A US Army ship carrying equipment to build a temporary dock in Gaza was on its way to the Mediterranean on Sunday, three days after US President Joe Biden announced plans to increase aid deliveries by sea to the blockaded enclave to which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are heading. . starving.
The new aid infusion came in the final hours before the holy month of Ramadan, which could begin as early as Sunday evening, depending on the sighting of the crescent moon. Hopes for reaching a new ceasefire by the month of Ramadan faded a few days ago, with negotiations seemingly faltering.
The opening of the sea lane, along with airdrops by the United States, Jordan and other countries, demonstrated growing concern about the deadly humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a new willingness to bypass Israeli control over land shipments. Israel said it welcomed sea shipments and would inspect shipments destined for Gaza before they left the staging area in neighboring Cyprus.
But aid officials say air and sea deliveries cannot make up for the lack of land supply routes. The daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza by land over the past five months has been far less than the 500 trucks that entered before the war.
A spokeswoman for the partner organization World Central Kitchen, Linda Roth, said that a ship belonging to the Spanish aid organization Open Arms, carrying 200 tons of food aid, is expected to make a test voyage to test the corridor “as soon as possible.” The ship remained in the Cypriot port of Larnaca in what Roth described as a “fast-evolving and fluid situation.”
Biden has intensified his public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he believes Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping it” in his approach to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, now in its sixth month.
Speaking on MSNBC on Saturday, the US president expressed support for Israel's right to go after Hamas after the October 7 militant attack on southern Israel, but said Netanyahu “should pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost.” He added, “Another 30,000 Palestinians cannot die.”
The Gaza Ministry of Health said that at least 31,045 Palestinians have been martyred since the start of the war. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its statistics, but it says that women and children constitute two-thirds of the dead. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and its numbers from previous wars largely match those of UN and independent experts.
Human losses among Palestinians continued to rise. The Civil Defense Department said that at least nine Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City on Saturday evening. The footage she shared showed a rescuer placing the body of a dead infant on a sofa amid the rubble.
Elsewhere, the bodies of 15 people, including women and children, were transported to the main hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah on Sunday, according to an Associated Press journalist. Their relatives said that they were killed by Israeli artillery fire towards a camp for displaced Palestinians in the coastal area near the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Israel rarely comments on specific incidents during the war. It confirms that Hamas is responsible for civilian casualties because the armed group operates from within civilian areas.
Meanwhile, American efforts began to establish a temporary dock in Gaza to deliver sea shipments. US Central Command said the US Army's first ship, General Frank S. Beeson, left a base in Virginia on Saturday and was en route to the eastern Mediterranean with construction equipment.
US officials said it will likely take weeks before the pier is ready for operation.
The sea corridor is supported by the European Union, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other countries. The European Commission said that UN agencies and the Red Cross would play a role.
The ship in Cyprus is expected to take two to three days to reach an unknown location. A spokesman for the World Central Kitchen said that construction work began on Sunday on the sidewalk designated for it in an undisclosed location in Gaza.
Once the ship's barge arrives in Gaza, the aid will be unloaded by crane, placed on trucks and transported to northern Gaza, which has been largely cut off from aid shipments and has been the focus of the Israeli military offensive, a member of the charity said on Twitter previously.
Israel declared war on October 7 after Hamas activists killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 250 hostage. The Israeli air and ground attack destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced about 80% of the population of 2.3 million people.
The United States and regional mediators Egypt and Qatar had hoped to reach a six-week ceasefire by Ramadan, but Hamas is demanding guarantees that the temporary truce will lead to an end to hostilities.
The mediators had hoped to alleviate some of the immediate crisis through a temporary ceasefire, which would have resulted in Hamas releasing some Israeli hostages, Israel releasing some Palestinian prisoners, and allowing aid groups access to a large influx of aid into Gaza.
