On March 17, 2024, the Prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to send ground forces into Gaza’s southern Rafah city despite increasing international pressure and concern over the fate Palestinian civilian citizens living there.
Benjamin Netanyahu, whose security and war cabinets were later due to discuss latest international efforts towards a truce deal, stressed that “no amount of international pressure will stop us from realising all the goals of war. To do this, we will also operate in Rafah,” he told a cabinet meeting hours before he was set to meet visiting chancellor Olaf Scholz for talks on the war raging since October 7, 2023.
Israel has repeatedly threatened to launch a ground offensive against Hamas militants in Rafah, now home to nearly 1.5 million mostly displaced Gazans sheltering near the Egyptian border. US President Joe Biden, whose country provides with billions of dollars in military assistance, he said a Rafah invasion would be red line without credible measures to protect civilians.
The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged Israel in the name of humanity not to launch a full-scale assault on Rafah, warning that this humanitarian catastrophe must not be allowed to worsen.
A Hamas proposal calls for an Israeli withdrawal from all cities and populated areas in Gaza during a six-week truce and for more humanitarian aid, according to an official from the Palestinian group. Israel plans to attend the talks, with cabinet members due to decide on the mandate of the delegation in charge of the negotiations before its departure for Doha, the office of Netanyahu said without giving a date for when they would leave.
The war meanwhile raged on and overnight Israeli bombardment across the Hamas ruled territory killed at least 61 Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The dead included twelve members of the same family whose house was hit in Deir-al-Balah in Central Gaza.
A Palestinian girl named Leen Thabit, retrieving a white dress from under the rubble of their flattened house cried as she told an international media agency that her cousin was killed in the strike. “She’s dead. “Only her dress is left, Thabit said. “What do they want from us.”
The war triggered by Hamas October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that resulted in about 1160 deaths, mostly civilians according to a tally from an international media agency. Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed around 31,645 people in Gaza, most of them women and children according to the health ministry.
Shelling and clashes were reported in South Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis and elsewhere and the Israeli Army said that its forces have killed approximately 18 terrorists in central Gaza since March 16, 2024. More than five months of the war and Israel’s siege have led to dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza where the UN has warned of looming famine for the coastal territory’s 2.4 million people.
As the flow of the aid trucks in Gaza slowed, a second ship was due to depart from Cyprus along with a new maritime corridor to bring food and relief goods said the people of the island nation. On March 16, 2024, the US Chairty World Kitchen said its personnel had finished unloading supplies from a barge towed by a Spanish aid vessel Open Arms which pioneered the sea route.
On March 17, 2024 Jordan announced the latest aid airdropped over Northern Gaza together with Egyptian, German and US aircraft. Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli hostages during the October 2023 attack. Dozens were released during a week-long truce in November 2023. Israel believes that 130 still remain in Gaza and 32 presumed dead.
Netanyahu has faced domestic pressure over the remaining captives, with protestors rallying in Tel Aviv on March 16, 2024 carrying banners urging a hostage deal now. In Rafah, the crisis has only grown worse said medical staff at a clinic run by Palestinian volunteers that offers treatment for displaced Gazans.
“We’re facing shortages of medications,” said Dr. Samar Gregea, herself displaced from Gaza City in the north. “There are a lot of patients in the camp, with all children suffering from malnutrition” and a spike in Hepatitis-A cases, she told an international media agency. “Children require foods high in sugars, like dates, which are currently unavailable.”
