Blinken urges protection of civilians – DW – 01/09/2024

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson Sarah Davies has told DW that ensuring aid arrives in Gaza is not the only problem facing humanitarian teams. 

Conflict and the devastation left behind in the territory also pose major challenges, Davies said.

“It’s very important that we remember that, regardless of how much aid enters Gaza, it also needs to be effectively and safely distributed.”

“Right now, that’s not able to happen, with things like ongoing armed hostilities, the sheer number of people who are displaced, people living on the road, the rubble, the debris, the telecommunications challenges,” said Davies.

“People are not receiving the aid or the supplies that they really so desperately need.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his military must avoid further harm on civilians in Gaza, the State Department said.

“The secretary reaffirmed our support for Israel’s right to prevent the terrorist attacks of October 7 from being repeated and stressed the importance of avoiding further civilian harm and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Blinken reiterated this and also expressed the importance of distributing humanitarian aid throughout Gaza.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says numerous patients are having amputations in the Gaza Strip even though it would normally be possible to save their limbs. 

WHO representative for the Palestinian Territories, Rik Peeperkorn, and the WHO emergency medical team coordinator, Sean Casey, said there were various reasons for this.

The pair spoke to the press in Geneva via video links from Jerusalem and Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.

They said the injured could not reach hospital in the first place because of the ongoing fighting, and that there was a lack of specialists such as vascular surgeons. 

Meanwhile, with hospitals so overcrowded, operating theaters were only being used for the most life-saving operations. 

“I have never seen so many amputees in my life, also children,” said Peeperkorn.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has led the handover of almost 10 metric tons of relief supplies for the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip to the Egyptian Red Crescent. 

Baerbock landed from Cairo in an A400M air force transporter carrying the supplies in al-Arish, the capital of the Egyptian governorate of North Sinai.

The plan was then to travel on to the border town of Rafah, 50 kilometers (about 32 miles) to the west. Most aid supplies to the Gaza Strip arrive via the Rafah crossing.

The German relief supplies, transported on almost 40 pallets, came from the German Foreign Office and were loaded and flown by the Bundeswehr from the German state of Lower Saxony.

Items included sleeping mats, blankets, children’s sleeping bags and camp beds for displaced people in temporary accommodation. 

The goods were unloaded by the Red Crescent and transported to the coastal strip by the UN International Organization for Migration, with a Norwegian refugee organization responsible for their distribution.

The Israeli army says nine of its soldiers died in fighting in Gaza on Monday, one of the deadliest days for the military since it launched a ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave on October 27. 

It said 185 soldiers had been killed in all during the offensive, launched in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks of October 7.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas, which governs Gaza, after its deadly attacks that killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. It has warned that its war with Hamas, listed as a terror group in several countries, will last throughout 2024.

Israel’s bombardment and ground operation in Gaza has killed least 23,210 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) say they are concerned about the possible collapse of hospitals in southern Gaza as fighting intensifies around the city of Khan Younis.

There is a fear that many medical staff and patients may simply flee for their lives.

“So what we’re seeing is really worrying around a lot of the hospitals and an intensification of hostilities, very close to the European Gaza hospital,” said Sean Casey, the WHO’s Emergency Medical Teams coordinator in Gaza. 

“We are seeing the health system collapse at a very rapid pace,” Casey told a Geneva press briefing by video link, adding that an estimated 600 patients had fled one facility.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says concrete measures must be put in place to stop the suffering of Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking in Cairo alongside Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Baerbock said it was necessary to ensure the flow of aid into Gaza. Baerbock said she would travel to the Strip’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt later on Tuesday.

“We need to have concrete measures today and now. We need to make sure aid is getting to people in Gaza,” she said.

The German foreign minister also said more access was needed in the northern part of the territory, where Israel said it has now cleared of Hamas infrastructure.

Baerbock, who congratulated Egypt on its role in negotiating hostage releases from Gaza, stressed that Berlin and Cairo agree that Gaza and the West Bank are Palestinian. As such, Baerbock said Palestinians should not be driven away.

Egypt’s Shoukry said the immediate priority was to get a ceasefire, deal with security issues, secure humanitarian aid and prevent displacement.

“All the steps that are being taken [by Israel] are for the purpose of pushing towards displacement,” said Shoukry, who added that 2 million Palestinians could not remained trapped.

