Gaza’s humanitarian crisis deepened Thursday, with warnings people are at risk of starvation and fuel could run out within hours, as Israel continues airstrikes and withholds essential supplies from the enclave in response to Hamas’ brutal terror attacks.
The decades old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians entered uncharted territory this week after Israel suffered its worst attack by Palestinian militants since its founding 75 years ago.
Israel has stepped up its offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 onslaught, when armed militants poured over the heavily-fortified border into Israel.
The gunmen killed more than 1,200 people, wounding thousands more in a coordinated rampage through farms and communities where they also took as many as 150 hostages.
The atrocities have sparked international revulsion and vows by Israel’s government to destroy Hamas, which has continued to fire rockets at Israeli towns over the last five days.
In a press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas should be “crushed” and “spat out from the community of nations.”
Blinken vowed US support for Israel and likened Hamas’ crimes to ISIS. At least 25 Americans have been killed in Israel, he said.
A ‘severe humanitarian crisis’
The United Nations “unequivocally condemned” attacks on civilians in Israel and Gaza in a statement on Thursday, which also focused on the worsening plight of people in Gaza.
More than 2 million Palestinians – including over a million children – live in the Gaza Strip, an area that has been under a land, sea and air blockade enforced by Israel since 2007.
At least 1,417 people have been killed in Gaza, including 447 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, as Israeli air strikes continue to pummel the densely populated strip, decimating buildings, reducing entire streets to rubble and trapping residents. More than 6,000 have been wounded, the ministry added.
Israel has ordered a “complete siege” on the enclave, including halting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel.
Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that supplies would remain cut off until hostages being held by Hamas are freed.
“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Katz said on social media.
The UN said withholding essential supplies will “precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation.”
Food and water are “quickly running out,” the deputy head of emergencies of the UN World Food Programme, Brian Lander, said Thursday.
The European Union has called for the right of Gaza to “access food, water and medicines according to international humanitarian law.”
More than 330,000 people have been displaced in Gaza, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) early Thursday.
Gaza’s only power station stopped working on Wednesday after running out of fuel, the head of the Gaza power authority Galal Ismail told CNN.
Gaza likely only has enough fuel for a few more hours, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Thursday.
If supplies cannot get into the enclave, “the humanitarian situation will become unmanageable,” the ICRC’s regional director for the Middle East told reporters during a briefing in Geneva on Thursday.
Hospitals are expected to run out of fuel on Thursday, leading to “catastrophic” conditions, the Palestinian Health Ministry warned.
A surge in injured people seeking treatment has pushed Gaza’s health infrastructure close to breaking point, according to Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza. “Even after expansion, all beds are occupied, leaving no room for new patients in critical condition,” he said on Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Thursday that hospitals in the enclave “risk turning into morgues” following Israel’s siege.
Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila has called for urgent international assistance to help set up field hospitals in the Gaza Strip and to provide medicines and medical supplies.
Video and photo from the besieged enclave depict scenes of tragedy and heartbreak.
“There are body parts scattered everywhere. There are still people missing,” one man in the northern neighborhood of Al-Karama said. “We’re still looking for our brothers, our children. It’s like we’re stuck living in a nightmare.”
“We are extremely worried that what is happening now is totally unprecedented,” Najla Shawa, an Oxfam worker in Gaza, told CNN. “We are talking about entire areas, not just one area. Entire areas are being wiped and destroyed.”
‘Possible escalations’
In response to Hamas’ assault, Israel has massed some 300,000 reservists near the Gaza border, according to the Israel Defence Force (IDF), a huge mobilization given the country’s 9 million population.
On Thursday, the IDF said it was continuing “large scale strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza strip,” as speculation of a possible ground incursion into Gaza grows.
“We have sent our infantry, armored soldiers, our artillery corps and many other soldiers from the reserves. 300,000 in numbers in different brigades,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Wednesday.
“They are now close to the Gaza Strip, getting ready to execute the mission that they have been given,” he added.
Israel’s government also said it was preparing its hospitals and healthcare system for “possible escalations in the security situation,” its health ministry said.
Hamas’ attack has also sparked some political unity in Israel after months of domestic friction with Netanyahu and National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz jointly announcing an emergency government and war management cabinet on Wednesday.
Gantz, a former defense minister, will join Netanyahu and current defense minister Yoav Gallant in a wartime cabinet.
“There is time for war and time for peace. This, now, is the time for war,” Gantz said during a televised address.
A diplomatic push is being made to try and bring about some sort of mediation.
US Secretary of State Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday. As well as meeting with Netanyahu, he is scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan on Friday, according to a US official.
Abbas leads the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was established in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 1993 through the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It stipulated the PLO give up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The PA are rivals to Hamas.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman received a call from Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday in which they discussed the “military escalation in Gaza,” Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
Horror stories
The scale and nature of Hamas’ attacks have horrified Israelis with each day bringing new testimonies of both atrocities committed as well as astonishing tales of survival and bravery amidst the carnage.
On Thursday, Netanyahu’s office released photos of “babies murdered and burned” by Hamas.
Tom Hand, a resident of the Be’eri, a kibbutz where Hamas gunmen left at least 120 dead, learned his daughter Emily, 8, was among those killed in Saturday’s onslaught.
“I knew she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t in Gaza, she wasn’t in a dark room filled with Christ knows how many people, pushed around… terrified every minute of every day, possibly for years to come. So death was a blessing,” he told CNN, his voice broken, tears streaming down his tired, ashen face.
The fact that Hamas has taken an unprecedented number of hostages now complicates Israel’s response.
On Wednesday, International IDF spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, told CNN that Israeli authorities believe the hostages are being held underground.
“Reason dictates that they are underground,” he said. “Reason dictates that they planned in advance locations to hide these hostages and keep them safe from Israeli intelligence, and efforts to get them out.”
He said even though Israel has had “some experience” with hostage situations they have never dealt with anything like this.
Izzat al-Risheq, a senior Hamas official, told CNN on Wednesday that it’s too early to exchange Israeli hostages.
“There were many calls made by Arab and non-Arab states to Hamas leadership abroad asking about the possibility of exchanging Israeli captives with Hamas prisoners,” al-Risheq said from Doha, Qatar.
“But we told everybody that it’s now too early to discuss it while Israel continues to pound Gaza and kill Palestinian civilians indiscriminately.”