Aid from New Pier off Gaza to Be Distributed This Weekend as Pressure Grows on Netanyahu

This handout picture courtesy of the US Central Command (CENTOCOM) taken on May 16, 2024 shows US Army Soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), US Navy Sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel army emplace the Trident Pier on the Gaza coast. (Photo by US Central Command (CENTCOM) / AFP)
This handout picture courtesy of the US Central Command (CENTOCOM) taken on May 16, 2024 shows US Army Soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), US Navy Sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel army emplace the Trident Pier on the Gaza coast. (Photo by US Central Command (CENTCOM) / AFP)
TT

Aid from New Pier off Gaza to Be Distributed This Weekend as Pressure Grows on Netanyahu

This handout picture courtesy of the US Central Command (CENTOCOM) taken on May 16, 2024 shows US Army Soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), US Navy Sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel army emplace the Trident Pier on the Gaza coast. (Photo by US Central Command (CENTCOM) / AFP)
This handout picture courtesy of the US Central Command (CENTOCOM) taken on May 16, 2024 shows US Army Soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), US Navy Sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel army emplace the Trident Pier on the Gaza coast. (Photo by US Central Command (CENTCOM) / AFP)

The first distribution of badly needed aid is expected to begin this weekend after rolling off a newly built US pier off the coast of Gaza, even as aid workers warn much more access is needed to the besieged territory where famine might be under way.

Israeli restrictions and heavy fighting in the war against the Hamas militant group — now in its eighth month — have left residents in parts of Gaza scrounging for weeds and animal feed, skipping meals and living on pale diets of bread. Deliveries to the territory that long has largely relied on humanitarian aid are still far from the average of about 500 trucks that entered daily before the war.

United Nations officials have not said where the truckloads of food would be distributed after arriving Friday and being stored in central Deir al-Balah.

US military officials anticipate the pier operation could reach 150 truckloads a day. Risks include attacks, logistical hurdles and a growing shortage of fuel.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza began after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Israel says around 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of around 30 more.

The Israeli offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, local health officials say, while hundreds more have been killed in the occupied West Bank.

On Saturday, at least five police officers were killed in an Israeli strike on a car in the Nuseirat refugee camp, medical officials said. They were taken to a hospital in Deir al-Balah and counted by Associated Press journalists. The police are a civilian force distinct from Hamas’ military wing.

Overnight, at least three people were killed in a strike that hit a house in the Barbara refugee camp in the southernmost city of Rafah, according to the Kuwaiti Hospital. The hospital said in the last 24 hours it had received the bodies of six people killed in Israeli strikes. The military said it remained active in eastern Rafah.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said one person was killed when an Israeli strike hit the city of Jenin on Friday night. The Israeli army said it struck a militant command center and killed Islam Khamaysa. He was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander in Jenin, according to the militant group and the army.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under growing pressure on multiple fronts. Hard-liners in his government want the military offensive on Rafah to press ahead with the goal of crushing Hamas.  

Top ally the US and others have warned against the offensive on a city where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million had sheltered — hundreds of thousands have now fled — and they have threatened to scale back support over Gaza's humanitarian crisis.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will be in Israel this weekend to discuss the war and is scheduled to meet with Netanyahu, who has declared that Israel would “stand alone” if needed.

Many Israelis, anguished over the hostages and accusing Netanyahu of putting political interests ahead of all else, want a deal to stop the fighting and get them freed. There was fresh frustration Friday when the military said its troops in Gaza found the bodies of three hostages killed by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack.

The latest talks in pursuit of a ceasefire, mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, have brought little. A vision beyond the war is also uncertain.  

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a member of the three-member War Cabinet, in the past week openly said he has repeatedly pleaded with the Cabinet to decide on a postwar vision for Gaza that would see the creation of a new Palestinian civilian leadership.

Meanwhile, fighting recently erupted again in places Israel had targeted in the early days of the war and said it had under control, notably in northern Gaza.



Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
TT

Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation Saturday of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it is planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis, including parts of Muwasi, a makeshift tent camp where thousands are seeking refuge.

The order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It's the second evacuation issued in a week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign.

On Monday, after the evacuation order, multiple Israeli airstrikes hit around Khan Younis, killing at least 70 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, citing figures from Nasser Hospital.

The area is part of a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) “humanitarian zone” to which Israel has been telling Palestinians to flee to throughout the war. Much of the area is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. About 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there, according to Israel's estimates. That's more than half Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.