Longer-term elements of Trump’s plan, including the make-up of an international “stabilisation force” for the small, densely populated territory and moves towards creating a Palestinian state – rejected by Israel – have yet to be hashed out.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said on Thursday the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) would work with international institutions and partners to address Gaza’s security, logistical, financial and governance challenges.
An upcoming conference in Egypt on Gaza’s reconstruction would need to clarify how donor funds are organised, who would receive them and how they would be disbursed, he told reporters.
Hamas ejected the PA from Gaza in a brief civil war in 2007.
MASSIVE INCREASE IN AID NEEDED
In a statement on Thursday, Israel’s military aid agency COGAT said coordination was underway with Egypt to decide a date for reopening the Rafah crossing for the movement of people after completing the necessary preparations.
COGAT said the Rafah crossing would not open for aid as this was not stipulated by the truce deal at any stage; rather all humanitarian goods bound for Gaza would pass through Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom after undergoing security inspections.
With famine conditions present in parts of Gaza, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that thousands of aid vehicles would now have to enter Gaza weekly to ease the crisis.
Aid trucks rolled into Gaza on Wednesday, and Israel said 600 had been approved to go in under the truce pact. Fletcher called that a “good base” but nowhere near enough, with medical care also scarce and most of the 2.2 million population homeless.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza media office, said the quantities of aid that had entered Gaza since the fighting subsided were a “drop in the ocean” of what is needed.
“The region urgently requires a large, continuous, and organised inflow of aid, fuel, cooking gas, and relief and medical supplies,” he told Reuters.
Much of the heavily urbanised coastal enclave has been rendered a wasteland by Israeli bombardments and airstrikes that have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Source: CNA
