With the arrival of the first aid shipment via the floating dock established by the US Army off the shores of Gaza City, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed its rejection of any military presence of any force on the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli occupation army announced the entry of the first shipment of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip via the floating dock.
The army spokesman said that more than 300 stretchers of humanitarian aid were transported in cooperation with the Israeli Government Coordination Unit and the US Central Command.
The aid was transported via trucks to the warehouses of the United Nations World Food Program in Gaza on Friday evening, but it was not clear when it would be distributed to residents of the Strip who are suffering from difficult humanitarian conditions as a result of the Israeli war.
Hamas statement
For its part, the Hamas movement said in a statement published on Friday evening that it and all the Palestinian resistance factions affirm “the right of our people to receive all the aid they need in light of the humanitarian catastrophe created by the occupation in its brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip.”
The movement also reaffirmed its rejection of any military presence of any force on Palestinian land, according to the statement. She stressed that “any route for bringing in aid, including the water terminal, is not an alternative to opening all land crossings under Palestinian supervision.”
In turn, the director of the government media office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta, said in statements to Al-Jazeera that the American dock does not meet the food needs of the residents of the Strip.
Al-Thawabta added that the population needs at least 7 million meals a day, and the sidewalk cannot provide this amount of food.
American messages to Hamas
On the other hand, White House National Security Communications Coordinator John Kirby told Tel Aviv Tribune that the United States sent messages indirectly to Hamas regarding the sea pier off the coast of Gaza, and explained to them what it is and how it works.
Kirby confirmed that aid shipments have already begun arriving in Gaza.
In the same context, Sabrina Singh, Deputy Spokesperson for the US Department of Defense (Pentagon), said in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune that the sea pier is not an alternative to land crossings.
She added that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stressed to his Israeli counterpart the necessity of opening land crossings to allow a greater flow of aid.
For more than 7 months, the Israeli occupation army has been waging what international experts describe as a war of extermination against the Palestinians in Gaza, where tens of thousands were martyred and injured, most of them children and women, and nearly 70% of the civilian infrastructure, including homes, schools, and hospitals, was destroyed.