According to an agreement brokered by Qatar between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, the Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip are to receive medication. In addition, aid supplies for the civilian population would be brought to the sealed-off coastal strip, the Qatari Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, the drugs purchased in France were initially scheduled to be flown to Egypt on Wednesday aboard two Qatari military planes. From there they would be taken to the Gaza Strip. As the Al Jazeera broadcaster reported, citing the French Foreign Ministry, 45 hostages were to receive medication for the treatment of various chronic diseases. The medicine should last for around three months.
Negotiations had been going on for weeks over the supply of chronically ill hostages with the necessary medication. According to Al Jazeera, Hamas fears that the medicine might be prepared in advance in such a way that it would be traceable and Israel might use it to find out where the hostages are.
Dead in the West Bank
Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip have killed another 163 Palestinians in 24 hours, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority. The total number of people killed since the start of the war has risen to 24,448, the authority announced on Wednesday. Accordingly, 61,504 people were injured. At the beginning of the month, the authority reported that around 7,000 more people were missing. The information might not be independently verified.
According to Palestinian sources, four people were killed during an Israeli army operation in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The Palestinians were killed in a drone attack, the Ministry of Health in Ramallah and the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Wednesday. When asked, the military said there had been “counter-terrorism activities in the area.” It initially did not provide any further information regarding the operation in the town in the northwest of the Palestinian territory. It was initially unclear whether the dead belonged to an extremist group. Tulkarem is under the administration of the Palestinian Authority.
UN experts: Hunger as a weapon
According to the United Nations, the entire population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine. The UN emergency agency OCHA pointed out once more on Wednesday that 378,000 of the 2.2 million inhabitants of the Palestinian coastal strip were already suffering from a “catastrophic” lack of supplies. The rest of the population is affected by a food crisis.
A group of eight UN human rights experts accused Israel of using starvation as a war tactic and spoke of “developing genocide.” It is unprecedented that the civilian population is being allowed to starve.
