The organizers of the Asian Football Cup, organized in early 2024 in Qatar, announced Monday that ticket revenues will be donated to help the Palestinians, in the heart of the war between Israel and Hamas. “We have decided to donate the revenue generated by tickets sold for the Asian Cup in Qatar to provide necessary aid to Palestine,” said the chairman of the organizing committee, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, without specifying whether the All of these revenues, or only part, were affected.
On October 7, Hamas commandos launched from the Gaza Strip an attack of unprecedented violence and scale on Israeli soil since the creation of Israel in 1948, killing around 1,200 people according to Israeli authorities. mostly civilians. The Palestinian Islamist movement also took more than 240 people hostage, taken to Gaza.
In retaliation for this attack, which traumatized the country, Israel has vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and has relentlessly shelled the Palestinian territory, where its army has also been carrying out a ground offensive since October 27. But the scale of the destruction and the toll of victims have sparked criticism from part of the international community. According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, 13,000 people, including more than 5,500 children, were killed in Israeli bombings.
A Hamas political office in Doha
Around 1.6 million of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN, have also been displaced by the war in this small, overpopulated territory subject since October 9 to a “complete siege” by Israel, which blocks deliveries of food, water, electricity and medicine.
Qatar is currently mediating to try to secure the release of Hamas hostages in exchange for a truce, and said on Sunday that only “very minor” obstacles remained to an agreement, without providing any details. calendar. Doha, which hosts a Hamas political office and has provided millions of dollars in financial aid to Gaza, was already involved in the mediation that last month led to the release of four of the hostages: an American woman and her daughter as well as two Israelis.