Egypt expressed its regret and rejection of the UN Security Council’s failure to issue a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, due to the United States’ veto for the third time, against the draft resolution proposed by Algeria on behalf of the Arab Group.
Egypt said in a statement on Tuesday that blocking the resolution that called for a ceasefire in an armed conflict that killed more than 29,000 civilians, mostly children and women, was a shameful precedent in the history of the Security Council’s handling of armed conflicts and wars, and implied moral and humanitarian responsibility for the ongoing deaths of Palestinian civilians and their daily suffering under the Israeli bombing.
On the same day, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas political bureau, arrived in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, with a delegation from the movement’s leadership.
The movement said in a statement that the visit aimed to discuss with Egyptian officials the political and field situation in light of the war on Gaza, and the efforts to stop the aggression, provide relief to the people, and achieve the Palestinian goals.
Regarding the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Government Information Office in Gaza, said that the people of the Strip were facing famine. He said that only 9 aid trucks had entered the whole Strip in the last 10 days and that at least 700,000 people were suffering from hunger that could lead to their death.
He said that the Israeli army deliberately starved the northern Gaza Strip and prevented any aid from entering, and called on the “brothers” in Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing immediately to bring in aid. He also urged the World Food Programme to reverse its decision to suspend its aid delivery to the northern Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Tuesday that it had temporarily halted the delivery of food aid to northern Gaza until the conditions allowed for safe distribution.
The programme said in a statement that the decision to stop the aid delivery to the northern Gaza Strip “was not taken lightly,” as it knew that it “meant that the situation there would worsen, and that more people would face the risk of dying from hunger.”
On the ground, the Israeli army admitted that 46 soldiers were wounded in the fighting in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of its wounded since the start of the war on 7 October to more than 3,000.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli army announced that 22 officers and soldiers were wounded in the fighting in the Gaza Strip in the previous 24 hours, before announcing the new toll.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, announced that its fighters had fired a TPG missile at an Israeli force that was hiding in a house in the Western Camp in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip. The brigades said that they had killed or wounded some of the Israeli force members.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), also claimed that its members had fought with a group of Israeli soldiers and that they had killed a soldier at close range south of the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City.
The Al-Qassam Brigades said that it had hit an Israeli “Merkvah” tank with an “Al-Yassin 105” shell, south of the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City.
Hamas warned the Israeli occupation not to try to invade the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, and commit massacres and genocide. It said that the victory that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was looking for was nothing but an illusion and that it only existed in his mind.
The movement accused Netanyahu of lying to everyone and misleading the families of the prisoners in Gaza by saying that they could be freed by force and warned that time was running out. Hamas said that the explosion was coming to confront the occupation for any restrictions on Muslims entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.
