Gazans hope for aid trucks as Israel prepares for next step
Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes yesterday, including in the south where Palestinians were told to take refuge.
One blast struck a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City where families were seeking shelter, and Israel’s defence minister ordered ground troops to “be ready” to invade, though he didn’t indicate when.
Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals tried to stretch out ebbing medical supplies and fuel for generators, as authorities worked out logistics for an aid delivery from Egypt. Doctors in darkened wards across Gaza performed surgeries by the light of mobile phones and used vinegar to treat infected wounds.
An unclassified United States intelligence assessment delivered to Congress estimated casualties in an explosion at a Gaza City hospital this week on the “low end” of 100 to 300 deaths. The death toll “still reflects a staggering loss of life”, US intelligence officials said in the report. It said officials were still assessing the evidence and their casualty estimate may evolve. US President Joe Biden has said that intelligence officials believe the explosion at al-Ahli Hospital was not caused by an Israeli airstrike.
The Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in retaliation for the devastating October 7 Hamas rampage in southern Israel. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north of Gaza and flee south, strikes extended across the territory, heightening fears among the territory’s 2.3 million people that nowhere was safe.
Palestinian militants fired rockets into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, and tensions flared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli infantry soldiers on the Gaza border to “get organised, be ready” to move in. Israel has massed tens of thousands of troops along the border.
“Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside. It might take a week, a month, two months until we destroy them,” he added, referring to Hamas.
There have been suggestions that Israel aims to create a buffer zone. The Financial Timesreports that Eli Cohen, Israel’s Foreign Minister, said that “at the end of this war, not only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, but the territory of Gaza will also decrease”. Israel’s Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, previously head of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, said subsequently that having most of Israel’s border security infrastructure several hundred metres inside Israeli territory, was no longer tenable. “On the Gaza Strip all along, we will have a margin. And they will not be able to get in. It will be a fire zone, ” theFinancial Times reports.
Israel’s consent for Egypt to let in food, water and medicine provided the first possible opening in its seal of the territory. Many Gaza residents are down to one meal a day and drinking dirty water.
Egypt and Israel were still negotiating the entry of fuel for hospitals. Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Hamas has stolen fuel from UN facilities and Israel wants assurances that won’t happen. The first trucks of aid were expected to go in today.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 3785 Gazans have been killed.
More than 1400 people in Israel have been killed.