Israel-Hamas war: Medicine and aid have entered Gaza — Qatar

Qatar's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said that medicine for hostages and aid for Gazan civilians had entered the Palestinian territory.

"Over the past few hours, medicine & aid entered the Gaza Strip, in implementation of the agreement announced yesterday for the benefit of civilians in the Strip, including hostages," ministry spokesman Majed al Ansari said in a post on social media platform X.

Qatar had been part of mediation efforts along with France and on Tuesday announced that medicine and aid would be flown from Doha to Egypt.

According to media reports, the goods were later taken to the Israeli Kerem Shalom border crossing for checks. They were then brought back to Egypt and finally to Gaza.

France had been working since October to get three months' worth of medication to 45 Israeli hostages with chronic illnesses, along with other medical supplies.

Hamas militants took about 250 hostages back to Gaza following the October 7 terror attacks. Israel says 132 remain there, including at least 27 believed to have been killed.

Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from shortages of food and medicine amid the fighting, according to representative of the United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees.

"I've just returned from Gaza myself and the situation is absolutely desperate," UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told DW's Brent Goff.

"There are severe shortages in medicines, specifically those related to chronic diseases, including diabetes and cancer."

Touba went on to say that aside from the fighting itself, the siege on Gaza was a "silent" killer because of the humanitarian issues it created.

"This is primarily the older people who are not able to get medical care or medicine. It's also children with special needs, also due to the lack of medicine," she said.

"But it's also someone having a heart attack and [who] cannot get to the hospital because of the reoccurring cuts in telecommunications.

"So indeed the siege is the silent killer of people in Gaza, and soon enough people are going to start dying of diseases and of hunger and starvation."

The Biden administration said it will put Houthi rebels in Yemen back on the US list of specially designated global terrorists.

The designation will lead to stringent financial sanctions on the Iran-backed militant group.

US officials said the move was aimed at cutting off their funding and weapons.

The Houthis, who control large swathes of Yemen, have launched attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea in recent weeks.

The militants have said their attacks on shipping are aimed at supporting the Palestinians in Israel's war in Gaza, which began after Hamas carried out a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, killing over 1,100 people and kidnapping hundreds.

"The United States will designateg... the Houthis as a specially designated global terrorist," a senior US administration official told journalists, noting that the designation does not take effect for 30 days and that it could also be lifted "if the Houthis cease their attacks."

The designation comes after US and UK warplanes, ships and submarines last week launched dozens of air strikes against the Houthis.

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said attacks on Israel and its interests by militant outfits in the region will stop if Israel halts its military offensive in Gaza.

"The security of the Red Sea is tied to the developments in Gaza, and everyone will suffer if Israel's crimes in Gaza do not stop ... All the (resistance) fronts will remain active," the minister said, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Israel has been carrying out a military offensive in Gaza over the past few months after Hamas, labeled a terrorist organization by the US, Germany and others, launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7.

There are increasing fears that the conflict will spill over into the wider region.

In recent weeks, the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen has been targeting international commercial shipping in the Red Sea in what they say are acts of solidarity with Palestinians against Israel.

Iran also earlier this week launched missile attacks on what it said are "spy headquarters" and "terrorist" targets in Syria and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said he is shocked by the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

The UNRWA chief said conditions in the territory have steadily deteriorated with each of his trips. His last visit came just before Christmas.

"Now you have a plastic makeshift site having mushroomed almost everywhere," Lazzarini said. "Hundreds of thousands of people living now in the street, living in this plastic makeshift, sleeping on the concrete."

He said UN shelters are suffering from overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions.

In some places, women have all but stopped eating or drinking to avoid using the filthy bathrooms, Lazzarini said, adding that diseases like diarrhea and skin infections are spreading fast.

He said the people there are in "survival mode."

Many talk of leaving Gaza in the hope of building new lives elsewhere, he noted.

"They don't see how they can continue to bring up their children in this type of environment," Lazzarini said. "People start to have difficulties to project what the future will look like.

"My fear is that we have now a generation of lost kids."

Fighting has ravaged Gaza since Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel.

Jordan said that Israeli shelling in southern Gaza has caused "severe material damage" to its field hospital in Khan Younis.  

The Jordanian military described the attack as a "flagrant violation of international humanitarian law."

It added that a medic working at the hospital as well as a Palestinian receiving treatment were wounded in the operation.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident.

Jordan, a close Western ally, made peace with Israel in 1994.

Amman, however, supports the Palestinian cause and has repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza since the war began.

Last week the World Health Organization warned of the possible collapse of the hospital system in southern and central Gaza, with only one third of the territory's hospitals still functioning after months of Israeli bombardment.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the suffering caused by the war in Gaza is "gut-wrenching."

The top US diplomat said that what was needed was a Palestinian state "that gives people what they want and works with Israel to be effective."

"The suffering breaks my heart," he said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. "The question is what is to be done."

Blinken said that, from what he was hearing, virtually every country in the Middle East felt that the United States had a part to play in regional stability.

Blinken also said there was a need for a "pathway to a Palestinian state," and Israel would not "get genuine security" without that.

The secretary of state said he had never known a time when the world faced "such a multiplicity of challenges."

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says parties to the conflict in Gaza are "trampling" on international law.

Speaking on the second day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Guterres urged Israel and Hamas to implement an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

He said the warring parties were "ignoring international law, trampling on the Geneva Conventions, and even violating the United Nations Charter."

