The US demands that Israel have credible plans to protect civilians in the event of a Rafah offensive. Chancellor Scholz travels to the crisis region. The events at a glance.
After the first aid shipment arrived by sea, supporters of the suffering population in the Gaza Strip are faced with the task of distributing the desperately needed food rations to the desperate people. The ship “Open Arms” anchored off the coast of the sealed-off coastal area on Friday, as the organization “World Central Kitchen” (WCK), which was involved in the mission, announced on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
Meanwhile, the USA, as Israel’s most important ally, is increasing its pressure on the country’s government to prevent a “catastrophe” in the event of a military offensive in the border town of Rafah and to ensure the protection of civilians there. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected in the crisis region at the weekend.
From a floating platform that the “Open Arms” towed from Cyprus hundreds of kilometers across the sea to Gaza, 115 tons of food and drinking water were brought to the shore, according to the Israeli military, which secured the landing site on the coast. The food would be enough for 37 million meals, WCK boss José Andrés wrote on
54-year-old Andrés, a star chef of Spanish origin living in the USA, founded the humanitarian organization in 2010. It provides meals to people in disaster areas around the world. There were also relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees on the border with Poland, among other things.
The “Open Arms” mission is considered a pilot project for better supplies for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip, who are currently lacking practically everything because of the war. The ship was cruising along a planned aid corridor that the EU Commission and Cyprus leaders announced a week ago. Separately, the US is planning a maritime corridor to Gaza, for which the US military will build a floating dock near the Gaza coast.
Young children suffer from acute malnutrition
The humanitarian emergency in Gaza has been worsening for weeks. According to the UN children’s fund Unicef, 31 percent of children under two years of age in the northern Gaza Strip are now acutely malnourished. In January it was 15.6 percent of children, the organization said. In the north of the Palestinian coastal area, the supply crisis is particularly dire due to the ongoing war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas.
The Gaza war was triggered by a massacre carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups in southern Israel on October 7th. On the Israeli side, more than 1,200 people were killed, and the terrorists kidnapped 250 more as hostages in the Gaza Strip. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive in the densely populated area on the Mediterranean.
According to the Hamas-controlled health authority on Friday, 31,490 Palestinians have died in the war so far and another 73,439 have suffered injuries. The numbers cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between armed fighters and civilians. At the same time, according to the authorities, these figures do not include a large number of people who are still suspected to be under rubble.
Are peace efforts moving?
A new proposal from Hamas as part of the sluggish indirect negotiations over a ceasefire and release of Israeli hostages appears to give cause for cautious optimism. “The proposal is broadly within the framework of the deal that we have been working on for several months,” US National Security Council Communications Director John Kirby said at the White House. It is good that Israel is now sending a delegation to the negotiations again, that the Hamas proposal exists and that it is being discussed. However, the devil is in the details.
In fact, Hamas has now moved to no longer demand that Israel end the war before the first hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. According to the proposal announced on Thursday, the Islamists would make Israel’s cessation of hostages a prerequisite for a second phase of hostage releases. In doing so, Hamas came closer to the content of a multi-stage plan that the mediators USA, Egypt and Qatar presented several weeks ago and which Israel accepted.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Hamas’ proposal as “unrealistic.” At the same time, it was said that an Israeli delegation would travel to Qatar following a security cabinet debate on Israel’s position. This would be the first time in two weeks that Israeli negotiators would take part in the indirect talks in the capital Doha.
US government wants plans to protect civilians in Rafah
The US government called on Israel to submit plans for a “credible” and “feasible” evacuation from the city of Rafah, located in the southern Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, if an Israeli military offensive takes place there. US Security Council spokesman Kirby said they had not seen such plans before and would welcome the opportunity to see them. “We cannot and will not support any plan that does not adequately take into account these million and a half refugees in Gaza,” he stressed. There must be a plan for these people – anything else would be a “catastrophe,” he warned. There must be a place for the people of the Gaza Strip where they are safe from the fighting.
According to his office, Netanyahu had previously approved plans for a military operation in Rafah. In addition to operational operations, the army is preparing to evacuate the civilian population, the statement said.
Outlook for Saturday
Chancellor Scholz (SPD) is setting off on a two-day trip to the Middle East this Saturday. As government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit announced in Berlin, Scholz will first visit Jordan and then travel to Israel. This is the Chancellor’s second trip to the region since the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th. Berlin, like Washington, is critical of the Israeli government’s Rafah plans. On his trip, Scholz will meet, among others, Netanyahu and the Jordanian King Abdullah II. According to the government spokesman, the topics of discussion are the situation in the crisis area and the airlift for the suffering population.
Tweet from World Central Kitchen Tweet from WCK boss Andrés