OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel warned on Saturday the main gateway into Gaza from Egypt would remain shut while Hamas recovered the bodies of former hostages, just as the UN relief chief said the devastated territory needed massive humanitarian support.
The Palestinian mission in Cairo had announced that the Rafah crossing could open as early as Monday, though only for Gazans living in Egypt who wished to return to the territory. Shortly after, however, Netanyahu’s office said he had “directed that the Rafah crossing remain closed until further notice”. “Its reopening will be considered based on how Hamas fulfils its part in returning the hostages and the bodies of the deceased, and in implementing the agreed-upon framework,” it said, referring to the week-old ceasefire deal.
Further delays to the reopening of Rafah could complicate the task facing Tom Fletcher, the UN head of humanitarian relief, who was in Gaza on Saturday. The British diplomat and his team travelled in a convoy of SUVs to see a wastewater treatment plant in Sheikh Radwan, north of Gaza City. “I drove through here seven to eight months ago when most of these buildings were still standing and, to see the devastation — this is a vast part of the city, just a wasteland — and it’s absolutely devastating to see,” he told AFP. The densely populated cities of the Gaza Strip, home to more than two million Palestinians, have largely been reduced to ruins by two years of bombardment and intense fighting between Hamas and the Israeli military.
The Rafah crossing has yet to reopen but, just over a week since the brokering of the truce, hundreds of trucks are rolling in each day via Israeli checkpoints and aid is being distributed.
Surveying the damaged pumping equipment and a lake of sewage at the Sheikh Radwan wastewater plant, Fletcher said the task ahead for the UN and aid agencies was a “massive, massive job”. He said he had met residents returning to destroyed homes who were trying to dig latrines in the ruins.
“They’re telling me most of all they want dignity,” he said. “We’ve got to get the power back on so we can start to get the sanitation system back in place.
“We have a massive 60-day plan now to surge in food, get a million meals out there a day, start to rebuild the health sector, bring in tents for the winter, get hundreds of thousands of kids back into school.”
According to figures supplied to mediators by the Israeli military’s civil affairs agency and released by the UN humanitarian office, on Thursday some 950 trucks carrying aid and commercial supplies crossed into Gaza from Israel. Relief agencies have called for the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to be reopened to speed the flow of food, fuel and medicines, and Turkey has a team of rescue specialists waiting at the border to help find hostage bodies in the rubble. Some violent has persisted despite the ceasefire. Gaza’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said on Saturday that it had recovered the bodies of nine Palestinians — two men, three women and four children — from the Shaaban family after Israeli troops fired two tank shells at a bus.
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