Aid "barely trickling" into Gaza, says UN humanitarian chief The UN’s humanitarian chief said aid is “barely trickling” into Gaza despite the agency’s “best efforts”. In a statement posted to social media, Martin Griffiths said bombardments on Gaza “are getting worse, even in areas supposed to be safer”. The world itself is failing to meet the bare entitlements of a part of humanity. The rules of war are clear: civilians must be protected and have the essentials to survive, wherever they are and whether they choose to move or stay. How does Gaza’s health ministry calculate casualty figures? In this time of war, the health ministry in Gaza has been given its own health warning. Joe Biden has questioned the reliability of its reporting of the number of people killed and wounded during the Israeli assault on Gaza – because the health ministry is run by Hamas. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” the US president said. But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using. On Thursday, the ministry said the Israeli bombing of Gaza had killed 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 children, in the nearly three weeks since Hamas killed about 1,400 Israelis and abducted more than 200 others in its cross-border attack. In a move to head off allegations of fabrication, the ministry also issued a 212-page list of the names and identity numbers of every Palestinian it says has been killed in the Israeli bombardment. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Biden to apologise for his “shocking and dehumanising” remarks. The council’s director, Nihad Awad, said: Journalists have confirmed the high number of casualties, and countless videos coming out of Gaza every day show mangled bodies of Palestinian women and children and entire city blocks levelled to the ground. President Biden should watch some of these videos and ask himself if the crushed children being dragged out of the ruins of their family homes are a fabrication or an acceptable price of war. They are neither. King Charles met with charity leaders from Medical Aid for Palestinians, the British Red Cross, Unicef UK and Christian Aid at Buckingham Palace on Thursday to discuss the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Charles, who is president of the British Red Cross, spoke about the “acute humanitarian situation” in the region, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said. The British Red Cross said the King had made a “generous donation” to its fundraising appeal. The division over the language of an official declaration following an EU summit in Brussels reflects one of the most damaging episodes for the bloc in many years, with an early clash between the European Council president, Charles Michel, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, over the lack of emphasis on humanitarian concerns in her early statements on the conflict. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, played down the row, saying everyone would coalesce around the important issue, which was the urgent need to get aid into Gaza. We will get there. I don’t think that we are far away from each other if we talk about words, because the basic meaning is the same. However, some feel the lack of unity has already damaged support for the EU in the global south. One source said: We were heavily criticised in Cairo [peace summit]. It was as if all the outreach we have done over the last two years [to Arab nations] has been pissed up against the wall. One diplomat said they didn’t care whether “pause” or “pauses” or “windows” was in the official communique for the summit, but they were concerned about handing Hamas an opportunity. “If the pause is too long, it will help Hamas to recover and attack again,” they said. One senior source said that contrary to impressions given by some, there were “a range of views on the crisis” and there had been so much “heavy lifting” in the last few days to agree the text, they had avoided turning the summit into a “drafting session”. Here are some of the latest images we have received over the newswires from Israel and Palestine. The EU is to call for “humanitarian corridors and pauses” of the shelling in Gaza to allow food, water and medical supplies to reach Palestinians, according to its latest draft text. An official declaration will be issued after a summit of leaders of the bloc’s 27 members in Brussels on Thursday. It follows days of bickering over the language in what one diplomat said was a week of “difficult discussions” over a situation everyone agreed was “horrific”. It is understood three member states, including Israel’s close ally Germany, that favoured the phrase “windows” felt an earlier text involving the phrase “humanitarian pause” suggested a permanent ceasefire and would undermine Israel’s right to defend itself. The text that leaders will be asked to sign off on on Thursday evening reads: The European Council expresses its gravest concern for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and calls for continued, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need through all necessary measures including humanitarian corridors and pauses. Israeli media has reported that the Netanyahu government plans to approve new rules that will authorise police to use live fire on protesters blocking roads or entrances to cities inside Israel during the war. According to the report, the rules have been championed by Itamar Ben Gvir, the ultra-nationalist settler and member of Netanyahu’s cabinet who oversees the police. They have received the rubber stamp of Israel’s attorney general, and will be brought before the government for authorisation on Sunday. Before the war began on 7 October, Israeli demonstrators had been turning out weekly by the hundreds of thousands against the Netanyahu government’s plan to weaken the judiciary, with protesters regularly blocking major Israeli thoroughfares. Much smaller demonstrations have been taking places since the war started, calling for the government to work to release the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The war has sparked a crackdown by the Israeli government against perceived dissent, with hundreds of people arrested or disciplined for speech sympathetic to Gazans. Police have been given wide new powers to determine what applies as “support for terrorism”, and have