Gaza staring at humanitarian crisis
Red Cross issues warning as many of the territory’s 1.5 million people run short of food, water and power
Israeli mobile artillery firing towards targets in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday as the death toll on both sides rose.
GAZA: The Red Cross yesterday warned of a ‘full-blown’ humanitarian crisis as Israel entered a southern Gaza town and said there could be no ceasefire unless Hamas was prevented from re-arming.
‘That is the make-or-break issue,’ Mr Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said about ensuring an end to weapons smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt frontier.
On its part, Hamas has demanded a lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza as a condition for any ceasefire.
But there was a glimmer of hope that the 11-day-old conflict in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed could be brought to an end, as a senior Israeli official said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in partnership with Egypt, was pursuing ‘a serious initiative’ for a ceasefire.
‘We are now working on something concrete,’ the official said, disclosing talks on the size of an ‘international presence’ along the blockaded Gaza-Egypt border, where Israel wants to stop rockets and other weapons from reaching Hamas through tunnels.
Mr Sarkozy said he also asked Syria yesterday to help convince Hamas to cooperate in international efforts to end the Israeli assault in the Gaza Strip.
‘I know the importance of Syria in this region and its influence on a number of players. I don’t have any doubt that President Bashar Al-Assad will throw all his weight to convince everyone to return to reason,’ Mr Sarkozy said, after meeting the Syrian leader in Damascus.
Even as ceasefire efforts gathered speed, however, an Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians in a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip, where people had sought refuge from the fighting, medical officials said. Two people had been killed in a strike on another school earlier in the day, while a third school was hit later, with at least 20 deaths reported.
And Mr Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a full-blown and major crisis in humanitarian terms.
‘The situation for the people in Gaza is extreme and traumatic as a result of days of uninterrupted fighting.’
At the same time, Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces have pushed into Khan Younis in southern Gaza as the army widened the ground assault it launched four days ago against Hamas militants after a week of air strikes failed to stamp out cross-border rocket fire.
There was also intense fighting overnight on the outskirts of Gaza City, where residents huddled indoors in fear. Deaths recorded by Palestinian medics were yesterday hovering at around 580.
Most of the several dozen deaths reported by hospitals in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in recent days have been civilians.
The Israeli military said it has killed 130 militants since last Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll since Dec 27 might be close to 700 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, many of the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million people are suffering from lack of food, water or power.
In southern Israel, schools remain closed and hundreds of thousands of people have been rushing to shelter at the sound of alarms heralding incoming rockets.
Ten Israelis, including three civilians hit in Palestinian rocket attacks, have been killed in the conflict.
At least five rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in Israel yesterday, including one that hit the town of Gadera, 28km from Tel Aviv, police said. A three-year-old girl was wounded.
Mr Regev said Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from rival group Fatah in 2007, had used the previous six-month ceasefire brokered by Cairo to double the range of its rockets from 20km to 40km.
Israel launched the current offensive after Hamas called off the six-month truce last month and stepped up cross-border rocket attacks in response to Israeli raids and a blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel, whose leaders will fight a parliamentary poll on Feb 10, has made clear that its priority is securing the safety of its citizens, but heavy casualties could erode strong public support for the operation.
Israel pulled its troops and more than 8,000 settlers out of Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation in a move that many at the time hoped would lead to a breakthrough for relations between the Jewish state and the Palestinians.
EXTREME SITUATION
‘There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a full-blown and major crisis in humanitarian terms. The situation for the people in Gaza is extreme and traumatic as a result of 10 days of uninterrupted fighting.’
Mr Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Source : Straits Times - 07 Jan 2009
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