GAZA: Israel pounded the length of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing families in their homes, even as a US envoy told Israel Washington wanted the war to end “as soon as possible”.

Internet and telephone services were cut across the war-torn Gaza Strip on Thursday, the Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said, while the UN warned of the possibility of a “breakdown of civil order” in the Gaza Strip as aid organisations have struggled to get supplies to desperate Gazans.

Hunger and desperation are driving people to seize humanitarian aid being delivered from the sole point of entry at Rafah, while many are forced to beg for bread, paying 50 times more than usual for a single can of beans and slaughtering a donkey to feed a family.

The UN humanitarian office OCHA said on Thursday that limited aid distributions were taking place in the Rafah area, close to the border with Egypt, where almost half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is now estimated to be living.

Sullivan asks ‘hard questions’ during Israel visit; UN warns of breakdown in civil order

“In the rest of the Gaza Strip, aid distribution has largely stopped, due to the intensity of hostilities and restrictions on movement along the main roads,” it said.

“We are teetering on the edge of a possible implosion. We might reach our limit. Why? Because there is more and more a breakdown of civil order.” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA, who has just returned from Gaza. He said he saw people stopping aid trucks to take food and immediately eat it — something he described as “completely new” in the Palestinian territory.

But he said he hadn’t heard of any UN or UNRWA trucks being hijacked by Hamas.

Sullivan’s message to Israel

While in Israel, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did talk about possible transitioning from high-intensity operations, which is what we’re seeing now, to lower intensity operations sometime in the near future, White House spokesman John Kirby said.

“I think we all want it to end as soon as possible,” Kirby told reporters at a briefing, adding that Sullivan had asked “hard questions” of Israeli officials about the course of their offensive against the Palestinian enclave. “But I don’t want to put a timestamp on it.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s defence minister warned on Thursday that the war on Gaza would last “more than several months” as he met a top US official amid a rift between the allies over mounting civilian casualties Bombed to dust In Khan Yunis, a whole city block had been bombed overnight to dust. Though most people had fled after Israeli warnings, neighbours digging with a hand shovel believed many were still trapped inside.

Elsewhere in the north in Jabalia, Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli forces had stormed a hospital, detaining and abusing medical staff and preventing them from treating wounded patients, at least two of whom had died.

UN-OCHA said Wednesday that the hospital director and about 70 other medical staff “remain detained in an unknown location outside of the hospital”. It said Israeli forces had released five doctors and female staff but there were reports of “ill-treatment” of those who had been held.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2023