Aid supplies are seen on Oct. 16, in North Sinai, Egypt. The aid convoy, organized by a group of Egyptian NGOs, set off today from Cairo for the Gaza-Egypt border crossing at Rafah.Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images
With Gaza increasingly desperate for water and medicine, dozens of aid trucks are stuck on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border, unable to enter the Palestinian territory because of Israeli restrictions and continued missile strikes near the border.
Relief agencies have been sending emergency supplies to an Egyptian airport near the Gaza Strip for several days, but the border has remained closed, even as Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been searching frantically for drinking water.
Gazans have practically run out of water, the United Nations children’s agency Unicef said in a social-media post on Monday, warning that the use of dirty water from wells was raising the risks of waterborne diseases.
Israel has fired thousands of missiles at Gaza and kept the territory under a strict blockade since Oct. 7, when hundreds of people in southern Israel were killed or abducted by militants from Hamas, the radical group that controls Gaza. By official count on each side, more than 1,400 people were killed by Hamas in southern Israel and more than 2,778 have been killed in Gaza in the past 10 days.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is among those calling for a humanitarian corridor to be established to bring aid into Gaza, including food, fuel and water. “It is imperative that this happen,” Mr. Trudeau told the House of Commons on Monday.
Mr. Trudeau spoke to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Monday and they agreed on the need for a humanitarian corridor to Gaza. “The two leaders expressed concerns about the complete blockade of Gaza and the worsening conditions for civilians,” Mr. Trudeau’s office said in a readout of the call later.
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U.S. President Joe Biden, who expressed support on Sunday for a humanitarian corridor during an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, will travel to Israel on Wednesday in a bid to reaffirm his backing of the country’s war against Hamas, while also trying to prevent the conflict from spreading and pressing his ally to protect civilians in Gaza during the expected ground invasion.
After his Israel visit, Mr. Biden will go to Amman, the Jordanian capital, to meet with King Abdullah II, Mr. el-Sisi and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, the White House said. His discussions with the Arab leaders will focus on humanitarian aid in Gaza.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the visit shortly after 3 a.m. local time after meeting with Israel’s war cabinet. He said Israel and the U.S. are working on a plan for humanitarian aid to get into Gaza, with safe zones for civilians.
Britain has also made a similar appeal. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told reporters Sunday that Britain was working with Israel, Egypt and “other leading political voices in the region” to open the Rafah crossing.
Rafah border has become vital to Gaza trade
In August 2023, 37.1% of commodity imports to Gaza, including 17% of food shipments to the strip, passed through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which has since been closed due to the Israel conflict.
40% of imports passing through Rafah crossing
37.1%
All commodities
30
20
Food
10
17%
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Note: Latest data as of August 2023.
Source: Reuters; UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Rafah border has become vital to Gaza trade
In August 2023, 37.1% of commodity imports to Gaza, including 17% of food shipments to the strip, passed through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which has since been closed due to the Israel conflict.
40% of imports passing through Rafah crossing
37.1%
All commodities
30
20
Food
10
17%
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Note: Latest data as of August 2023.
Source: Reuters; UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Rafah border has become vital to Gaza trade
In August 2023, 37.1% of commodity imports to Gaza, including 17% of food shipments to the strip, passed through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which has since been closed due to the Israel conflict.
40% of imports passing through Rafah crossing
37.1%
All commodities
30
20
Food
10
17%
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Note: Latest data as of August 2023.
Source: Reuters; UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Over the weekend, media reports had suggested that Israel would agree to a ceasefire to allow aid supplies to reach Gaza and to allow foreign citizens to leave across the border. But that possibility was swiftly quashed on Monday morning. “There is no ceasefire,” a terse statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared.
Egyptian officials told journalists that they have been trying to negotiate an agreement with Israel to open the border for aid shipments, but the negotiations have failed so far.
