The need is great and there is no ceasefire in sight. There is now a risk of escalation of violence in the occupied territories during Ramadan. The news at a glance.
The US’s plan to set up a temporary port to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip has met with international approval, but it still needs time to be implemented. U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Pat Ryder said it expected it would take about 60 days for the temporary port to be fully operational. Ryder emphasized that in the meantime, the United States is seeking to significantly expand overland deliveries as the most effective way to get aid to the crisis area. The airdrops of relief supplies also continued.
After more than five months of war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the US government announced on Thursday that it would set up a temporary port to bring food, water and medicine to the war zone in view of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza . The humanitarian situation of the people in Gaza has been deteriorating dramatically for weeks. UN officials recently warned of thousands of civilians starving to death in the Gaza Strip.
Independently of the preparation of a temporary port facility on the coast of the Gaza Strip, the international community is working on establishing a maritime corridor through which aid supplies from Cyprus will reach ports near Gaza in Egypt or Israel. “We are now close to opening the corridor – hopefully this Saturday, this Sunday,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday at a meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulidis.
Germany is participating in the maritime corridor. “More help must reach Gaza,” wrote Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) on the X platform (formerly Twitter). That is why Germany supports a maritime humanitarian corridor from Cyprus to Gaza. “This support is urgently needed,” he emphasized.
Deadly aid packages from heaven
Meanwhile, the problem of dropping relief supplies from the air became apparent. A load falling from the sky killed five people yesterday because the parachute did not open properly. The Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas, confirmed this at the request of a dpa employee on site. Videos on social media showed how the large aid package fell to the ground practically unchecked. Several people were also injured. Aid organizations are calling for more effective supplies by land and point out that Israel would prevent trucks from entering the Gaza Strip. Israel denies this and accuses the aid organizations of being inefficient in distributing goods.
Habeck admonishes Israel
The background to the distress in the Gaza Strip is massive bombings and a ground offensive by Israel in the coastal area. The military is reacting to the worst massacre in Israel’s history, in which terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups murdered around 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 in Israel on October 7th. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military offensive so far, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority. The information makes no distinction between civilians and armed fighters. However, a large majority of the victims are women, minors and old men.
Israel must change its approach in the Gaza Strip, said Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) on Friday in New York after a conversation with UN Secretary General António Guterres. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have to fight Hamas. But the number of civilian casualties is too high and the strategy needs to change.” The other Berlin cabinet members would also see the situation that way, he added.
Humanitarian organizations are calling for an immediate ceasefire to provide relief to the bombed-out and suffering civilian population. Indirect talks about a ceasefire and the release of the Israeli hostages from Hamas were interrupted on Thursday without any result. They should continue at the beginning of the week. The United States, which is mediating in the negotiations along with Egypt and Qatar, blames Hamas’s intransigent stance for the lack of an agreement.
Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida reiterated the Islamists’ position. “Our highest priority in achieving a prisoner exchange is a binding commitment that the aggression against our people will end and the enemy will withdraw,” he said in a video message carried by the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing published on their Telegram channel. The mediator’s proposal accepted by Israel, however, calls for a six-week ceasefire and the start of the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. Only during this ceasefire should negotiations begin on steps that will lead to a permanent cessation of fighting. Israel has so far shown no willingness to move away from this step-by-step plan.
Before Ramadan, Hamas spokesman pours fuel on the fire
The fasting month of Ramadan, a particularly holy period for Muslims all over the world, is expected to begin on Sunday. Islamist and militant movements such as Hamas attribute special significance to Ramadan in jihad, the so-called holy war. Against the backdrop of the Gaza war, this raises fears of an increase in violent conflicts in Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida alluded to this in his video message when he called on the Palestinian population to march to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount during the month of fasting. “May the blessed month of Ramadan (…) become the maximum tidal wave on the streets and fronts inside and outside Palestine,” he said. Hamas calls the attack on Israel on October 7th the “Al-Aqsa tidal wave.”
Palestinian militants gave a foretaste of this when they attacked an illegal settler outpost near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday. They fired around 30 shots at an Israeli army post guarding the settlement of Homesh, the Kan broadcaster reported. As the soldiers pursued the attackers, the militants detonated an explosive device. Three soldiers suffered moderate injuries and four others suffered minor injuries, the army said. Homesch is considered illegal even under Israeli law, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is making intensive efforts to legalize this and other outposts at the instigation of its right-wing extremist coalition partners.