Gaza’s 2.4 million residents are being severely tested, subjected to incessant bombardment and, since October 9, a “total siege” with water, food and electricity supplies cut off.

“The handful of convoys allowed to pass through Rafah are nothing compared to the needs of the more than 2 million people trapped in Gaza,” complained UNRWA chief Philip Lazzarini.

He called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which has become a matter of life and death for millions of people”.

This possibility has been categorically ruled out by Netanyahu. “Calls for a ceasefire are calls to surrender to Hamas. This will not happen,” he stressed.

For Washington, an ally of Israel, a cease-fire is not “the right answer at this time,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, who referred instead to “humanitarian ceasefires.”

Tons of help remains blocked

Tons of aid are piling up at the Rafah border crossing that separates Egypt from Gaza, waiting to be inspected by Israel, according to a US official who asked not to be named.

Only 117 aid trucks have arrived since October 21 in Gaza, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 and the takeover of power by Hamas, according to the latest UN count yesterday, Monday morning. The Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees political activities in the Palestinian Territories, COGAT, announced today that another 39 trucks arrived yesterday.

Hamas claims that 8,306 people, most of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli bombardment since October 7. “Almost 70% of the people who have been killed are children and women. It can’t be about ‘collateral losses'”, lamented Lazzarini.

Hospitals shelter civilians

The condition of hospitals is also a cause for concern, as thousands of civilians have taken refuge in them.

The Palestinian Red Crescent spoke today of new strikes on the outskirts of Al-Quds Hospital. “The building is shaking and the displaced civilians as well as the working groups are scared and panicking,” he wrote on X.

Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals to hide weapons or fighters, which the Islamist movement denies.

In Gaza, doctors “even perform operations on the floor” and C-sections or “amputations of children without anesthesia” due to a lack of medicine, the Doctors of the World (MDM) complained yesterday, Monday.

Due to the lack of drinking water, “people are drinking sea water, people in my group have diarrhea, their children will be dehydrated within a few days,” added the vice president of this non-governmental organization, Jean-Francois Corti.