Egyptian state media and Gaza media on Monday showed images of an explosion at a site near the Rafah crossing, the main gate between Egypt and Gaza, which further damaged the chances of opening the crossing. They said the explosion was an Israeli missile strike. Several other Israeli air strikes around the Rafah crossing have been reported in the past 10 days.
The World Health Organization, which has sent air shipments of medical supplies to the Egyptian side of the border in an attempt to get aid into Gaza, said on Monday that the growing shortage of water is putting the lives of 3,500 hospital patients “at immediate risk.”
Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) said on Monday that Gaza’s hospitals are overwhelmed by injured patients who often cannot get treatment with proper medicine.
“There are no more painkillers now,” Claire Magone, general director of the French branch of MSF, said in an online video. “Our staff tells us about the wounded screaming in pain.”
The water shortage is growing worse by the hour and has now reached “a critical threshold,” she said.
A Palestinian carries a water canister by the buildings destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, on Oct. 16.Hatem Moussa/The Associated Press
After an Israeli order to evacuate the northern half of Gaza, thousands of people have gathered in makeshift shelters in the south, but those shelters are overcrowded and are vulnerable to bombing attacks that are still hitting the south as well as the north of the territory, Ms. Magone said.
Israel’s military, meanwhile, continued to mass its forces for an expected land invasion of Gaza, although it gave no indication of when this might happen. “Determination is required because victory will take time,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech to the opening of Israel’s parliament.
“There will be difficult moments,” he said. “There will be pitfalls. Sacrifice will be necessary. But we will win because this is our very existence in this region, in which there are many dark forces.”
Mr. Netanyahu has faced sharp criticism for the security and intelligence failures that allowed Hamas to send hundreds of gunmen into southern Israel on Oct. 7. In his speech on Monday, he promised a thorough investigation of everything that led to the breaches.
“There are many questions about the disaster that befell us 10 days ago,” he said. “We have already begun to apply immediate lessons.”
Shortly after his speech, sirens blared and the parliamentary floor was evacuated because of rockets fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by militants in Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Blinken took shelter for five minutes in a bunker in Tel Aviv when sirens went off during their meeting on Monday, according to U.S. officials.
In Sderot, an Israeli city just one kilometre from the edge of the Gaza Strip, the sounds of the two sides trading blows were audible throughout Monday, as Israeli warplanes roared overhead, often followed by booms somewhere in the distance.
Hamas retaliated with a barrage of rockets that sent the few remaining residents of Sderot running for shelters in the middle of the afternoon. Most of the city’s prewar population of 30,000 has followed the official advice to evacuate, though a few hundred people remain.
Volunteers load food and supplies onto trucks in an aid convoy for Gaza on Oct. 16, in North Sinai, Egypt.Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images
“It’s like this every day, all the time,” said corner-store owner Mark Iziyayev, as he handed out free coffee and snacks to a group of Israeli soldiers stationed in the city.
None of them flinched as an explosion sounded. “Maybe that’s the Iron Dome, or maybe it’s a Qassam,” he shrugged, referring to Israel’s vaunted air defence system, and the rudimentary rockets that Hamas has been firing at Israel for years before the current conflict erupted.
As the Israeli blockade and missile strikes continue in Gaza, some Palestinians suspect that Israel wants to put pressure on Gaza’s population to abandon their homes and move into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Egypt, however, would reportedly resist this scenario, and Hamas is equally opposed.
“Hamas asserts that displacement to Egypt or other countries of the world is not in the dictionary of the Palestinian people, and that our people would rather die on their land,” the organization said in a statement on Monday.
In northern Israel, shelling intensified across the Lebanese border as clashes worsened between Israeli forces and Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants, who are backed by Iran’s government. For the safety of local residents, Israel ordered the evacuation of 28 villages within two kilometres of the border, another sign that the fighting could increase.
With reports from Kristy Kirkup and Ian Bailey in Ottawa and Adrian Morrow in Washington