2023-12-23 05:31:00
Israeli strikes and ground fighting continue on Saturday in the Gaza Strip, where the suffering Palestinian population is hoping for an increase in humanitarian aid after the adoption of a resolution to this effect by the UN Security Council.
After five days of laborious negotiations to avoid a veto by the United States, the Council finally adopted a text on Friday calling for the “immediate” and “large-scale” delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The resolution refrains from calling for a “ceasefire”, an unacceptable condition for Israel and its American ally. It calls for “creating the conditions for a lasting cessation of hostilities”.
The adoption of this text, thanks to the abstention of the United States and Russia, is seen as a diplomatic success within an institution widely criticized for its inaction since the start of the war.
But its real scope on the ground is still uncertain: humanitarian aid, which is already trickling into Gaza, is currently very far from meeting the immense needs of a population largely threatened by famine, according to the ‘UN.
Before this vote, Israel, which controls trucks entering Gaza, was already suing the UN agencies responsible for distributing aid for incompetence. A position maintained by Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Friday.
“The Security Council’s decision highlights the need to ensure that the United Nations is more effective in transferring humanitarian aid and to ensure that aid reaches its destination and does not end up in the hands of Hamas terrorists”, he reacted on X.
“Good direction”
On the Palestinian side, UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour welcomed “a step in the right direction”, while insisting on the need for an “immediate ceasefire”.
But Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, deemed the resolution “insufficient” and said it did not “respond to the catastrophic situation created by the war machine Zionist (Israeli, editor’s note)”.
Israel has promised to destroy Hamas, after the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by the Islamist movement on its soil, which left around 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli toll. . Palestinian commandos also kidnapped around 250 people, 129 of whom are still being held in Gaza, according to Israel.
Israeli military operations carried out in retaliation left 20,057 dead, mostly women, adolescents and children, and more than 50,000 injured, according to the latest report from the Hamas government.
In addition to the aerial bombardments, the Israeli army launched a ground offensive on October 27 in the north of the territory which allowed it to advance towards the south and take several sectors. Israel lost a total of 139 soldiers in Gaza.
On Saturday, the army again announced that it had killed “terrorists” and discovered tunnels used by Hamas in Gaza City.
During the night from Friday to Saturday, a strike on the town of Deir el-Balah (center) left several injured, according to the Al-Jazeera channel.
“My message to the world is that they are looking at us, that they are seeing us, that they are seeing that we are dying. Why are they not paying attention to that?” AFP Walaa Al-Medini, a Palestinian-Egyptian displaced person evacuating the Bureij refugee camp (center), after a preventive warning from the Israeli army.
Risk of starvation
The conflict has reduced a large part of Gaza to ruins, a small, overpopulated territory of 362km2 ruled by Hamas since 2007.
Israeli bombings have forced 1.9 million people to flee their homes, or 85% of the population according to the UN.
After more than two months of war, only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and international agencies are now warning emphatically of the risk of famine which threatens the population.
Despite the new resolution adopted by the Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres slammed the “massive obstacles” to aid distribution created by the way Israel is carrying out its “offensive”.
He recalled that “136” United Nations employees “were killed in 75 days”, “unheard of” according to him. Only a ceasefire can “begin to address the desperate needs of the people of Gaza” and enable the necessary aid to be distributed, he added.
“The most pressing demand for the population of Gaza is an immediate ceasefire,” added the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recalling that “hunger, famine and the spread of diseases”, largely threaten the Palestinian enclave.
In the coming weeks, “10,000 children under the age of five will suffer from the deadliest form of malnutrition,” UNICEF insisted in a press release.
Mediation
In this context, the efforts of Egyptian and Qatari mediators continue to try to reach a new truce, after that of a week at the end of November which allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians detained by Israel and the transport of more help.
But the belligerents remain intransigent: Hamas demands an end to the fighting before any negotiations on the hostages. Israel is open to the idea of a truce but rules out any ceasefire before the “elimination” of Hamas.
In the meantime, the families of the hostages live in anguish.
On Friday, Kibbutz Nir Oz and the army announced that a 73-year-old Israeli-American hostage had died during his kidnapping on October 7. His remains are still in the Gaza Strip.
US President Joe Biden said he was “heartbroken by the news” and said he was “praying” that the wife of this man, also a hostage, is in good health.
“We will not stop working to bring them home,” he promised in a statement.
23/12/2023 04:30:06 – Gaza Strip (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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