During a visit to the Middle East this week to advance a Gaza ceasefire plan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the “best way” to help resolve Hezbollah-Israel violence is to “resolve the conflict in Gaza and achieve a ceasefire.”
This has not happened.
Hamas insists on a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire — demands that Israel has repeatedly rejected.
Blinken has said Israel supports the latest plan, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose far-right coalition partners are staunchly against a ceasefire, has not publicly endorsed it.
More than 100 hostages were released during the only week-long ceasefire in the Gaza war in November, including Israeli ones, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Karl Schau, the executive deputy director of the World Food Programme, said that “the chaos in the region… and active conflict” has “made it nearly impossible to provide the level of aid to meet the growing demands on the ground.”
“Above all, people want this war to end,” he said after a two-day visit to Gaza.
The US military said a ferry built to deliver aid to Gaza would be temporarily relocated to an Israeli port to protect it from potential high seas.
The platform was reinstalled off the coast of Gaza just a week ago after suffering storm damage.
Leaders of the G-7 group of advanced economies called for “rapid and uninterrupted supplies of humanitarian relief to civilians in need” at a summit in Italy on Friday.