Key Points
- US working with Egypt and Israel to get the Rafah border crossing reopened.
- UN chief says Gaza deaths show something ‘wrong’ with Israel operation.
- Gaza interior ministry says 19 people killed in air strike near hospital in refugee camp.
The Rafah border crossing into Gaza was closed on Wednesday due to an unspecified “security circumstance” but US officials were working with Egypt and Israel to get it reopened, US State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said.
Rafah, which is controlled by Egypt and does not border Israel, is the only point of aid delivery since Israel launched a military assault and siege of Gaza in retaliation for an attack by Hamas militants from the coastal strip on 7 October.
Evacuations of foreign passport holders through the crossing were suspended on Saturday and Sunday after an Israeli strike on an ambulance that was heading to Rafah, but the crossing was open again on Monday and Tuesday.
“Our understanding is that given a security circumstance the Rafah border crossing remains closed today,” Patel said during a regular press briefing.
The United States expects the Egypt-controlled crossing will be reopened at “regular intervals” so that aid can enter the Gaza Strip and foreign nationals can continue to depart, Patel said.
“This is an incredibly fluid situation. The border crossing has opened on many instances and allowed for the safe … exit for foreign nationals who have sought it,” he said.
Washington has urged Israel to agree to humanitarian pauses so that aid can flow into Gaza.
Patel said 81 trucks carrying essential supplies crossed into the strip on Tuesday, bringing to about 650 the total number of trucks that have crossed since a diplomatic agreement was reached to reopen the crossing on 21 October.
Humanitarian situation in Gaza ‘catastrophic’
The United Nations has been working to increase humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has been pushing for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow aid access to Gaza.
“It is absolutely essential – absolutely essential – to have a flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza that corresponds to the dramatic needs that the population is facing,” Guterres said.
“We are in intense negotiations with Israel, with US, with Egypt, in order to make sure that we have an effective humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Guterres said.
“Until now it has been too little, too late.”
Thousands flee north Gaza as Israel troops, Hamas clash
Thousands of Palestinian civilians have trudged in a forlorn procession out of the north of Gaza seeking refuge from Israeli air strikes and fierce ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.
The exodus took place in a four-hour window of opportunity announced by Israel, which has told residents to leave the north encircled by its armoured forces or risk being trapped in the violence.
But the central and southern parts of the Palestinian enclave also came under fire again as the war between Hamas and Israel entered its second month.
Palestinian health officials said an air strike that hit houses in the Nusseirat refugee camp killed 18 people on Wednesday morning.
The military said troops have advanced to the heart of the city while Hamas says its fighters have inflicted heavy losses. Israel says combat engineers are using explosive devices to destroy a Hamas tunnel network.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said combat engineers were using explosive devices to destroy a Hamas tunnel network that stretches for hundreds of kilometres beneath Gaza. The military said it had destroyed 130 tunnel shafts so far.
“Combat engineers fighting in Gaza are destroying the enemy’s weapons and are locating, exposing and detonating tunnel shafts,” it said.
Huge numbers of displaced people from among Gaza’s 2.3 million population are already crammed into schools, hospitals and other sites in the south.
Thousands of Palestinian workers, who had been deported by Israel, made their return to the Gaza Strip. Source: Getty / Mohammed Zaanoun
Something ‘wrong’ with Israel operation, Guterres says
Guterres said on Wednesday that the number of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip shows that there is something “clearly wrong” with Israel’s military operations against Hamas.
Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, after the militants killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 hostages in a 7 October attack.
Israel has struck Gaza – an enclave of 2.3 million people – from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground invasion.
“There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when one looks at the number of civilians that were killed with the military operations, there is something that is clearly wrong,” Guterres told Reuters.
Palestinian officials said 10,569 people have now been killed in Gaza, 40 per cent of them children.
“It is also important to make Israel understand that it is against the interests of Israel to see every day the terrible image of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people,” Guterres said.
“That doesn’t help Israel in relation to the global public opinion.” While strongly condemning the Hamas attack on Israel, Guterres said that “we need to distinguish – Hamas is one thing, the Palestinian people (are) another.”
“If we don’t make that distinction, I think it’s humanity itself that will lose its meaning,” Guterres said.
Guterres compared the number of children being killed in Gaza with the toll in conflicts around the world that he reports on annually to the UN Security Council.
On Monday, he said Gaza was becoming “a graveyard for children.”
“Every year, the highest number of killings of children by any of the actors in all the conflicts that we witness is the maximum in the hundreds,” Guterres said.
“We have in a few days in Gaza thousands and thousands of children killed, which means there is also something clearly wrong in the way military operations are being done,” he added.
Hamas is a Palestinian military and political group, which has gained power in the Gaza Strip since winning legislative elections there in 2006. Its stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state, while refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Hamas, in its entirety, is designated as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
New Zealand and Paraguay list only its military wing as a terrorist group. In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly voted against a resolution condemning Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist organisation.
