Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed to open the crossing from the city of Rafah to Gaza to allow the movement of a first batch of humanitarian aid trucks, US Head of State Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
“[al-Sisi] We agreed to let up to 20 trucks pass to start,” Biden told reporters, after contacting his Egyptian counterpart, aboard the presidential plane, while returning from a visit to Israel.
Biden also notes that the operation should not begin before Friday, as Egypt will need to repair damage to the road to make the crossing possible.
The American leader affirms that the UN is in charge of distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip and that a second shipment may be possible, depending on “how things go,” warning that if Hamas wants to “confiscate it and not let it go, then it will be over.”
Joe Biden should have met this Wednesday with Fattah al-Sisi, in a meeting in Jordan, which ended up being canceled after a deadly attack on a hospital in Gaza, which sparked outrage throughout the Arab world.
“The end result is that he [al-Sisi] “He deserves to be recognized because he was completely cooperative,” the US president added.
Israel isolated the Gaza Strip, preventing all food, water, medicine and fuel from entering its 2.3 million inhabitants after the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7.
White House officials told the Associated Press (AP) that the aid will arrive in the coming days.
Earlier, Israel had assured that it would allow Egypt to deliver limited amounts of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the first concession in a 10-day siege of the territory.
In a statement, the Israeli Executive indicated that it “will not prevent” the supply of food, water and medicine, as long as these goods do not reach the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
The head of humanitarian emergencies of the UN maintained this Wednesday that aid to Gaza, as soon as it can cross the Egyptian border, must be “substantial”, on the order of 100 trucks per day, and its security must be taken care of.
Martin Griffiths referred to “incredibly detailed negotiations with the parties” to define the rules for the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid, shortly after the Israeli authorization to allow aid entry.
“We have to ensure that we can intervene on a large scale every day, consciously, repetitively and reliably,” Griffiths insisted, explaining that the various UN employees in the Gaza Strip – including 14,000 UN Security Agency workers the UN for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) – will try to distribute aid.
Israel has been relentlessly bombing Gaza since the bloody Hamas surprise attack on October 7 that killed 1,400 people in Israel, most of them civilians.
The Israeli response caused at least 3,478 deaths in the overcrowded Palestinian territory, most of them civilians, according to local authorities.
Source: TSF
