The Israeli army is continuing its ground operations in the Gaza Strip. According to the WHO, the humanitarian situation there is continually deteriorating. The large hospitals in Gaza City could no longer be supplied.
Israeli units in the north of the Gaza Strip are involved in fierce fighting with Hamas gunmen, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said this morning. Among other things, Hamas tunnels were destroyed. These would have served as rocket launching pads. In addition, command centers were destroyed. Around 300 suspected targets were attacked in cooperation between ground troops and the air force.
The fighting was “intense,” said Hagari. “This type of fighting endangers our armed forces, comes at a high cost and is complex, but crucial to achieving the goals of the war. The coming weeks will require perseverance and patience from all of us – a lot of perseverance and patience.” The army spokesman raised the number of hostages held by Hamas to 240.
Air alert in Eilat – Houthi rebel drones
In the morning, an air alarm was sounded in Eilat on the Red Sea. The Israeli armed forces said it was a drone that was shot down before it reached Israeli airspace. At midday, Yemen’s pro-Iranian Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for firing drones toward Israel.
Meanwhile, according to the World Health Organization, medical care for the approximately 2.2 million residents of the sealed-off coastal strip continues to deteriorate. A third of the hospitals are no longer functional and 71 percent of the clinics are no longer functional, said the emergency coordinator of the World Health Organization (WHO), Rich Brennan, to the Reuters news agency.
The WHO’s ability to supply the remaining hospitals with medicine and equipment is vital and, Brennan continued: “Now we are cut off from this ability because of the high security risk in the north of the Gaza Strip.” There are 1.4 million displaced people who have fled primarily to the south of the coastal strip in order to find protection from the bombings in UN facilities or converted facilities.
“The sanitary facilities are terrible”
The sanitary situation is catastrophic, said the WHO representative: “You cannot imagine what the conditions are like in these collective shelters or in the houses of the people who were so generous to let other families stay with them. The sanitary facilities are Horrible. I just spoke to a UNWRA colleague who said the living conditions are inhumane. Where do people go to the toilet? How is all the waste disposed of?” The WHO could no longer reach and supply the large hospitals in Gaza City.
According to the Israeli daily “Yedioth Achronoth”, the Israeli government intends to convince Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to accept Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip in the Egyptian Sinai region. Al-Sisi firmly rejects this and in turn suggests that Israel should take in the Palestinian refugees in the Israeli Negev, it said.
Around three quarters of the residents of the Gaza Strip are refugees or descendants of refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 when the state of Israel was founded. In this context, Palestinians speak of the Nakbar, the “catastrophe”.