Hamas today imposed new conditions for the entry of medicine into the Gaza Strip, mainly intended for the hostages kidnapped on October 7, and mainly refuses the inspection of the convoy requested by the Israeli authorities.

“Trucks with pharmaceutical products will enter without Israeli control,” warned in a post on social media X a senior official of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Musa Abu Marzouk.

However, the Israeli authorities rejected early this afternoon any possibility of allowing the motorcade to enter without the specific control. All convoys carrying humanitarian aid have been subject to such checks since the start of the war.

“The five trucks that will carry the medicines will undergo a security inspection at the Kerem Shalom crossing. At the end of the inspection, the trucks will enter the Gaza Strip,” Cogat, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that coordinates the operations, told AFP. “political activities” of the army in the occupied territories.

The usual procedure is this: humanitarian aid from Egypt goes through the Rafah crossing, then is subject to Israeli control at the Kerem Shalom crossing, on the border between Israel and the small Palestinian enclave. It then returns to Rafah before finally entering the Gaza Strip.

In his post, Musa Abu Marzouk sets out other Hamas conditions: “for every box of medicine” that goes to the 45 hostages they are intended for, “a thousand boxes will go to the people of Gaza.” “The drugs will be supplied through a country we trust, Qatar and not France as Israel requested.”

Once they enter the Gaza Strip, the drugs, whether intended for the population or the hostages, will be “transferred to four different hospitals in the Gaza Strip.” Finally, Hamas is asking for “more aid and medicine”.

“We alone (and not the Israeli side) determined the amount of drugs that should come in, who should be the middleman and who should be the distribution mechanism,” said Abu Marzouk.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Doha, “two planes of the Qatari armed forces have arrived in the city of El-Arish in Egypt. They are carrying 61 tons of aid, including medicines, provided by the State of Qatar and the French Republic, as well as food.” .

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said this evening that the army “will do everything it can to verify together with Qatar that the drugs will reach the hostages who need them”.