RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened Saturday to allow a drop of urgently needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off and bombarded it with airstrikes following Hamas’s bloody rampage two weeks ago.
Only 20 trucks were admitted, an amount that aid workers said was insufficient to deal with the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. More than 200 trucks carrying 3,000 tons of relief supplies have been waiting nearby for days.
Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking dirty water. Hospitals say they are running out of medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators due to a nationwide power outage. The Hamas-run health ministry said five hospitals were no longer operating due to a lack of fuel and bomb damage.
Doctors Without Borders said Gaza’s health system was “on the verge of collapse.”
There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says is aimed at destroying Hamas. Israel said Friday that it has no plans to take long-term control of the small but densely populated Palestinian territory.
Israeli media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his cabinet late Saturday to discuss the expected invasion.
Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the country planned to step up its airstrikes starting Saturday to prepare for the next phase of the war.
“We will increase our attacks to minimize threats to our forces in the next phases of the war. Starting today, we will intensify attacks,” Hagari said, repeating his call for Gaza City residents to move south for safety.
Israel has vowed to crush Hamas but has offered few details about what it envisions for the Gaza Strip if it succeeds.
Yifat Shasha-Biton, a cabinet minister, said there was broad consensus in the government that there needed to be a “buffer zone” in Gaza to keep Palestinians away from the border.
“We need to create a distance between the border and our communities,” she told Channel 13 TV, adding that no decisions have been made yet about its size or other specifics.
The opening of Rafah came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy, including visits to the region by US President Joe Biden and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter the Gaza Strip until Hamas released all prisoners from its Oct. 7 attack on cities in southern Israel.
Late Friday, Hamas released its first prisoners – an American woman and her teenage daughter. It was not immediately clear whether there was a connection between the release and the aid deliveries. Israel says Hamas is still holding at least 210 hostages, although their condition – and whether they are even still alive – is unknown.
On Saturday morning, an Associated Press reporter saw the 20 trucks driving north from Rafah to Deir al-Balah, a quiet farming town where many evacuees from the north have sought shelter. Hundreds of foreign passport holders hoping to escape the conflict in Rafah were not allowed to leave the country.
American citizen Dina al-Khatib said she and her family were desperate to get out. “It’s not like previous wars,” she said. “There is no electricity, no water, no internet, nothing.”
According to UNICEF, the trucks carried 44,000 bottles of drinking water – enough for 22,000 people in a single day. “This first, limited water will save lives, but the need is immediate and immense,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
The World Health Organization said four of the trucks were carrying medical supplies, including trauma medications and portable trauma bags for first responders.
“The situation in Gaza is catastrophic,” the head of the United Nations World Food Program, Cindy McCain, told The Associated Press. “We need many, many, many more trucks and a continuous flow of aid,” she said, adding that before the war, about 400 trucks entered Gaza every day.
The Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip called for a secure corridor that would operate 24 hours a day.
Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said: “The humanitarian situation in Gaza is under control.” He said aid would only be delivered to the southern Gaza Strip, where the army has ordered the relocation of people, adding that no fuel would penetrate.
Biden said the United States “remains committed to ensuring that civilians in Gaza continue to have access to food, water, medical care and other assistance without Hamas redirecting it.”
The US government will work to keep Rafah open and allow US citizens to leave Gaza, he said in a statement.
Emphasizing international concern over civilians in Gaza, Guterres told a summit in Cairo that Hamas’s “reprehensible attack” on Israel “can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Two Egyptian officials and a European diplomat said extensive negotiations with Israel and the United Nations to approve fuel shipments for hospitals had produced little progress. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose information about the sensitive deliberations.
An Egyptian official said they discussed releasing hostages with dual nationality in return for fuel, but Israel insisted on releasing all hostages.
Friday’s release of Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie brought some hope to the families of other suspected hostages.
Rachel Goldberg, whose son is believed to have been seriously wounded before he was taken hostage, said she was “very relieved” at the news but called for quick action to save others, including her son.
“I think he might die,” she said. “So we don’t have time.”
Hamas said it was working with Egypt, Qatar and other mediators to “complete the case of the hostages” if the security situation permitted.
Israel has also traded fire with Lebanese Hezbollah fighters along its northern border, raising concerns about the opening of a second front. The Israeli military said on Saturday it had struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and anti-tank missile attacks.
“Hezbollah has decided to join the fighting and we are demanding a high price for it,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to the border.
Hezbollah said six of its fighters were killed on Saturday and the group’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, warned that Israel would pay a heavy price if it launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Israel ordered its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan – with which it made peace decades ago – and avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza broke out across the region.
An Israeli ground attack would likely result in a dramatic escalation of casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people have been killed in the war in Israel – most of them civilians killed during the Hamas attack.
More than 4,300 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. This also includes the controversial number of victims of a hospital explosion.
At Saturday’s summit, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called for securing aid to Gaza, negotiating a ceasefire and resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that failed more than a decade ago. He also said the conflict would never be resolved “at Egypt’s expense,” citing fears that Israel might try to push Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula.
King Abdullah II of Jordan called Israel’s attacks on Gaza a “war crime” and criticized the international community’s response.
“Anywhere else, an attack on civilian infrastructure and the deliberate starvation of an entire population of food, water, electricity and basic necessities would be condemned,” he said.
Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many followed Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off coastal enclave. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in the southern Gaza Strip.
A senior Israeli military official said the air force would not attack the area where aid is being distributed unless rockets that the militants relentlessly fire at Israel are fired from there. “It is a safe zone,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose military information.
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Magdy reported from Cairo and Krauss from Jerusalem. Associated Press journalists Isabel DeBre, Julia Frankel and Ravi Nessman in Jerusalem, Sam Magdy in Cairo and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.