Israel has begun expelling thousands of Palestinian workers back to Gaza, despite ongoing fighting and airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians in the territory. Following the Hamas attack, Israeli forces set about restoring security along the border, trapping thousands of Palestinian workers inside Israel. On Friday, authorities began pushing them back into Gaza, as told to reporters at the Karem Abu Salem crossing.
Israel stated it would begin sending the workers back to Gaza.
Israel is severing all contact with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza, the Israeli security cabinet said in a statement.
At the same time in Geneva, the UN announced a $1.2 billion emergency aid to help 2.7 million people facing a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell says the following:
They are being sent back, we don’t know exactly to where, and whether they even have a home to go to.
However, before the conflict erupted, some 18,500 Gazans had Israeli work permits, according to figures provided by COGAT, the Israeli defence agency responsible for Palestinian civil affairs.
The Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip reported that the death toll since the beginning of the conflict in the territory has reached 9,227. Among the dead are 3,826 children and 2,405 women, according to the ministry.
Blinken, who has repeatedly spoken out about minimising civilian casualties, reiterated his words, a marked change in tone from the U.S., which has pledged full support and increased military aid to Israel.
We will be talking about concrete steps that can and should be taken to minimize harm to men, women and children in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said the Israeli army was succeeding in its actions inside Gaza. “We are advancing,” he said at a base near Tel Aviv.
An equally interesting metaphor concerned the Chinese side. In November, for example, when China took over the presidency of the UN Security Council, Chinese Permanent Representative Zhang Jun showed his colleagues an ancient toy, comparing its mechanics to world peace:
“It’s called a Luban lock. It was invented more than 2,500 years ago. It’s composed of six pieces of wood. They hold up together tightly in a very simple way. You can break it easily by pulling out one of the six pieces, the problem is how to fix it,” explained Zhang. “Let’s take this [toy] as peace and to cherish what we have before us. So once it’s broken, you cannot fix peace together easily.”
The UN has repeatedly called for a halt to hostilities and a transition to peace talks, but some European countries, as well as Israel and the U.S., have ruled out a complete ceasefire, which they believe would allow Hamas to regroup and resupply.
Time is running out to prevent genocide and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the UN says.
The human catastrophe is intensifying by leaps and bounds. Many of the city’s half a million residents fled south after Israel warned them to leave ahead of the ground operation, those who remained have endured weeks of aerial bombardment, dwindling supplies and daily carnage. But that’s not the worst that has befallen them. As the conflict spirals into urban and underground warfare, it means more chaos lies ahead. Hamas is known to be fighting from a complex of tunnels believed to be hundreds of kilometres long.
Gaza will be the curse of history for Israel, spokesman Abu Obeida said.
Israel’s allies have unequivocally supported its right to self-defence, but there is growing concern and anger around the world about the exact method Israel has chosen to wage war. Israel rejects these calls for a truce, and it rejects accusations that this cannot be the way to wage war because civilian casualties are already measured in the thousands. Israel, on the other hand, says its targets are Hamas militants, whom it accuses of deliberately hiding among the population and civilian buildings.
The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, which has diplomatic ties with Israel, said it was ” relentlessly” pushing for an immediate ceasefire, warning that the risk of the conflict spreading across the region and further eruption was very real.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, with respect to Israel, stressed that Israel has the right to defend itself and go after Hamas, but the attack on Gaza also looks as if the whole war is turning into “revenge.”