The German foreign minister had arrived in Egypt after a visit to Israel. 

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says at least 23,210 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel launched its pursuit of Hamas after the October 7 terror attacks.

A ministry statement said 126 deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours.

A total of 59,167 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip during more than three months of fighting, the ministry said.

The ministry does not provide a breakdown as to how many of its figures are combatants or civilians. However, it is considered by several UN agencies as a largely reliable source on casualties in Gaza.

Hamas is listed as a terrorist group in several countries, including the US, Germany and Israel. 

Along with other Palestinian militants, Hamas fighters crossed the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping about 240. Around half the hostages were released during a six-day truce in November.

The Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah says it launched a drone attack on Tuesday against an Israeli military command hub.

The Iran-backed group said it targeted the “enemy’s northern command center” in the city of Safed with several explosive attack drones.

It said the attack came as part of a response to the killing of senior Hezbollah figure Wissam Tawil on Monday and the deputy chief of Hamas last week.

The Israeli military on Tuesday said one of its northern bases had been attacked but that there had been no damage or casualties as a result.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Israel that he sees opportunities for the country to build closer ties in the region once the Gaza crisis has passed.

Blinken made the remarks in a televised meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, after visits to several Arab capitals.

“I know of your own efforts, over many years, to build much greater connectivity and integration in the Middle East, and I think there are actually real opportunities there.

“But we have to get through this very challenging moment and ensure that October 7 can never happen again and work to build a much different and much better future,” Blinken said, referring to the Hamas massacres that sparked the Gaza war.

Blinken has said he will discuss the “way forward” in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza as he meets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Washington’s top diplomat has visited Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, plus Turkey and Greece, since Saturday.

The Israeli military says its forces have killed around 40 Palestinian fighters and raided a militant compound and tunnel shafts during expanded operations in the southern Gaza Strip’s largest city, Khan Younis.

In a summary of operations since Monday, the military also said it had hit Hamas fighters in central Gaza. 

Southern and central Gaza have now become the focus of the conflict, with Israel declaring on Saturday that Hamas infrastructure in the northern part of the territory had been dismantled.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock touched down in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, late on Monday, the next stop on her fourth Middle East tour since the war erupted.

Baerbock is meeting on Tuesday with Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry in Egypt’s new administrative capital near Cairo. 

Egypt played a central role in mediations that led to a weeklong cease-fire in November, during which Hamas released dozens of Israeli hostages.

Baerbock has already visited Israel and the West Bank. She is due to visit Lebanon on Tuesday evening, following her Cairo stop.

Baerbock’s fellow Green politician, Economics Minister Robert Habeck, is also expected in the region. A spokeswoman in Berlin said he would visit Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the West Bank by January 11.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it killed a rocket expert from the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Syria on Monday. 

“Today [Monday], the IDF eliminated Hassan Akasha in Beit Jinn in Syria,” the Israeli military said on Telegram, adding that Akasha was “a central figure” responsible for rockets fired from Syria into Israel in recent weeks.  

“Since the beginning of the war, Akasha directed Hamas terrorist cells which fired rockets from Syria toward Israeli territory.”

Beit Jinn is a Syrian town southwest of the capital Damascus. It lies close to the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war, then later annexed, in a move that was not recognized internationally.

“We will not allow terrorism from Syrian territory and hold Syria responsible for all activity emanating from its territory,” the Israeli army statement said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting Israeli leaders on Tuesday, as he aims to prevent the conflict in Gaza from spilling over to the rest of the region during his fourth Middle East tour since the war started.

Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv late on Monday, following two days of talks with Arab leaders.

The US top diplomat said he plans to press the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “on the absolute imperative to do more to protect civilians and to do more to make sure that humanitarian assistance is getting into the hands of those who need it.”

He will also urge Israel to allow displaced Palestinian civilians to return to their homes in Gaza, as right-wing members of Israel’s ruling coalition express interest in relocating Gaza residents.

US media outlet Axios reported that Israeli leaders plan to tell Blinken they will not allow Palestinian northern Gaza residents, displaced by the Israeli ground offensive, to return if the militant group Hamas refuses to free more of the Israeli hostages it seized during the October 7 terror attacks.

Hamas is designated as a terrorist group by the US, the European Union and Israel, among others.

rmt/wd (Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)