Israeli forces flood Hamas tunnels
As UN pleads for funding for Palestinian aid agency
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israel’s army has begun flooding Hamas’ network of tunnels as intense fighting rages in the Gaza Strip, with the United Nations warning of the potential “collapse of the humanitarian system” in the territory after a funding row hit its Palestinian aid agency.
The epicenter of the fighting in recent weeks has been Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city, where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings, and where an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist witnessed people leaving town on Tuesday as explosions sounded nearby.
“We left the Nasser hospital without any mattresses, under tank and airstrikes. We didn’t know where to go,” one young woman said. “We’re out in the cold, left to fend for ourselves, with no tents and nothing to survive on.”
Elsewhere in the city, Israeli troops gave journalists a tour of a tunnel they said had been used as a Hamas command center.
“Every war has its own characteristics, and I think that this war, its basic character is about that overand underground maneuver,” Dan Goldfus, commander of the 98th Paratroopers Division, told reporters outside of the shaft.
“I think the enemy is on the run and is trying to put itself under the civilians as much as it can,” he said.
The Israeli military, which has dubbed the vast network of tunnels “the Gaza metro,” said on Tuesday it had begun flooding the underground complexes with water in a bid to “neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network.”
UNRWA row
The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
About 250 foreign and Israeli hostages were also dragged to Gaza during those attacks, of whom about 132 are still there. That figure includes the bodies of at least 28 people believed to have been killed.
Following the attacks, Israel launched a withering air, land and sea offensive in Gaza that has killed at least 26,751 people, mostly women and children, the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry said.
The war has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population, said the UN, which warned that the humanitarian crisis there would only get worse if major donors didn’t restore funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Israel has alleged that several agency staff members took part in the October 7 attacks, leading key donor countries, including the United States and Germany, to suspend funding.
Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s coordinator for Gaza aid, said on Tuesday that no other agency could “replace or substitute” the UNRWA, which has thousands of employees.
The heads of several UN agencies, including the World Health Organization, UN Children’s Fund, UN Human Rights Office and the World Food Program, later issued a statement warning that defunding the UNRWA would “have catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza.”
Withholding the funds, they said, was “perilous and would result in the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, with far-reaching humanitarian and human rights consequences.”
Washington, which said it had given $131 million to UNRWA since last October, said it “very much supported” the agency’s work.
“We want to see that work continued, which is why it is so important that the United Nations take this matter seriously, that they investigate, that there is accountability for anyone who is found to have engaged in wrongdoing,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Truce proposal
After a recent meeting in Paris between US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials yielded a proposed framework for a truce, Hamas confirmed on Tuesday that it had received the proposal and was “in the process of examining it and delivering its response.”
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, whose government helped broker a previous truce last November, voiced hope that an initial deal might lead to a permanent ceasefire.
He said the current plan included a phased truce that would see female and child hostages released first, with more aid also entering Gaza.
The US also expressed hope for a deal, with Secretary of State
Antony Blinken saying that “very important, productive work has been done.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office earlier called the talks “constructive,” ruled out releasing “thousands” of Palestinian prisoners as part of any deal.
“I would like to make it clear. ... We will not withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip, and we will not release thousands of terrorists. None of this will happen,” he said on Tuesday, using the acronym of the Israeli military’s formal name, the Israel Defense Forces.