Efforts towards a truce in the Israel-Hamas war continued yesterday after a new proposal from the Palestinian militant group, which also called for more aid into Gaza, where famine threatens and the first food shipment by sea was unloaded.
Israel said it would send a delegation to Qatar for another round of talks on a possible deal, but also advanced plans for a military operation in Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has sought refuge from more than five months of war and deprivation.
US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) yesterday said its team had finished unloading almost 200 tonnes of food, the first shipment to arrive on a new maritime aid corridor from Cyprus.
Photo: AFP / Handout / Israeli Army
“All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza,” WCK said in a statement.
Agence France-Presse footage on Friday showed WCK’s partner, the vessel Open Arms, towing a barge with the aid close to the shore of north Gaza.
Open Arms had sailed from Cyprus on Tuesday.
WCK founder Jose Andres said the seaborne aid that reached Gaza is the equivalent of 12 trucks, but “we could bring thousands of tonnes a week.”
The UN has reported particular difficulty in accessing northern Gaza for deliveries of food and other aid.
Residents say they have resorted to eating wild plants and animal fodder, and some have stormed the few aid trucks that have made it through.
Multiple nations have begun daily aid airdrops over Gaza, and the new sea corridor is to be complemented by a temporary pier which US troops are on their way to build.
However, air and sea missions are no alternative to land deliveries, UN officials and aid groups say.
A spokesman for the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said early yesterday that 123 people had been killed over the previous 24 hours, including 36 during a strike on a house sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, central Gaza.
Witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in the southern Gaza Strip’s main city Khan Yunis as well as areas of the north.
Netanyahu’s office on Friday said he had approved the military’s plan for an operation against Hamas in Rafah, where about 1.5 million people are sheltered, many in tents near the Egyptian border.
There were no details or a time line for the long-threatened operation.
The White House, which has said an assault on Rafah would be a “red line” without credible civilian protection measures, said it had not seen the plan.
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