Israel's attack on Deir al-Balah paralyzes humanitarian action in Gaza

BarcelonaThe Israeli army respects nothing and no one in Gaza. The World Health Organization (WHO) denounced this morning the assault on its staff residence and main warehouse, as part of the ground incursion that began Monday in the town of Deir Al Balah, in the center of the Strip. According to the statement, the residence (where the professionals and their families were staying) was bombed three times, with airstrikes that caused a large fire, and the building was severely damaged. Israeli soldiers subsequently arrested four staff members. According to health authorities in the Palestinian territory, the toll this Monday is at least 130 Palestinians dead and 1,000 wounded, the highest in several weeks, including 14 Palestinians who were waiting to collect food at distribution points. in the midst of the hunger crisis caused by the blockade imposed by Benjamin Netanyahu's government in the Strip.

For the first time since Israel began its genocidal offensive 21 months ago, tanks have entered Deir al-Balah, which, being more protected, had become a center of operations for humanitarian organizations. Israeli troops entered the southern and eastern districts, after having ordered the evacuation on Sunday of between 50,000 and 80,000 Palestinians who remained in the city, located in the center of the Gaza Strip.

"The Israeli army entered the facility, forcing the women and children to flee on foot amid shelling toward Al-Mawasi [the displacement camp south of the Gaza Strip], and handcuffing, stripping, and interrogating the men at gunpoint. The organization reported that two of its staff members and two of their relatives were detained, and three of them were later released. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has demanded their immediate release and protection for its staff, as required by international law.

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said two staff residences in the same town were also attacked, although the Israeli army "has been informed of the location of the UN facilities, which are inviolable." Dujarric recalled that the fact that UN equipment is within the area that the Israeli army has ordered to evacuate does not exempt Israel. of their obligation to "protect" them.

Dismantling humanitarian infrastructure

The dismantling of the humanitarian infrastructure in Deir Al-Balah will have very serious consequences for the population of Gaza, in addition to the widespread hunger caused by the nearly five-month Israeli blockade on the entry of food, medicine, and fuel into the Strip. In the last 72 hours, 21 children have died of hunger in the Strip. According to the director himself, some 900,000 children in Gaza suffer from hunger and 70,000 from malnutrition.

With the health system systematically attacked by bombing and a population greatly weakened by 21 months of indiscriminate war, the people of Gaza are facing the worst situation in their history. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that "the last vital systems that keep people alive are collapsing." The UN reiterates that Israel "has an obligation to allow and facilitate, with all the means at its disposal, humanitarian relief from the UN and other humanitarian organizations." Some 6,000 trucks carrying food, water, medicine, and fuel are stalled on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border awaiting Israeli authorization.

The UN agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stated that its local director, Jonathan Whittall, has decided to remain in Deir al-Balah. Israeli authorities said they will not renew his visa, which expires in August, claiming he is "anti-Israel." In a thread on X on Tuesday, Whittal said that Gaza is living under "deadly conditions" that are "avoidable" and "intentional."

The UN refugee agency for Palestine (UNRWA), for its part, has denounced that its own staff are "fainting from hunger" in the Strip, and has noted that it has enough food stockpiled across the border to feed the entire population of Gaza for three months: "Let aid enter safely and in the necessary volume."

The Gaza Health Ministry announced Tuesday that five hospitals and clinics and the central oxygen station in northern Gaza will cease operations due to a lack of fuel, and that the remaining medical facilities will only be able to continue operating for 48 hours with the gasoline remaining in the generators.

All this comes after the European Union announced that it had reached an agreement with Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has not been fulfilled. The announcement served to avoid adopting sanctions against Benjamin Netanyahu's government at the last summit, and the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, said Tuesday that "all options remain on the table." "The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible," she wrote to X, adding that she had spoken with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar "to make it clear that the Israeli army must stop killing people at distribution points."

A large-scale operation

It does not appear that Israel has any intention of stopping the massacre. Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has declared that troops "must prepare for a sustained, large-scale and extensive campaign." He admitted that the Israeli army "faces a complex and challenging reality that requires multi-arena operations" in Gaza and defined the war in the Strip as "one of the most complex it has ever faced," for which Israel "is paying a heavy price in combat."

The military operation on Deir Al Balah torpedoes the possibility of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, about which Donald Trump had expressed optimism last week. Israel has justified the move by claiming that 20 of the hostages kidnapped on October 7 are in the area, but their families have cried out, fearing they will be killed. And it's not surprising: one of Netanyahu's security cabinet members, Minister of National Missions Orit Strock, said on Sunday that Deir al-Balah had to be occupied even at the cost of the hostages' lives. His statements, as well as those of the ultra-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Belzalel Smotrich, suggest that the death of the hostages would be one less burden on his plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

On Friday, following the Israeli attack on a church in Gaza, Netanyahu spoke with Pope Leo XIV and promised there would be an agreement to end the war soon. But this is not what is happening on the ground. "It is Israel, not Hamas, that is blocking the agreement by refusing to return to pre-operation positions and insisting on new defense lines that are not the ones agreed upon in March," he writes in the Israeli daily. Haaretz Journalist Chaim Levinson: "These new lines are political demands, not military ones."