As desperate Gazans run out of food and water, aid trucks back up at the border
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With truckloads of aid waiting on one side and over two million Palestinians facing shortages of food, water and medicine on the other, all eyes Friday were watching the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza to see if a deal to deliver relief would hold.
After the White House announced the deal earlier this week to allow 20 trucks of aid into Gaza, negotiations over the logistics of the delivery continued into Friday morning — in part to address Israel's concerns about how to keep the aid out of the hands of Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group whose deadly surprise attack on Israel earlier this month sparked the current hostilities.
A United Nations spokesperson told Reuters on Friday that a first aid delivery was due to start "in the next day or so."
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who arrived at the Egyptian side of the border crossing on Friday, called for aid to be allowed into Gaza as soon as possible.
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"Civilians in Gaza lack all necessities of life," Guterres said at a press conference. "I call for a humanitarian cease-fire to deliver aid to Gaza."
Gaza has been under total blockade by Israel since the days after the Oct. 7 attacks, in which 1,400 people were killed, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli officials say the siege is necessary to stamp out Hamas, which governs Gaza — and they will not allow in aid via Israel's border crossings until Hamas releases approximately 200 hostages captured during the attack.
Gazans are facing an increasingly acute humanitarian crisis. The territory's main power plant, desalination plants and wastewater facilities have all been unable to operate for days, the U.N. reports. Near-constant Israeli airstrikes have destroyed thousands of homes and killed more than 4,100 people, Palestinian officials say.
On a brief trip to Israel this week, President Biden had worked to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to allow in aid.
Both countries have expressed concerns: Israel sought assurances that Hamas would not divert aid or use the trucks to smuggle in weapons, asking that U.N. workers to inspect trucks before they entered Gaza. Egypt has said it will refuse the mass displacement of Palestinian refugees across its border.
As of Friday, about 200 trucks are waiting on the Egyptian side of the border, according to the U.N., with yet more aid stockpiled in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, about 30 miles from the Gaza border.
Among those desperately awaiting word of the border's status were the hundreds of U.S. citizens who have been trapped in Gaza since the outbreak of the war.
One of them, Wafaa Abuzayda, who lives in Massachusetts, was visiting family in Gaza when the war began earlier this month.
Like many people in Gaza, Abuzayda, along with her husband and 1-year-old son Yousef, moved south toward Rafah after Israel urged people to evacuate from the northern half of Gaza.
But that hasn't been safe, she said. Israeli airstrikes have continued to hit southern Gaza.
On Thursday night, a building nearby was struck, causing a window to shatter as her son was sleeping nearby, she said. "I pulled him immediately, and I hugged him. He was freaking out. He was looking at me — he doesn't know what is going on," she said. "We are not safe here."
There has been no indication if U.S. citizens would be allowed out if the Rafah crossing opens to allow in aid.
In the occupied West Bank, tensions grew overnight after a confrontation between Israeli forces and Palestinians at a refugee camp in Nur Shams, northeast of Tel Aviv near the territory's border with Israel.
An Israeli airstrike and an exchange of fire between Israeli police and Palestinians followed an Israeli search-and-arrest operation in the camp, the United Nations said. The IDF said "a number of terrorists" were killed in counterterrorism operations; Palestinian health officials reported at least 11 deaths. Israeli media report the death of one Israeli policeman.
In total, at least 80 people in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the war earlier this month, according to Palestinian officials.
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