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“What we are seeing in Gaza is not just the killing of innocent people and the destruction of their lives but a systematic attempt to destroy Gaza from its people,” said the Jordanian foreign minister. Ayman Safadi, on Sunday at the Doha Forum, the whole world. foundation meeting in Qatar.
Safadi, whose government signed a peace treaty with Israel, continued to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza as “in the country (the) legal definition of genocide,” Reuters reported, urging Israel condemns the comments as “outrageous” and “wrong.” .”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his call for Israel to do more to protect civilians in Gaza as they pursue their war against Hamas.
“We think there should be an investment on protecting the public and ensuring that humanitarian aid can reach everyone who needs it,” said Blinken during the presentation at the CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I think there is hope, but the results don’t always show,” he said.
But Blinken’s proposals do little to stop the suffering of civilians in Gaza, Palestinians say, and at the same time, the United States has increased its military and government support for Israel.
In recent days, the Biden administration approved a UN resolution that requires the release of humanitarian aid and approves the sale of tanks and related equipment to Israel, and requests an emergency to passed Congress.
The move came as the death toll in Gaza reached nearly 18,000, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which said on Sunday that 297 people had died. in the last 24 hours.
In a statement, the spokesman of the Ministry of Health of Gaza Ashraf al-Qudra described the situation in hospitals in the south as “disturbing and unbearable,” saying “it is impossible to The medical team managed to deal with the large number of casualties.”
Nearly 50,000 people have been injured in Gaza since the war began on October 7, Qudra said, when Hamas launched a brutal attack inside Israel, killing at least 1,200.
At the World Health Organization on Sunday, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the health of Gaza was “on its knees,” and called for a cease-fire “the only way to truly protect and improve the health of the people of Gaza.”
Other WHO officials, in a special session to resolve the crisis in Gaza, outlined the alarming signs of a system close to collapse: new cases of meningitis; the rapid spread of respiratory diseases; diarrhea; and patients who have died due to severe lack of medicine.
Supporting the health of Gaza is “almost impossible in these circumstances,” Tedros said.
Finally, the executive board of the WHO adopted a resolution that requires “quick, permanent and uninterrupted access to humanitarian aid, including the availability of medical personnel.”
As committee members deliberated in Geneva, the United States said it could not “accept” the draft resolution, citing said he was “disappointed” that the article did not mention the Hamas attack against Israel. There was no opposition to the motion.
The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using medical facilities as “base-and-command centers,” putting hospitals at the center of its campaign in northern Gaza. Several health facilities in the north have been attacked and forcibly evacuated, including Gaza’s main Al-Shifa Hospital, but so far there is little evidence to support his main claim that the use by Hamas of sites to direct actions against Israel.
“All the hospitals in the north are not working,” said Qudra, who was reached by phone on Sunday.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday that its forces were “fighting hard” in several areas, including Khan Younis in the south and Shejaiya and Jabalya in the north.
“These are the centers of gravity of Hamas,” IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a briefing on Sunday.
He was referring to the flow of images that have emerged in recent days from northern Gaza showing dozens of prisoners stripped down to their pants, some of them blindfolded and their hands are tied. Some friends and family members of the men in the photos said they have no ties to Hamas or any armed group.
“Not all of them are members of Hamas or terrorist organizations,” Hagari said of the detainees. But, he said, the IDF required them to open it to prove they were not wearing explosive belts. “This is something we’ve been doing for years in the war.”
He added that the photos and videos have not been officially released by the IDF. But the photos, many of which were published and reported by the Israeli media, raised concerns within Israel.
The head of Israel’s National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, suggested on Sunday that there would be no more pictures of Gazans greeting IDF soldiers in their underwear.
“There is no point,” Hanegbi said in an interview with Israel’s Kan radio. “I don’t think you will see pictures like this in the future.”
Mahmoud Almadhoun was detained by the IDF in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza on December 7 and said he was made to sit for hours on the ground in his pants before Israeli soldiers tied his hands and loading him and many others into trucks.
“None of the people they arrested were Hamas or any kind of fighters,” he said in an interview after his release.
“When we ask for water they curse us,” he said. “When we ask for food they curse us. They kept kicking us. We had no water. They kick the sand in our eyes.”
More than 90 percent of the population, or 1.9 million people, have been displaced in Gaza, according to the United Nations. The number of families fleeing to Rafah, in the south, has overwhelmed local aid and development agencies. People are sleeping on the streets or in makeshift camps, without food, water or sanitation, aid groups say.
The Palestinians feel “absolutely abandoned” by the international community, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said on Sunday at the Doha Forum.
Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy on Sunday blamed the lack of aid on Hamas, which he said was stealing supplies from civilians, and on international agencies, which he said were the inability to quickly distribute aid as Israel inspects for access to Gaza.
“Israel has the power to inspect more trucks of food, water, medicine and buildings than are currently entering Gaza,” Levy said in an interview.
“This crisis is not related to the number of trucks going to Gaza. Israel has the responsibility of the executive to ensure that there are adequate sanitation and public health conditions as well as the provision of food and medical care available to the occupied population,” it said. Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories, said Sunday. “Israel must allow the humanitarian community to deliver aid safely and securely to and throughout Gaza.”
Meanwhile, the Gaza Ministry of Health and other medical workers said they are recording new cases of hepatitis, scabies, measles and upper respiratory tract infections, mostly among children.
Infectious diseases are spreading rapidly, said Imad al-Hams, a doctor at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, as people flock to small plots of land to escape the onslaught of Israeli forces.
George reported from Doha, Harb from London and Balousha from Amman, Jordan.