2024-03-28 22:09:14
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) this Thursday ordered Israel to guarantee without delay the delivery of “urgent humanitarian aid” in the Gaza Strip, devastated after almost six months of war between Israel and Hamas.
The conflict, which began after the attack by the Islamist movement in Israel on October 7, has left the narrow territory in ruins and its 2.4 million inhabitants on the brink of famine, according to the UN.
Israel must take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, the unhindered delivery of “basic services and urgent humanitarian aid” to Gaza, declared the highest UN court, based in The Hague.
Following a lawsuit from South Africa, the ICJ in January demanded that Israel prevent any act of “genocide” in Gaza and allow the entry of humanitarian aid. Israel called the accusations “scandalous.”
The Ministry of Health of the narrow territory, governed by Hamas since 2007, reported this Thursday the death of at least 66 people overnight, mostly in Israeli bombings.
The balance brings the number of deaths in Gaza due to the Israeli military offensive to 32,552, according to the ministry, which specifies that the majority of those killed are civilians.
Israel vowed to “annihilate” the Islamist movement after its October 7 attack in the south of its territory, which left at least 1,160 dead, mainly civilians.
The Islamist fighters also captured about 250 people and 130 of them are still held in Gaza, of whom 34 have died, according to Israeli authorities.
“Blindfolded”
Since then, the fighting has not stopped. The Israeli Army, which accuses Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals, continues its operation launched on March 18 in the Al Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City, where it claims to have “eliminated some 200 terrorists” in the area.
Israeli troops “evacuated civilians, patients and medical equipment to alternative medical facilities,” the military said.
Karam Ayman Hathat, a 57-year-old Palestinian who lives in a building near the hospital, told the AFP agency that “Israeli forces forced the men to strip naked and keep only their underwear (…)”.
“I saw others blindfolded who had to follow a tank in the middle of explosions,” he added.
In Khan Younis, in the south, soldiers carry out operations near the Naser and Al Amal hospitals, located one kilometer away.
The Israeli army indicated this Thursday that it had “eliminated dozens of terrorists in the Al Amal sector” and added that its troops “found explosive devices and a mortar shell.”
Ghazi Agha, 60, was in a tent at the Naser hospital complex when the army asked people there to evacuate the facility.
“They called us through a megaphone: ‘Come out or we will bomb the buildings.’ I went out with a dozen people (…) We heard explosions and gunshots all the time,” he said.
Israel also plans a ground operation in Rafah, a town in southern Gaza that it considers the last stronghold of Hamas.
Humanitarian situation
Nearly 1.5 million Palestinians live overcrowded in this city, the vast majority displaced by violence in other parts of the territory.
The recent adoption of a resolution at the UN demanding an “immediate ceasefire”, made possible by the US abstention, angered the Israeli government with its ally.
But on Wednesday a senior US official said Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is now willing to talk to Washington about the possible offensive on Rafah.
For its part, Qatar, which acts as a mediator with Egypt and the United States, assured this week that indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue, with the aim of achieving a truce and an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the small territory and ground aid only arrives in dribs and drabs.
In parallel, several countries are dropping food by parachute, especially in the north of the strip, where the situation is desperate.
“Food aid is often parachuted in when people are isolated (…) Here, the aid we need is only a few kilometers away: we have to use the roads,” said James Elder, spokesman for the United Nations Relief Fund. Children (Unicef), from Rafah.
A group of Palestinians lined up on a street in the town on Thursday to fill their cans with drinking water.
“There is no water in the school” converted into a shelter, “so we come here,” explained Ali al Samuni, a displaced person in his fifties.
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