Biden to visit Israel as Gaza war sparks humanitarian crisis

WASHINGTON/TEL AVIV - United States President Joe Biden will make a high-stakes visit to Israel on Wednesday to show support for its war on Hamas.

Washington said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to let humanitarian aid reach besieged Gazans.

Trucks carrying vital supplies for Gaza have headed towards the Rafah crossing in Egypt, the only access point to the enclave outside of Israel’s control.

There is no clarity on whether they would be able to cross.

A witness told Reuters about 160 trucks had set off towards the border from the nearby Egyptian town of Al-Arish, where they have been backed up waiting while diplomats tried for days to open the route.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that controls Gaza. Its military operation is in retaliation for a

Hamas attack in the south of the country on Oct 7

.

Gunmen from the militant group killed more than 1,400 people during the rampage, the deadliest single day in Israel’s 75-year history.

Israel says 199 hostages were also taken to Gaza during the raid.

Hamas

released a video on Monday night of a French-Israeli hostage,

Ms Mia Schem, calling on world leaders to help her and other captives get home.

Israel’s military called the video “psychological terror against Israeli citizens”.

Ms Schem’s mother told a press conference she was “begging the world to bring my baby back home”.

Israel has responded by tightening its blockade on Gaza. It has also bombarded the area with air strikes that have killed at least 2,800 Palestinians and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Mr Biden’s planned visit at the end of

hours of talks with Mr Netanyahu

on Monday. Mr Blinken said Mr Netanyahu agreed to develop a plan to get humanitarian aid to Gaza civilians. He gave no further details.

“The President will hear from Israel

what it needs to defend its people

as we continue to work with Congress to meet those needs,” Mr Blinken said.

Mr Biden would also “hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimises civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas”, Mr Blinken added.

Washington is also trying to rally Arab states to help head off a wider regional war.

Iran has pledged pre-emptive action from the “resistance front” of its allies, which include the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

After visiting Israel, Mr Biden is expected to travel to Jordan to meet King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, US national security spokesman John Kirby said.

The PA’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and condemned the targeting of medical centres, hospitals, journalists and schools in air strikes.

Lifting rubble with bare hands

In Jabalia in the north of the Gaza Strip, frantic residents were using their bare hands to lift chunks of concrete and metal, crying out when they located bodies under rubble in a huge, smoking bomb crater. Others ran with stretchers carrying the wounded.

A man emerged from a ruined building holding the limp body of a small boy in his arms, covered in chalky soot.

In the enclave’s main southern city of Khan Younis, the authorities said at least 49 people were killed in air strikes on homes on Monday night.

Mr Amin Hneideq awoke to a powerful explosion that sent the window crashing down, injuring his daughter’s head.

The bomb missed his house, but destroyed a home nearby, killing a family from the north that had obeyed Israeli orders to flee to shelter in the south.

“They brought them from the north just to strike them in the south,” said Mr Hneideq, weeping.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Israel opened a single water line to Khan Younis for three hours on Monday, but only around 14 per cent of Gazans had access to it.

“Concerns over dehydration and waterborne diseases are high, given the collapse of water and sanitation services, including today’s shutdown of Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant,” UNRWA said in a statement.

“People will start dying without water.”

In addition to trying to get aid through the Rafah crossing, Washington also wants it opened to let out Gazans with foreign passports, including several hundred Palestinian Americans.

Gazans with dual nationality tried to reach Rafah on Monday, but said it was impossible because of Israeli air strikes.

Egypt has said it could allow medical evacuations through the crossing, but it rejects the prospect of any mass exodus.

Arab states say such a movement of people would amount to an unacceptable expulsion of Palestinians from their land.

The overwhelming majority of Gazans without dual nationality are forbidden from leaving.

US officials say Israel is concerned that any aid it lets into Gaza could be used to benefit Hamas, and it is working on a plan to ensure that any deliveries are monitored and controlled.

A senior US official said Mr Biden’s newly appointed envoy for humanitarian affairs in the Middle East, Mr David Satterfield, would meet Israelis on Tuesday to start hammering out details.

Clashes in Israel’s north

As Israel plans an expected ground invasion of Gaza to root out Hamas, cross-border clashes have intensified with Hezbollah on a second front on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it killed four people who had tried to cross the border fence to plant explosives.

Israel ordered the evacuation on Monday of 28 of its villages in a 2km-deep zone near the Lebanese border.

Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Teheran was not involved in the Hamas attack on Israel. But he hailed what he called Israel’s “irreparable” military and intelligence defeat.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told state TV that Israel would not be allowed to act in Gaza without consequences.

He warned of pre-emptive action by the resistance front in the coming hours.

“All options are open and we cannot be indifferent to the war crimes committed against the people of Gaza,” Mr Amir-Abdollahian said. “The resistance front is capable of waging a long-term war with the enemy.”

Mr Netanyahu told Parliament on Monday he had a message for Iran and Hezbollah: “Don’t test us in the north. Don’t make the same mistake you once made. Because today, the price you will pay will be much heavier.”

As Israel masses troops on Gaza’s border, it has told more than a million people in the northern half of the enclave to flee to the southern half for their safety, even though Hamas has told them to stay put.

While tens of thousands have fled south, the UN says there is no way to move so many people without causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

The UN says a million Gazans have already been driven from their homes.

Power is out, sanitary water is scarce and fuel for hospital emergency generators is running low. REUTERS