declared they will not allow solidarity demonstrations in support of Gaza. The US national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said a “humanitarian pause” should be considered in Gaza in light of a rapidly escalating humanitarian emergency in the blockaded enclave which Israel has been striking for 19 days. Outlining what such a pause could look like during a press briefing to reporters, Kirby said it would be a “a temporary and local agreement to stop the fighting long enough to do some discrete task.” He added that such agreements are “localised, temporary, specific pauses on the battlefield so that humanitarian assistance can get in to the people that need it or they, the people, can get out of that area in relative safety and humanitarian pause.” The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, showed the general assembly a brief video that he said showed a Hamas fighter trying to decapitate a man with a garden tool during the attack on 7 October this year. Erdan, who has called for the resignation of the UN secretary general, António Guterres, insisted: This is not a war with the Palestinians. Israel is at war with the genocidal Hamas terrorist organisation … Hamas do not care about the Palestinian people. Hamas has only one goal – to annihilate Israel. In a joint statement the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco, on Thursday condemned the targeting of civilians and violations of international law in Gaza. Their statement said the right to self defence did not justify breaking the law and neglecting Palestinians’ rights. The Arab ministers also condemned forced displacement and collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza. They criticised Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian areas and called for more efforts to implement a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict, an idea that has been the foundation of a long-moribund peace process. The absence of a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has led to repeated acts of violence and suffering for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples and the peoples of the region. Support for Israel came from European governments. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Friday would send a clear signal of backing for Israel in what he called its self-defence efforts. Arab nations condemn Israel’s Gaza assault during UN debate Arab nations have linked hands with the Global South to challenge Israel and its western backers to end the bombing in a Gaza at the start of a rare two-day emergency debate at the UN general assembly. In a fierce warning on Thursday the Iranian foreign minister said that if what he described as the genocide did not stop the US would “not be spared from this fire”. The debate was occasionally unsettling for the US, as diplomats from across the globe challenged what they frequently described as Washington’s unqualified support for Israel since the Hamas attack that killed 1,400 people. Since then, according to the Palestinian authorities, more than 7,000 people have been killed in Gaza, with Israel pounding the territory with airstrikes. The tone of the debate was set by its title – Illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. A large majority of nations in the assembly will probably condemn Israel if a non-binding vote is called on Friday. The smaller 15-strong UN security council, including its five permanent veto wielding members, has been unable to reach agreement on the terms of a humanitarian pause to the hostilities. On Wednesday Russia and the US vetoed each other’s resolutions. The US last week also vetoed a Brazilian resolution calling for humanitarian corridors into Gaza, on the grounds that it did not assert Israel’s right to self defence. A resolution passed by the security council carries more weight than one passed by the larger 193-country general assembly. About 900 additional US troops are being deployed to the Middle East, or have already arrived there, to bolster air defences to protect US personnel, the Pentagon said. US troops have been attacked at least 12 times in Iraq and four times in Syria in the past week, the Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Patrick Ryder said during a briefing on Thursday. He added that US forces were targeted earlier today in Iraq but the attack failed. EU leaders agree to call for "humanitarian corridors and pauses" in Gaza EU leaders meeting at the European Council summit in Brussels have reached agreement on the Middle East. In a compromise text, agreed after hours of discussions, heads of state and government from the EU’s 27 members declared that the EU “reiterates the importance of ensuring the protection of all civilians at all times in line with international humanitarian law” and “deplores all loss of civilian life”. The leaders also said that they are concerned about deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza and called for aid “including humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs”. In a concession to Spain, new wording was added to the final text that the European Council “supports the holding of an international peace conference soon”. The death toll of French citizens from the attacks by Hamas in Israel on 7 October has risen to 35. Nine people remain unaccounted for, the French foreign ministry said on Thursday. Some of those missing are being held hostage by Hamas, it said. We are doing everything we can to obtain their release. Hamas delegation travels to Moscow for talks on foreign hostages in Gaza A senior Hamas delegation has travelled to Moscow to meet Russian foreign ministry officials in the organisation’s first high-profile international visit since it launched a raid in southern Israel on 7 October, killing an estimated 1,400 people and taking another 220 hostage. The delegation was led by Mousa Abu Marzook, a founder and political leader of Hamas, who met the Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. Marzook, who lives in exile in Qatar, travelled to Moscow after an earlier meeting in Doha, the capital of Qatar, with Bogdanov and the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani. The delegation was confirmed by representatives of Hamas and by Russia, and a photo showed the three men meeting at the Russian foreign ministry in Moscow. “Abu