Here’s how things stand on Tuesday, March 12, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- On Tuesday, Israeli forces reportedly attacked Palestinians waiting for aid trucks at the Kuwait Roundabout south of Gaza City, killing seven people, the Wafa news agency reported.
- Separately, Israel was checking on Monday whether it had killed Hamas’s deputy military leader in an air strike in Gaza, the Israeli military said, as prospects faded for a ceasefire to coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
- If his death is confirmed, Marwan Issa will be the highest-ranking official from the group killed by Israel in five months of a war that has pulverised the besieged enclave and killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
- More than five months of fighting have caused a humanitarian crisis, with children starving to death due to malnutrition and dehydration as Israel has imposed restrictions on aid deliveries to Gaza.
- Five months of conflict on top of more than a decade and a half of blockade have caused relentless mental harm to children in Gaza, according to a report released by Save the Children on Tuesday.
- Charity ship Open Arms has set sail for Gaza from Cyprus, carrying almost 200 tonnes of food. The mission, part of a pilot project attempting to open sea routes for aid to be delivered to Gaza’s starving population, is being organised by US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) and funded by the UAE.
Regional tensions
- The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) has confirmed that the Houthis fired two antiship ballistic missiles at a Singaporean-owned and Liberian-flagged ship called “Pinocchio”.
- Palestinian Minister of Women’s Affairs Amal Hamad called on “all the women of the world to stand by Palestinian women” as she spoke to journalists during a session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York on Monday.
- Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz slammed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for holding “a distressing bias” against Israeli victims of sexual assault.
- Tariq Ahmad, the UK minister of state responsible for relations with the Middle East, North Africa and the UN, on Monday urged Israel to “allow unhindered access” to Jerusalem’s holy sites during Ramadan.
- US President Joe Biden also said he did not have any plans “at this moment” to address the Israeli parliament as earlier reported by some media.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- A large public march was held in the town of Arraba, south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Monday, in response to the killing of Palestinian man Muhammad Jaber.
- Israeli forces had killed Jaber, who was from Arraba, alongside another Palestinian man in a shooting north of Tulkarem. They claimed Jaber was armed and planning to carry out an attack.
- The Israeli military has shot and killed two Palestinian men near the town of Attil, north of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported on Tuesday. More than 400 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces since October 7, when Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attack.
