Gaza’s humanitarian crisis compounded by heavy rain and floods

As Israel continued its attacks in Gaza on Wednesday despite international criticism, the humanitarian crisis was compounded when heavy rain caused flooding.

The tent camps providing temporary accommodation to hundreds of thousands of refugees, who fled the north and areas of heavy fighting in Khan Younis in the south, were particularly badly affected.

United Nations agencies warned of a looming public health disaster as officials reported that vaccines for children had run out. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said the ability of his agency to help was on the “verge of collapse”. More than 130 staff from the agency have died in Gaza, he said.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had no response to a report by the Wall Street Journal that it has started pumping seawater into Hamas’s underground tunnel system in Gaza.

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The IDF said 10 soldiers, including two senior officers, were killed in house-to-house fighting on Tuesday in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Sejaiya. Nine of the soldiers were killed in a militant ambush inside a building.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 18,600 Palestinians have been killed in the war, with more than 50,000 wounded. Some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 240 kidnapped in the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7th, when gunmen entered 22 Israeli communities.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan will arrive in Israel on Thursday for talks with prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet about the next phases in the war.

The visit comes after public differences between the US and Israel over post-war arrangements, particularly Washington’s insistence on a role for the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Mr Sullivan’s arrival will take place after US president Joe Biden criticised Mr Netanyahu’s government and warned that aerial bombardments of Gaza were causing Israel to lose international support.

Israeli officials are also concerned that Mr Sullivan will present Israel with a US deadline of just a few weeks to end the war, whereas the Israeli military is pressing for the fighting to continue in its current format for at least another month and a half.

The talks will also focus on US-led diplomatic efforts to reach a new arrangement in south Lebanon, under which Hizbullah fighters will relocate away from the border, allowing some 100,000 Israeli civilians, who have fled the Galilee, to return to their homes. Hizbullah leaders said in recent days that their fighters would only redeploy north of the Litani river if IDF forces in Israel moved to positions south of Haifa. The suggestion was rejected out of hand by Israel.

In response to Tuesday night’s overwhelming vote in favour of an immediate ceasefire by the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would continue its war against Hamas. “We’re going all the way, there’s no question about it. I say this despite the huge pain, but also despite international pressures. Nothing will stop us, we’re going all the way until we’re victorious, and nothing less.”

The UN General Assembly vote has no legal force but was the strongest sign yet of eroding international support for Israel’s actions. Three-quarters of the 193 member states voted in favour and only eight countries joined the United States and Israel in voting against

Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen called on the international community to act “effectively and aggressively” to protect global shipping lanes after a number of attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Israeli-owned or Israel-bound vessels in recent weeks.

Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that the Houthis were committing a war crime by targeting “several commercial vessels carrying civilian crews in the Red Sea over the last few weeks”. – Additional reporting: Reuters