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EXPLANER
As attacks continue in the besieged enclave, Gaza’s 2.3 million residents face acute hunger and a humanitarian crisis.
Here’s how things are going on Friday February 23, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- A series of Israeli attacks on central Gaza on Thursday left 40 people dead and more than 100 injured, authorities in the besieged enclave said.
- Meanwhile, as the Israeli assault on Nasser Hospital in the town of Khan Younis continues, humanitarian agencies hope to evacuate around 140 patients stranded there. Palestinian authorities said Israeli troops withdrew from the compound and then stormed it again.
- Gaza’s health ministry said 110 patients were waiting to be evacuated. He said eight patients at Nasser Hospital had died due to lack of electricity and oxygen four days earlier and their bodies had started to decompose, posing a risk to other patients.
- Gaza’s population of 2.3 million faces acute hunger and the spread of disease in a humanitarian crisis that aid officials say is unprecedented.
- Separately, an independent panel investigating Israeli claims about links between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. body responsible for Palestinian refugees, will focus on whether the agency has done enough to uphold UN standards of neutrality.
Regional tensions and diplomacy
- Speaking to reporters at the G20 foreign ministers’ summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Israel cannot unilaterally block a Palestinian state .
- In New York, thousands of protesters marched to the office of the pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza.
- At the International Court of Justice (ICJ), China said Palestinians “must not be denied” justice during a hearing on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
- “Justice has been delayed for a long time, but it must not be denied,” Ma Xinmin, legal adviser to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told the court in The Hague.
- Finally, as tensions continue to escalate regionally, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it attacked several Israeli bases and targeted two buildings where troops had gathered in the towns of Metula and Manara.
- The group said its attacks on Israel would stop when the war on Gaza ended.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli air strike hit a vehicle in the Jenin refugee camp, killing at least one person.
- Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the country’s Defense Ministry was close to authorizing the construction of 3,344 new homes in illegal Israeli settlements.
- Israeli forces also demolished two houses, a water well and the electricity grid in the community of Khallet al-Farra, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported.
- On Wednesday, at least one person was killed and eight injured when three Palestinian gunmen opened fire on motorists near an Israeli checkpoint near occupied East Jerusalem.
