— Hamas says October 7 attacks ‘necessary step’
— People are eating food meant for birds and animals: Jabalia resident
GAZA: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ spokesperson (IFRC), Tommaso Della Longa, has said the situation in Gaza is getting “worse and worse.”
“What we are seeing is what we predicted, and not because we are magicians, but because we know by experience,” he told Anadolu Agency, adding that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are in shelters without access to running water, proper food and adequate sanitation.
“It is beyond the catastrophic,” said Della Longa.
“We knew since the beginning that the lack of food, the lack of clean water, lack of shelter, lack of proper shelter, with running water, and sanitation would have led to what is happening now, which means respiratory diseases, diarrhea is spreading like a lion’s fire among the population,” he said.
‘Bombing all around us’, says Gaza hospital doctor
Dr Ahmed al-Moghrabi, the head of the plastic surgery and burns department at Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, explained that shortly before speaking to Al Jazeera, the sound of Israeli bombing had been heard near the hospital.
“[I expect] the ambulances will bring patients from these explosions, as a result of the bombing,” said al-Moghrabi.
With fears growing that the Nasser Hospital will face an attack similar to the devastating Israeli attack on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, thousands of displaced people who have sought shelter in the hospital and its grounds have fled. Al-Moghrabi is worried about what may come.
“If it happens, it will be a real horror,” he told Al Jazeera. “I pray to God that this will not happen… We are not a target. I know that Israel has already crossed all red lines… but this is the main hospital in the south of Gaza. I hope that this will not happen. If it happens, I cannot tell you how catastrophic it will be.”
People are eating food meant for birds and animals: Jabalia resident
Palestinians at the Jabalia refugee camp market in the northern Gaza Strip expressed their suffering as they looked to secure daily food sustenance amid dire shortages of flour and food in the markets and an absence of humanitarian aid, Al Jazeera reports.
“We have no food, only some rice. We do not have flour. There is crowding over the available quantities,” AJ reports one of the Gazans as saying.
“We have been living in suffering for 104 days. Today we are searching for our daily food. There is no flour or wheat. People eat corn, and this is food for birds and animals, not for humans” another person said.
Hamas says October 7 attacks ‘necessary step’
The Hamas group has said the October 7 attacks that led to conflict with Israel were a “necessary step” but “chaos” had led to “faults” in the operation.
The attacks were “a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people”, the group said in its first public account about October 7, adding that “maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza”.
Israeli public should know war with Hezbollah would be ‘difficult’: Israeli general
Israeli Reserve Major-General Eyal Ben-Reuven has spoken to Israel’s Maariv newspaper about the possibility of starting a war against the Lebanese armed group, Hezbollah.
According to Al Jazeera, he said Israel’s political leadership should tell the public that Hezbollah is stronger than Hamas and that a war with it would be “difficult”.
Palestinian Authority is ‘on its knees’ financially, politically: analyst
Political analyst Nour Odeh has said it is the twelfth time Israel has used its leverage of Palestinian tax revenue to punish or weaken the Palestinian Authority.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Odeh said it is still unclear whether the PA would be willing to accept the transfer of tax via Norway because it would be humiliating to walk back on its pledge to not take the tax revenues with the deduction of Gaza’s share.
“All of this money, given that the economy is on its knees, given that the revenues have dropped dramatically since October will probably not be sufficient for the PA to continue to meet all its responsibilities,” she added.