Marzook, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, is in Moscow,” said the Russian foreign ministry in a statement. Contact with him took place in pursuit for the immediate release of foreign hostages held in the Gaza Strip, and issues related to ensuring the evacuation of Russian and other foreign citizens from the territory of the Palestinian enclave were discussed. Earlier this month, Bogdanov had said he wanted to meet Hamas representatives in Qatar to discuss the release of Israeli hostages. At least six of the 220 hostages held by Hamas have Russian citizenship, according to the Israeli government. The Palestinian representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, addressed an emergency special session at the UN’s general assembly on the Israel-Palestine crisis. “We are meeting here while Palestinians in Gaza are under the bombs,” he said. He told of families being killed, hospitals coming to a halt, neighbourhoods being destroyed and civilians “fleeing from one place to another with no safe place to go”. “There is no time to mourn,” he told the assembly, pointing to the rising death toll in Gaza. If you do not stop it for all those who have been killed, stop it for all those who can be saved. Mansour, recalling Israel’s recent comments in the UN’s security council about how its people are suffering, said Palestinians are suffering too. How can representatives of states explain how horrible it is that 1,000 Israelis were killed, and not feel the same outrage when 1,000 Palestinians are now killed every single day? Why not feel a sense of urgency to end their killing? Aid "barely trickling" into Gaza, says UN humanitarian chief The UN’s humanitarian chief said aid is “barely trickling” into Gaza despite the agency’s “best efforts”. In a statement posted to social media, Martin Griffiths said bombardments on Gaza “are getting worse, even in areas supposed to be safer”. The world itself is failing to meet the bare entitlements of a part of humanity. The rules of war are clear: civilians must be protected and have the essentials to survive, wherever they are and whether they choose to move or stay. Palestinian families in Gaza are running out of food as bakeries run out of fuel amid Israel’s blockade of the territory, ActionAid has warned. The international charity accused Israel of using starvation as “a weapon of war” with bakeries “a target of indiscriminate bombing”. It said it was particularly concerned about the impact of food and water shortages on women and newborns. ActionAid quoted a Gaza resident currently at a UN shelter saying: The situation in the Gaza Strip is very, very bad. People have been killed, may God have mercy on them, but the rest will die because of hunger. There is no food in the supermarket, no tinned food, no food. Regarding bread, we have to wait in line. We go at six in the morning and wait until the afternoon to get it. This is if you even manage to get some bread, of course. The situation in Gaza “is nothing short of a complete catastrophe”, ActionAid Palestine’s coordinator of advocacy and communication, Riham Jafari, said. With over 2 million people in urgent need of food, it is completely barbaric to see bakeries under bombardment as civilians line up every day to get food for their families. Those who survive the bombings may die from starvation instead. She added: Food is a basic human right, not a weapon of war. We should be clear: indiscriminate attacks on bakeries, hospitals and schools amount to a gross violation of international humanitarian law. An Al Jazeera correspondent has held a funeral for his wife, son, daughter and grandson whom the Qatar-based network said were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, had fled with his family to the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza after Israel warned those in the northern half of the territory to leave immediately. Twenty-one other people were killed in the same airstrike, according to Palestinian health officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike, according to Reuters. It was an extraordinary moment when an 85-year-old hostage shook the hand of her Hamas captor and said one word: “Shalom”. Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released by Hamas after 16 days in captivity, is now focused on trying to secure the release of other hostages. Her daughter, Sharone Lifschitz, has revealed that the captor was reportedly a paramedic with whom her mother had discussed peace. Sharone said her mother had been comforting the relatives of other captives while she received medical treatment in Tel Aviv. She said she was “immensely proud” of Yocheved, a retired teacher who has emerged from her ordeal several kilos lighter but with a determination to bring some hope to the families of the remaining hostages. Sharone, a London-based artist and academic, said: It’s really hard to explain that we are still in this. As my mum says, her body is here but her heart is back there with the rest of the hostages. Yocheved and her husband, Oded, 83, who have been married for 63 years and are peace and human rights activists, were kidnapped by Hamas from the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel on 7 October. Yocheved had told her daughter that she became separated from Oded after witnessing him being shot in the hand. Yocheved was tied to a motorcycle and driven to Gaza, while Oded, a veteran journalist, remains missing. The US government has reiterated its lack of trust in figures released by Hamas of the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli bombardment. This follows Joe Biden voicing skepticism of death toll figures issued by the ministry of health in Gaza, the blockaded Palestinian territory. The US president’s assertion at the White House yesterday prompted a row. Now the US State Department has said Washington knows that a significant number of people have died in Gaza but does not have independent confirmation of numbers, adding that it does not trust the figures released from Hamas, Reuters reports. The state department spokesperson Matthew Miller added that the US had seen Russia play no productive role at all in the Middle East crisis. A delegation from Hamas visited Moscow on Thursday for talks on the release of foreign hostages including Russian citizens that the militant group is currently holding in Gaza.