Gaza: population threatened with famine


After multiple postponements, the UN Security Council is expected to vote Friday on a resolution intended to improve aid to Gaza.

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Bombings continue on Friday in the Gaza Strip, where, according to the UN, a quarter of the population is threatened with famine. The UN Security Council is trying to break the deadlock to pass a resolution to increase humanitarian aid.

Since Monday, the members of the Council have multiplied the postponements, unable to agree on a text capable of escaping a veto from the United States, which has already blocked two previous resolutions in recent weeks.

Discussions notably stalled on the control of humanitarian convoys. It was initially to be entrusted to the UN alone, but Israel, which fears the entry of weapons into the enclave, wants to maintain its supervisory power over the aid trucks. The Security Council vote is now scheduled for Friday, according to diplomatic sources.

United Nations services continue to warn of the humanitarian crisis in which Gaza is sinking.

Approximately half the population is expected to be in the “emergency” phase – which includes very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality – by February 7according to a report from the United Nations hunger monitoring system released Thursday.

And “at least one in four families”, or more than half a million people, will face “phase 5”, that is to say catastrophic conditions.

“We have been warning for weeks that with such deprivation and destruction, each day that passes will only bring more hunger, disease and despair to the people of Gaza,” the head of humanitarian operations in Gaza reacted on the UN, Martin Griffiths. “The war must end.”

No respite

On the ground, no respite is in sight. Early Friday, an Israeli bombing killed 5 people in Rafah (south), according to the Hamas health ministry.

The Israeli army claims to have killed “more than 2,000 terrorists in the Gaza Strip since December 1. On Thursday, it intensely bombarded the territory, with 230 strikes in 24 hours, mainly concentrated on the south of the enclave.

One of them notably targeted the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing pointcausing four deaths and interrupting the activities of UN agencies to deliver humanitarian aid via this route, recently reopened by Israel.

“There is no safe place, everything has been bombed and people are really afraid,” Mahmoud el Mash’hid, a man displaced by the conflict in Khan Younes (south), told AFPTV.

More than two months of Israeli bombardment by air, sea and land have caused at least 20,000 dead – mainly women and children – in Gaza according to Hamas, destroyed entire neighborhoods and displaced 1.9 million people, or 85% of the population, according to the UN.

Israel has vowed to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, after its attack of unprecedented scale and violence on October 7.

This attack left around 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli toll. Palestinian commandos also kidnapped around 250 people, of whom 129 are still being held in Gaza, according to Israel.

Second truce?

Efforts continue on several fronts to try to achieve a new truceafter that of a week at the end of November which allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians detained by Israel and the delivery of more aid to Gaza.

THE Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, based in Doha, is in Cairo for talks with the Egyptian mediator. Ziad al-Nakhala, the leader of Islamic Jihad, another Islamist movement which fights alongside Hamas and also holds hostages, is expected to go there in the coming days.

Israel dialogues with the Qatar and the United Statestwo other mediators.

But the positions of the protagonists remain very distant. Hamas sets as a prerequisite a cessation of 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.

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Israel’s goal of eliminating the movement is “doomed to failure,” Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, said in an audio recording Thursday. He again conditioned the release of the hostages on Israel’s “stopping of aggression”.

A senior Israeli official for his part reported a “kind of progress” after “meetings with the Qataris on two occasions last week”.

“We are ready to negotiate a new formula (for) hostage releases (…) We will then need a humanitarian pause like the first (end of November). Before and after that, we remain committed to achieving our major objective, which is to put an end to the existence of Hamas,” he said on condition of anonymity.

Sufferings

In the meantime, the suffering continues and the hostages’ loved ones tremble for them.

“It’s Russian roulette, we wake up every morning without knowing what news we are going to receive,” Ella Ben Ami, whose mother Raz was released after 54 days of captivity but father, Ohad, explained to the press on Thursday. remains detained in Gaza.

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The destruction caused by the fighting has reduced Gaza’s hospital system to shreds. Alone nine of 36 hospitals of the territory still operate in part and all are located in the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Even in hospitals, people with open fractures and bleeding are asking us for food,” Sean Casey, a World Health Organization worker, said Thursday after visiting two Gaza hospitals. Al-Chifa and Al-Ahli. “If that’s not a sign of desperation, I don’t know what is.”

The Israeli army announced the death of two new soldiers on Friday. It has lost 139 soldiers since the start of its ground offensive on October 27.

Regional tensions

Beyond the Gaza Strip, the conflict continues to fuel tensions in the Middle East.

Since the start of the war, the exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, Hamas’ Islamist ally in neighboring Lebanon, are at the border almost daily. On Thursday, an octogenarian woman was killed and her husband injured in an Israeli bombardment on a border village in southern Lebanon, according to official media.

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Two Israeli civilians were lightly injured by Hezbollah fire in an area near the Lebanese border, according to the Israeli army.

In the Red Sea, the threat of attacks on international maritime traffic from Yemen’s Houthi rebels – in solidarity with Hamas – causes a slowdown in world trade. Major carriers no longer use this highway of the sea, prompting Swedish furniture giant Ikea to announce possible delivery delays on Thursday.

More than 20 countries have now joined the US-led coalition to defend ships in the Red Seaaccording to the Pentagon.

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