Since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, more than 100 hostages have been freed during a week-long ceasefire in November last year. However, efforts for a new truce agreement and an exchange have not been successful so far.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand that the Israeli government do more to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
Weekly events are also anti-government in character, with many calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold new elections and make way for a successor.
“I’m not ready to live in a world full of dead people. I’m not ready to live in a country with a government that sends us to settle on borders and fight wars and in the end abandons us. I’m not ready to live without a father”, said Ofer Kalderon, the son of Rotem Kalderon, one of the hostages captured by Hamas.
Hamas launched an incursion into southern Israel last October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
Since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, more than 100 hostages have been freed during a week-long ceasefire in November last year.
However, efforts to reach a new truce agreement involving the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners have so far failed.
One of the stated goals of the Israeli military campaign was to free hostages held in Gaza, but in eight months only seven of them have been freed.
Three others were mistakenly killed by Israeli forces after escaping on their own and Hamas claims others were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israel estimates that around 80 people are still being held by Hamas, along with the bodies of 40 others.
“Say yes to the deal, bring everyone home; the living to be rehabilitated with their families and the dead to be buried with dignity in their country”said Michal Lubnov, the wife of hostage Alex Lubnov.
The Israeli offensive on Gaza has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
It also triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where more than 80 percent of the population has been displaced and Israeli restrictions and ongoing fighting have hampered efforts to deliver humanitarian aid, fueling widespread hunger.
The inconclusive war has also divided the Israeli public, thousands of people take to the streets every Saturday evening to ask the government to reach an agreement that would bring the hostages home. Some accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of prioritizing his political survival over the lives of the hostages.
“Tactical pause” in the Gaza Strip
The Israeli army announced on Sunday a “tactical pause” in its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip to allow the delivery of increased quantities of humanitarian aid.
The military said the pause would begin in the Rafah area at 8 a.m. (5 a.m. GMT) and remain in effect until 7 p.m. (4 p.m. GMT). She said breaks would take place every day until further notice.
The pause is intended to allow aid trucks to reach the nearby Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, the main aid entry point, and travel safely to the Salah a-Din highway, the main north-south route, to deliver supplies to other parts of the Gaza Strip, the army said. The army said the pause was coordinated with the United Nations and international aid agencies.
The crossing has suffered a bottleneck since Israeli ground troops entered Rafah in early May.
Israel’s eight-month military offensive against the Hamas militant group has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, with the UN reporting widespread hunger and hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of starvation. The international community has urged Israel to do more to ease the crisis.
From May 6 to June 6, the United Nations received an average of 68 trucks of aid per day, according to figures from the U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA. That figure is down from 168 trucks per day in April and is well below the 500 trucks per day needed according to aid groups.
The flow of aid into the southern Gaza Strip has diminished just as humanitarian needs have increased. More than a million Palestinians, many of whom had already been displaced, fled Rafah after the invasion, crowding into other parts of the southern and central Gaza Strip. Most of them now languish in dilapidated tent camps, using trenches as latrines, with open sewers in the streets.
WFP: “catastrophe” in southern Gaza
Meanwhile, Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip queued under the blazing sun to get water from aid trucks in Khan Yunis, where tens of thousands live mainly in tents. in plastic.
Displaced people are struggling with high temperatures, lack of food and water and absence of medical supplies.
This comes a day after a senior official from the UN World Food Program said that a “water and sanitation disaster” was taking place in southern Gaza, compounded by the growing number of displaced people from the town of Rafah, located in the far south of the Gaza Strip.
“People camp in the streets, on the beach, at best with a few shelters. But, you know, we’ve been through rivers of sewage” said Carl Skau, WFP Deputy Executive Director.
The same day, a UNICEF spokesperson told the BBC that one of its convoys had been refused entry into northern Gaza despite having all the necessary documents.
Israel: no restrictions on truck entry
COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, says there are no restrictions on truck entry. It says more than 8,600 trucks of all kinds, both aid and commercial, entered Gaza through all crossing points between May 2 and June 13, an average of 201 per day. But much of the aid accumulated at crossing points and did not reach its final destination.
A COGAT spokesman, Shimon Freedman, said it was the UN’s fault that its shipments were piling up on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom. He said the agencies had “fundamental logistical problems that they have not resolved”in particular a lack of trucks.
The UN denies these allegations. She claims that fighting between Israel and Hamas often makes transporting UN trucks too dangerous inside Gaza to Kerem Shalom, which is right next to the Israeli border.
The United Nations also says the pace of deliveries has been slowed because the Israeli military must allow drivers to visit the site, a system that Israel says was designed to ensure the safety of drivers. Due to the lack of security, aid trucks were sometimes looted by crowds while traveling on Gaza’s roads.
The new agreement aims to reduce the need to coordinate deliveries by providing an uninterrupted 11-hour window each day to allow trucks to enter and exit the crossing point.
It was not immediately clear whether the military would ensure the safety of aid trucks as they passed through the highway.