West Bank

The ship of the Spanish NGO Open Arms He might not set sail this Sunday from the port of Larnaca, in Cyprus, to take to Gaza the 200 tons of food that the NGO World Central Kitchen, run by Spanish chef José Andrés, has been able to gather. The shipment, with the aim of alleviating famine in the Strip following five months of war between Israel and Hamas, might leave this Monday, if weather conditions improve, as reported by one of the entities organizing this shipment of humanitarian aid. With the Open Arms A maritime corridor is opened to deliver food coordinated by the EU, the US and the United Kingdom. In addition, the United States has confirmed the departure from the east coast of the country to Gaza of a first ship with equipment to build a temporary port from which to manage the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Strip. The White House estimates it will take regarding two months to build. On the other hand, there have already been 25 deaths in Gaza due to malnutrition and dehydration in the last 10 days, most of them babies, according to medical sources and the enclave authorities.

The United States will set up a temporary port in Gaza for the entry of humanitarian aid, as announced by President Joe Biden in the State of the Union address before both houses of Congress. Israel “fully supports” the plan and will coordinate with Washington to put it into practice, a senior Israeli official said Thursday. The spokesman for the Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres, Stéphane Dujarric, has welcomed the plan, but has recalled that the needs remain enormous and that the international community should focus on strengthening access to aid by land, more effective both by cost as well as volume.

The arrival of more aid to the Strip is urgent. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, has claimed that Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system as part of a broader “famine campaign” in its war once morest Hamas. “Israel is not only denying and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, it is also destroying the food system,” Fakhri told the UN Human Rights Council. “Israel has mounted a famine campaign once morest the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he added.

Spain will contribute another 20 million euros to the budget of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, announced this Thursday. In a press conference following his interview in Madrid with the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, Albares indicated that this contribution will come from the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID) and that it will serve to “support the organization in its crucial role in Gaza, and to support the six million Palestinians in the region.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that Israeli forces “will continue to operate once morest Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, the militia’s last stronghold.” “Whoever tells us not to act in Rafah is telling us to lose the war and that will not happen.”

The leader of the Houthi movement, Abdelmalek al Huti, has assured that the United States and United Kingdom offensive once morest Yemen “has failed” in its objective of stopping the insurgents’ attacks once morest ships sailing in the Red Sea and linked to Israel.

The foreign ministers of the 57 Muslim-majority countries that make up the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met this Tuesday in the Saudi city of Jeddah to discuss the war in Gaza. There they have issued a warning to the countries that maintain “complicity with the genocide” in the Strip, warning that their action will have serious diplomatic consequences. “These governments need a strong, unambiguous message from all member countries.” [de la OCI] that complicity in the genocide and its double standards will have serious diplomatic, political and economic consequences,” said the Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Riad Al Maliki.

The organization has also asked to increase funding for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), so that they can distribute food and humanitarian aid in Gaza desperate for famine. Malnutrition – which causes irreparable wasting (morbid thinning) in young children – has never been the deadly threat it is now in the enclave, the WHO has reported.

“Before the hostilities, wasting in the Gaza Strip was rare: only 0.8% of children under five years of age suffered from acute malnutrition. The current 15.6% wasting rate among children under two years of age in northern Gaza suggests a serious and rapid decline. “Such a decline in the nutritional status of a population in three months is unprecedented worldwide,” warned Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied territories.

On the other hand, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has called on the international community to “strongly condemn and punish” Hamas’ crimes of sexual violence following the UN endorsed yesterday in a report that there is “compelling information” to believe that The Islamist group sexually abused the hostages. The Islamist militia has denied the accusations: “It does not provide any testimony, it is based on Israeli institutions, soldiers and witnesses chosen by the occupation authorities to prove this false accusation.”

In addition, the director of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has confirmed that his agency has recorded “hundreds” of cases of abuse reported by Palestinians who were detained in Israeli centers. : “The majority of them arrived completely traumatized by the torture.” Lazzarini has cited cases of prisoners photographed naked, victims of verbal or psychological abuse, threats of electrocution, sleep deprivation, use of dogs in an intimidating manner or being forced to wear diapers to adults for several days.

Finally, Lebanese Prime Minister Nayib Mikati has announced that negotiations to end hostilities along the Lebanese-Israeli border will begin during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week. The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged fire along their border for almost five months in parallel with the Gaza war.