US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to return to the Middle East yesterday in a new bid to secure a truce in the Israel-Hamas war, a day after a Canadian government official said Ottawa would halt all arms shipments to Israel.
Following a failed attempt to secure a ceasefire in the war in the Gaza Strip by the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last week, a new round of negotiations hosted by key mediator Qatar has begun.
However, on the ground there was no sign of a letup in the war that has devastated much of the Gaza Strip and forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge in the south of the besieged territory.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Israel’s military yesterday said it had killed about 90 gunmen and arrested 160 people in a raid on Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital that started on Monday.
Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital before the war, is now one of the few healthcare facilities that is even partially operational in the north of the territory, and had also been housing displaced civilians.
Nearly six months into the war, Israel’s key backer, the US, has repeatedly called on its ally to allow an increase in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Blinken was due in regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia yesterday, before today arriving in Egypt, which neighbors Gaza and has been involved in previous mediation efforts.
Earlier this week, he said that everyone in Gaza was suffering “severe levels of acute food insecurity.”
“That’s the first time an entire population has been so classified,” he said during a visit to the Philippines.
A UN-backed assessment said that 300,000 people in the territory’s north would face famine by May without a surge of aid.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said Israel was blocking aid and conducting the conflict in a way that “may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war.”
Mossad Director David Barnea started a new round of talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators on Monday.
Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Majed al-Ansari said he was “cautiously optimistic,” but it was “too early to announce any successes.”
Meanwhile, Canada, a key ally of the US, which provides Israel with billions of dollars a year in military aid, had already reduced its weapons shipments to Israel to nonlethal equipment such as radios following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war.
“The situation on the ground makes it so that we can’t” export any kind of military equipment, a Canadian official said on condition of anonymity.
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly told the Toronto Star newspaper on Tuesday that Ottawa would stop future arms exports to Israel.
Israel slammed the decision, with Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz saying it “undermines Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas terrorists.”
“History will judge Canada’s current action harshly,” he wrote in a post on social media.
US Senator Bernie Sanders welcomed the move.
“Given the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, including widespread and growing starvation, the US should not provide another nickel for Netanyahu’s war machine,” Sanders wrote on social media.
Israel has historically been a top receiver of Canadian arms exports, with C$21 million (US$15.44 million) of military materiel exported to Israel in 2022, following C$26 million in shipments in 2021, Radio Canada reported.
That places Israel among the top 10 recipients of Canadian arms exports.
No exports had been sent since January, the government official added.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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