United Nations: The average Gazan is living on two pieces of Arabic bread made from flour the UN had stockpiled in the region, yet the main refrain now being heard in the street is “Water, water,” the Gaza director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday.
Thomas White, who said he travelled “the length and breadth of Gaza in the last few weeks,” described the place as a “scene of death and destruction.” No place is safe now, he said, and people fear for their lives, their future and their ability to feed their families.
The Palestinian refugee agency, known as UNRWA, is supporting about 89 bakeries across Gaza, aiming to get bread to 1.7 million people, White told diplomats from the UN’s 193 member nations in a video briefing from Gaza.
But, he said, “Now people are beyond looking for bread. It’s looking for water.”
UN deputy Mideast coordinator Lynn Hastings, who is also the humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said only one of three water supply lines from Israel is operational. “Many people are relying on brackish or saline ground water, if at all,” she said.
In the briefing, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths also said intense negotiations are taking place among authorities from Israel, Egypt, the United States and United Nations on allowing fuel to enter Gaza.
Fuel, he said, is essential for the functioning of institutions, hospitals and the distribution of water and electricity. “We must allow these supplies reliably, repetitively and dependently into Gaza.” Israel’s military hit the family home of the exiled leader of Hamas on the outskirts of Gaza City with an airstrike Saturday and pressed ahead with attacks across in the besieged enclave where a humanitarian crisis is rapidly worsening.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged an immediate cease-fire to allow aid in.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is horrific,” Guterres said late Friday in an unusually blunt statement. “An entire population is traumatized, nowhere is safe.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been in the region since Friday trying to find ways to ease the plight of the civilians caught in the fighting and was meeting with Arab foreign ministers on Saturday. His mission is complicated by Israel’s insistence there can be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.
Guterres said he had not forgotten the slaughter of civilians at the hands of Hamas militants when they launched their attack on Israel almost a month ago, but said civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected. He also said civilians must not be used as human shields, and called upon Hamas to release all of the roughly 240 hostages it has.
The family home of Hamas’ exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh, in the Shati refugee camp on the northern edge of Gaza City, was hit Saturday morning by an airstrike, according to the Hamas-run media office in Gaza. It had no immediate details on damage or casualties and there was no immediate comment.
Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told The Associated Press that the house was being used by Haniyeh’s two sons.
The home is located in a narrow alley in the refugee camp, which has become a crowded neighbourhood of Gaza City over the generations. Haniyeh, a former aide to Hamas’ founder, Ahmed Yassin, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2004, has been in exile since 2019.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s total of more than 9,000 people killed in Gaza is four times as many deaths as during the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2014 when just over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, Griffiths said. He added that the real toll will only emerge once buildings are cleared and rubble is taken away.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes along the border with Lebanon Saturday as the militant Hezbollah group attacked several Israeli army posts, including one that was struck with two large rockets.
The escalation came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his powerful group is already engaged in unprecedented fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border. He threatened a further escalation as Israel’s war in Gaza with Hamas, Hezbollah’s ally, nears the one-month mark.
Hezbollah is prepared for all options, Nasrallah declared, “and we can resort to them at any time”.
Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters attacked at least six Israeli posts along the border, saying “suitable rockets and weapons” were used. It added that “direct hits were scored and technical equipment was destroyed.”