Concern continues to intensify today about 2.2 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, despite hopes that Israel and Hamas will declare a new truce in negotiations mediated by Qatar and the US in particular.

The besieged Palestinian enclave, largely in ruins, remains mired in a major humanitarian crisis, with the vast majority of its population at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations.

The US and Qatar, which together with Egypt mediate between Israel and Hamassay they hope a new truce will be announced before the start of the month of Ramadan, around March 10 or 11, that would allow the release of at least some of the roughly 100 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip.

According to an AFP source in the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, as it is better known by its acronym, a six-week truce, a 1:10 exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and the entry of larger quantities of humanitarian aid in the enclave.

Last Monday night US President Joe Biden he spoke of an “agreement by the Israelis that they will not engage in operations during Ramadan” to “give us time to get all the hostages out.”

“I hope that by next Monday, we will have a ceasefire,” the US president told reporters earlier, although he acknowledged that no deal had yet been reached.

“We would certainly welcome (a deal) by the weekend,” US foreign ministry spokesman Matthew Miller said yesterday. “We’re trying to cross the finish line” and “we think it’s possible,” he added.

30,000 dead

THE Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, during his visit to Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron also assured yesterday that they share the will to conclude a “ceasefire” agreement “very quickly”.

The release of the hostages is an absolute “priority” for Paris, the French president reminded, while the Emir of Qatar denounced the “genocide of the Palestinian people”, the “forced displacement” of populations and the “barbaric bombings”.

THE Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvawhose country is hosting a meeting of G20 finance ministers starting today that is expected to be dominated by the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, also yesterday repeated the accusation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is committing “genocide” with “female and child” victims.

The war broke out on October 7, when Hamas’ military arm launched an unprecedented raid on the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, killing more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to a French count. Agency based on official Israeli data.

During the attack some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli sources, more than 130 hostages remain in the Palestinian enclave, of which 31 are believed to be dead, after the release of more than 105 hostages at the end of November, when a ceasefire was declared.

In retaliation, Israel has vowed to “eliminate” Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, which it, like the US and the EU, describes as a “terrorist” organization.

In the bombings and ground operations of the Israeli army in the Palestinian enclave, 29,878 people have lost their lives, the vast majority of them women and children, according to yesterday’s account of the Health Ministry of Hamas.

According to the same source, at least 91 people were killed in Israeli shelling overnight in various sectors of the Gaza Strip.

“Ocean of needs”

The international community is very concerned about the humanitarian disaster that would be caused by a ground attack – repeatedly announced by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu – in Rafah, on the closed border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt, where some one and a half million internally displaced people are trapped.

The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Jan Egeland, who interviewed Rafa on CNN, said yesterday that he had “never seen a location so bombed for so long with its population trapped without any possibility of escape.” ».

Aid organizations have been “overwhelmed” in the face of “this ocean of needs”, he admitted.

Rafah is the only entrance for humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave, which is subject to Israeli approval and arrives in very limited quantities. Its distribution in the north is almost impossible due to disasters, battles, looting.

“If nothing changes, famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), told the UN Security Council yesterday.

Since January 23, no aid convoy has been able to reach the northern part of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN, which criticizes restrictions by Israeli authorities.

“There is no food here at all. Even the fodder we were forced to eat has run out,” local resident Marouane Awadia told AFP, adding: “We don’t know how we will be able to survive.”