1. Food aid to Gaza
“The prosecutor International Criminal The Court made the shameful accusation that Israel was deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is total nonsense. A complete fabrication. Israel has allowed over 40,000 aid trucks into Gaza. That’s 500,000 tons of food!”
According to UN data, 28,018 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the war began, with routes into the area no longer including the Rafah checkpoint which Israeli forces stormed in early May, drastically curtailing aid deliveries to the southern area.
Since then, only 2,835 trucks have passed through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint in the south and Erez checkpoint in the north, delivering only a fraction of the needed aid.
Relief groups accuse Israel of deliberately blocking aid from entering the Gaza Strip and imposing arbitrary and ever-changing restrictions on what supplies are allowed in.
Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam Director for the Middle East and North Africa Said “The Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate international aid efforts, they are actively obstructing them,” he said in March.
Earlier this year, the Integrated Food Security Catalog, the world’s leading authority on hunger, Gaza was on the brink of starvationIn June, the organization’s famine assessment committee said that because of the increased flow of supplies to northern Gaza, “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.”
But the risk of famine remains high, they added. “The situation in Gaza remains dire and the risk of famine is high and persists across the Gaza Strip… The prolonged nature of the crisis means that this risk remains higher than at any time in the past few months,” they said.
2. Protection of Civilians
“The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. Is he talking about God’s green earth? The Israeli Defense Forces just dropped millions of barrels of warheads.“Millions of text messages were sent and hundreds of thousands of phone calls were made to rescue Palestinian civilians from danger.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sometimes drops leaflets and sends text messages to warn Palestinians of its intention to attack an area, but these measures often fail to stop civilians from getting caught in the fighting, as was made clear this week when the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of an estimated 400,000 people in Khan Younis.
“The evacuation order was issued amid ongoing Israeli attacks, leaving civilians with no time to know which areas to evacuate and where to go. Despite the evacuation order, Israeli military operations continue unabated in and around the area,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
Evacuation orders issued by the IDF mean that many people in Gaza are being forced to flee repeatedly. Earlier this month, Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that 90 percent of Gaza’s residents have been displaced at least once, and many as many as 10 times. The Israeli military has designated certain areas, such as Al Mawashi, as “humanitarian zones,” but airstrikes have been carried out in areas previously designated safe.
UNWRA, the UN agency that provides support to Palestinian refugees, estimates that more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip’s total area is “under evacuation orders or designated as a no-go zone.”
Palestinians and aid groups have repeatedly said that no place is safe in Gaza. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs described the mass evacuation orders as “confusing,” saying the Israeli military was making the demands to help civilians flee while at the same time intensifying attacks on those same locations and areas that civilians could use as escape routes.
Such choices, they said, “could put civilians at further risk and increase civilian suffering.”
3. Negotiations with Hamas
“The war in Gaza could end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders and disarms. All hostages will be returned, but if they are not, Israel will fight until it destroys Hamas’ military power and ends its rule in Gaza. And bring all the hostages back to their home countries.”
Netanyahu’s speech did not mention a ceasefire but noted negotiations were underway, and he also praised an Israeli military operation that freed four hostages early last month but killed at least 274 people.
An estimated 114 hostages remain in Gaza, according to recent estimates, although an undisclosed number of captives have died as efforts to recover bodies continue.
Netanyahu, who promised “total victory” in his speech, has argued that only military pressure can force Hamas to sign a ceasefire, and that Israeli forces must remain in Gaza for the long term and be able to continue fighting even if they agree to a temporary halt.
People familiar with the hostage negotiations, vocal Israeli supporters and even some of the hostages’ families have accused Netanyahu of obstructing an agreement.
a The poll was released Just before the Israeli prime minister flew to Washington, Israel’s Channel 12 news reported that two-thirds of Israelis believe the return of the hostages is more important than continuing the fighting in Gaza and that a “total victory” for Netanyahu is unlikely.
“More than nine months of military pressure have only resulted in the deaths of hostages and many Palestinian civilians. Deal now!” former Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin said earlier this month.
He added that Israeli negotiators should finalize the deal and “present it to the public so that everyone knows that the prime minister is blocking an agreement.”
