To show solidarity for the fight against Hamas and to urge Israel to ease the situation of the beleaguered Gazans, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak led US President Joe Biden on visits to both Jaffa and Gaza on Thursday.
Hours after Biden left Tel Aviv, Sunak arrived and used a phrase commonly associated with Churchill to pledge support for Israel “in its darkest hour” after Hamas militants killed 1,400 Israelis in a spree on October 7.
“I want to show my support for the Israeli people, and that’s why I came here in the first place. Sunak told Israeli media upon arriving, “You have endured an atrocious, horrific act of terrorism, and I want you to know that the United Kingdom and I stand with you.
During a subsequent appearance alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he remarked, “I know that you are taking every precaution to avoid harming civilians in direct contrast to the terrorists of Hamas which seeks to put civilians in harm’s way.”
After an eight-hour trip, in which he pledged his support for Israel but achieved only modest success in convincing the Israeli government to lift the siege on the 2.3 million people living in Gaza, Biden returned home on Wednesday night.
Egypt has offered to let 20 relief trucks into Gaza in the next days, which is better than nothing but still falls short of the 100 per day that UN assistance head Martin Griffiths warned the Security Council was needed.
According to two Egyptian security sources, equipment was sent over the crossing on Thursday to fix roads on the Gaza side so that aid could be delivered. On the Egyptian side, there was a line of more than a hundred trucks, but no vehicles were scheduled to cross until Friday.
Israel has announced it will allow some supplies to enter Gaza via Egypt, but only if none of it benefits Hamas. It reiterated that it will not allow aid through its own checkpoints until all of the more than 200 hostages held by the militants are released.
Also, it was made plain that the bombing campaign will continue unabated: “In the Gaza Strip, every place where Hamas has touched or is touching will be struck and destroyed,” the commander of Israel’s Ramat David air base was quoted as saying by Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
“We really are a war machine that knows how to do two or three times what is being done now.”
The severity of it is unprecedented.
For 2.3 million people who have been without food, water, fuel, or medical supplies, the promise of just 20 truckloads of help was met with skepticism by Gazans.
Regarding the assistance, I think it’s silly. El-Awad El-Dali, 65, remarked while standing next to the ruins of his home, “We want nothing from Arab and foreign countries except to stop the violent bombardment on our houses.”
Nearly 3,500 people have been killed and over 12,000 injured in bombings, according to health officials.
A baby’s pink cot was tossed on the ground, and a clothing store had its windows blown out and its vehicles damaged in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
Rafat Al-Nakhala, who had fled north from Gaza City in accordance with an Israeli evacuation order, claimed that even this area was unsafe.
I’m over 70 years old; I’ve seen many conflicts come and go; I’ve never seen anything like this; there’s no religion and no one has any compassion. Praise the Lord. None of the Arab or Muslim nations, or anybody else on Earth, can give us hope save God.
A guy in Khan Younis was seen kissing the body of a baby before he dropped the coffin into a tomb. Grieving family members reported seeing the graves of four young children there and three others at another location.
Reuters film from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza shows locals digging with their bare hands to extricate a young child and girl who are stuck under masonry inside a destroyed building. As people tried to use their phones as torches, the body of a guy was carried out of the rubble.
Half of Gaza’s population, according to the UN, has been displaced and cannot leave the tightly crowded region.
violence in the middle east
Arab nations are furious by the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, making it more difficult for Biden and other Western leaders to galvanize Arab friends to stop the war from spreading.
When an explosion occurred in a Gaza hospital on the eve of Biden’s visit, Arab leaders canceled their conference with him. Biden stated that US evidence corroborated the Israeli narrative, but Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike. Israel claimed the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launch by Palestinian forces.
After the outbreak of war, Sunak was the first Western leader to travel to an Arab country. When the Hamas strike occurred, he was planning to leave Israel and head to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was very close to agreeing to normalize relations with Israel.
While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” Biden pleaded with Israelis before he left. In the United States, anger followed the events of September 11. And while we did the right thing in the end, we did the wrong things along the way.
On Air Force One later, he told reporters, “Israel has been badly victimized, but the truth is they have an opportunity to relieve suffering of people who have nowhere to go… it’s what they should do.”