"The world is standing by as civilians, mostly women and children, are killed, maimed, bombarded, forced from their homes and denied access to humanitarian aid," he said.

"I repeat my call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and a process that leads to sustained peace for Israelis and Palestinians, based on a two-state solution."

The Israeli military said its forces had destroyed a "terrorist cell" in a "precision air strike" in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it killed Abdullah Abu-Shalal, who planned to carry out an imminent, large-scale terrorist attack with his cell members.

He was the "head of terrorist infrastructure" at the Balata camp in the city, responsible for a "number of terrorist attacks" over the past year, the army added.

"Under Abdullah's leadership, the terrorist infrastructure in the Balata (refugee) camp in Nablus has received funding and guidance from Iranian sources," the IDF claimed.

An unidentified, charred body arrived at Rafidia governmental hospital in Nablus after Israeli forces bombed a vehicle near Balata camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said.

Since Hamas — which is listed as a terror organization by the US, Germany and others — triggered a war with Israel by launching a surprise attack on October 7, killing over 1,100 people and abducting hundreds, the security situation in West Bank has also deteriorated.

Three major Japanese shipping companies said on Wednesday that they were joining other big firms in suspending routes through the Red Sea over Houthi rebel attacks on vessels in the crucial waterway.

"We have suspended navigation through the Red Sea by all ships we operate," a spokesperson for Nippon Yusen, also called, NYK Line, told news agency AFP, adding the move was made to "ensure the safety of crews."

Media reports said that Japanese shipping firms Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines have also suspended navigation through the Red Sea. 

The firms have become the latest among operators to halt traversing the Red Sea corridor following an advisory from the Combined Maritime Forces to stay clear of the region after the launch of US and British air strikes on Houthi forces in Yemen.

The Iran-backed rebels have carried out several attacks against commercial vessels since the war began and have vowed to continue the attacks until Israel halts the conflict in Gaza. 

The US Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a resolution that could have seen security aid to Israel frozen unless a report probing whether Israel committed human rights violations was produced within 30 days.

The vote was brought by Senator Bernie Sanders, and saw 11 senators backing the resolution versus 72 who voted to have it set aside.

Sanders' resolution was filed under the Foreign Assistance Act, which allows Congress to direct the State Department to provide a human rights report and other information on any country receiving US security assistance.

If the resolution had passed, the State Department would have had 30 days to provide the requested report with failure to do so resulting in suspension of assistance.

"This resolution is not only off-base, it's dangerous. It sends absolutely the wrong signal at the wrong time," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

The US provides Israel with $3.3 billion (€3 billion) in military assistance on an annual basis.

Israel began bombarding Hamas targets in Gaza after the events of October 7. On that day the Islamist Hamas militant group, launched a terror attack that left more than 1,100 people dead, while hundreds of others were abducted and taken hostage.

Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry says that more than 24,000 people have been killed since the start of the war.

The United States says it has hit more Houthi military targets inside Yemen, after seizing Iranian weapons intended for the rebels.  

Ian Ralby is a non-resident Senior fellow at the Centre for Maritime Strategy and told DW that the move by the US and UK from defense to striking targets inside Yemen has "led to an escalation." 

Ralby said that the strikes "exacerbated an existing tension within the region of the Houthis fighting not only against the government of Yemen and the wider West, but specifically the US and the UK."

Ralby said strikes inside Yemen were not an effective deterrent to the Houthis, who had already been involved in fighting for years now.

"There was no chance that hitting targets inside Yemen was going to really de-escalate either the overall tension or deter them from continuing because for the first time by attacking shipping they gained relevance and global attention that they've never had," Ralby said.

Ralby explained that it "doesn't take a whole lot to disrupt shipping" and the Houthis "have the capacity to be a thorn in the side of shipping indefinitely because a low-tech version of this could be a very disruptive approach."

Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday announced that mediation efforts in cooperation with France had resulted in agreement between Israel and the Hamas militant group to allow medication and aid to Gaza.

In a statement posted on social media platform X, Qatar's Foreign Ministry said "that the medications and aid will leave Doha tomorrow (Wednesday) to the city of Al-Arish in the sisterly Arab Republic of Egypt, on board two Qatari Armed Forces aircrafts, in preparation for their transport into the Gaza Strip." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed the deal and said: "Upon the planes' arrival in Egypt, the medicines will be transferred by Qatari representatives to their final destination inside the Gaza Strip."

Meanwhile National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the US "welcomed" the agreement to deliver medicine to hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.

The US and Israel, among others, list Hamas as a terrorist organization.

France said it had been working on the deal since October and three months' worth of medication would be supplied for 45 Israeli hostages with chronic illnesses, along with other medical supplies.

Hamas militants took about 250 hostages back to Gaza following the October 7 terror attacks. Israel says 132 remain there, including at least 27 believed to have been killed.

Since Israel launched retaliatory military operations, over 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 2.3 million displaced, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

The intensive phase of Israel's war with Hamas militants in southern Gaza will end soon, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.

US national security spokesperson John Kirby said that the phase-down of military activity in Gaza could help the flow of aid into the enclave.

Kirby also said the US was having "very serious and intense discussions" with Qatar about another deal to free Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Meanwhile, the European Union added the Gaza leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas to its "terrorist" sanctions blacklist over the group's October 7 terror attacks on Israel.

kb/rt (AP, AFP, Reuters)