Caught between a rain of bombs from the air and a war of words on the ground, Palestinian civilians in Gaza struggled to find fuel, food and health care – and aid operations were being choked off – nearly three weeks after their Hamas government unleashed a deadly terror attack on Israel.
As Israel launched a tank raid and aerial bombardments and prepared an expected ground invasion, diplomats at the United Nations headquarters in New York met in emergency special sessions. The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly provided the first global response to the war by approving a non-binding resolution on Friday that calls for a “humanitarian truce” and cessation of hostilities in Gaza.
"The humanitarian system in Gaza is facing a total collapse with unimaginable consequences for more than 2 million civilians. As the bombing intensifies, needs are growing ever more critical and colossal," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Friday in yet another appeal for greater aid access.
"Misery is growing by the minute. Without a fundamental change, the people of Gaza will face an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering," he said. "Everyone must assume their responsibilities. This is a moment of truth. History is judging us all."
The General Assembly's Arab-drafted resolution, which did not unequivocally condemn Hamas' Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel or demand the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas, passed on a 120-14 vote, with 45 abstentions. It was opposed by Israel and the United States.
The U.N. Security Council, which has been divided by dueling Russian and U.S. resolutions, failed again this week to agree on how to call for an end to the Israel-Hamas war or to demand protections for civilians and humanitarian aid.
On the ground, some aid was trickling in, but not nearly enough to begin to relieve the misery and suffering of Palestinian men, women and children caught up in the conflict, according to the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, known as UNRWA. That was forcing aid agencies to significantly scale back operations in the Gaza Strip as fuel to power hospitals, ambulances, water supplies and other necessities ran critically short.
"For the past few days, intense negotiations at the highest levels finally allowed very limited humanitarian supplies into the strip. While the breakthrough is welcome, these trucks are a trickle rather than the flow of aid that a humanitarian situation of this magnitude requires," said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA's commissioner-general.
"Fuel, though, has been firmly denied to Gaza. Without it, there will be no humanitarian response, no aid reaching people in need, no power for hospitals, no water, no bread," he said. “Mothers do not know how they can clean their children. Pregnant women pray that they will not face complications during delivery because hospitals have no capacity to receive them."
Fuel could be exhausted at any time unless Israel relents and allows shipments into Gaza to resume. Israeli’s military, the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF, banned fuel shipments to keep it out of the hands of Hamas. A spokesman for the IDF, Daniel Hagari, said on Friday that Israel's ground forces were “expanding their activity” in the Gaza Strip after hours of intense airstrikes.
Before the war, Gaza received some 500 trucks of food and other supplies daily, including 45 shipments of fuel to power cars, water desalination plants and bakeries. Israel initially refused to allow any aid into the Gaza, but now allows a few trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter.
In the first four days after the Rafah crossing with Egypt was opened a total of 62 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza and quickly reached health-care facilities and displaced Palestinians, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.
“Hospitals have reached an unprecedented point of devastation due to the influx of injuries combined with severe shortages of essential resources, personnel, electricity, and water,” it said. Fuel at the hospitals is “being severely rationed” and used to run a selected number of critical facilities.
WHO concerned for welfare of hostages
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the assembly his country aimed to “completely eradicate Hamas’ capabilities and we will use every means at our disposal to accomplish this.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian accused Israel and the United States of “genocide in Palestine” and warned again the war could spill across the region. Hamas, he asserted, was prepared to free civilian Israeli hostages it holds, but conditioned it on the release of some 6,000 Palestinians held captive in Israeli prisons.
OCHA reported, relying on Palestinian health authorities, that Wednesday was one of the deadliest in the war, with 756 fatalities, including 344 children. During that time residents of Gaza faced the most intense Israeli bombardment and airstrikes since the start of hostilities.
More than 6,500 people, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza so far and another 1,600, including 900 children, are missing and may be buried in the bomb rubble.
OCHA estimated that 1.4 million people in Gaza have been displaced with some 629,000 taking refuge in U.N.-provided shelters. Overcrowding is a growing concern with shelters operating at nearly three times their intended capacity.
The head of the U.N.’s World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on Hamas to release the captives and said the International Committee of the Red Cross should be granted immediate access to evaluate their health and provide needed care and medicines.
“There is an urgent need for the captors of the hostages to provide signs of life, proof of provision of health care and the immediate release, on humanitarian and health grounds, of all those abducted," said Tedros.
“Many of the hostages, including children, women and the elderly, have pre-existing health conditions requiring urgent and sustained care and treatment," he said. "The mental health trauma that the abducted, and the families, are facing is acute and psychosocial support is of great importance.”
The IDF ordered Palestinians to move to the southern part of the Gaza Strip as it bombed the north, wiping out entire neighborhoods in one of the most overcrowded places on Earth. At the same time, however, airstrikes continued in the south, leaving Palestinian civilians in a hellish limbo, unsure which way to turn and nowhere to run.
“When the evacuation routes are bombed, when people north as well as south are caught up in hostilities, when the essentials for survival are lacking, and when there are no assurances for return, people are left with nothing but impossible choices,” said Lynn Hastings, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for occupied Palestinian territory. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
