Lorries carrying aid for Gaza were again kept waiting to enter from Egypt on Thursday, with Israel evading demands to open the Rafah crossing as it bristles at Hamas over the return of dead hostages.
Visiting Egypt on Thursday, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher called on Israel – which tightly controls entry and exit from Gaza – to open all the strip's border crossings to “turn the situation around” from a state of famine.
The aid agency UNRWA said that while some food is entering Gaza under US President Donald Trump's ceasefire deal, it was “nowhere near enough to meet the massive needs”. It said three months' worth of food supplies were waiting to be delivered from Egypt and Jordan.
Israel, though, remains vague on when the Rafah crossing might open, as it demands that Hamas hands over the remains of 19 dead hostages still in Gaza. Defence Minister Israel Katz went as far as to warn that Israel would resume fighting in Gaza if its demands are not yet.
Government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said only that the Rafah crossing would be open “in the future” and that aid was entering Gaza via other routes. “Israel has so far only received the remains of nine of our hostages,” she said.
“We are demanding that Hamas release the 19 hostages whose bodies are still being held inside the Gaza Strip,” Ms Bedrosian said. Israel has meanwhile handed over dozens of mutilated and unidentified bodies of Palestinians to authorities in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed a US-brokered ceasefire last week that raised hopes of ending the two-year Gaza war and relieving the famine conditions in the strip. But Egyptian drivers and volunteers were sitting on the road next to their lorries on Thursday as Israel delays opening the Rafah route.
Mr Fletcher was heading to Rafah after visiting aid workers and injured Palestinians in Egypt on Thursday. “This route is a vital lifeline for food, medicine, tents and other life-saving aid,” he said. “We want to see it full of trucks, as part of a massive surge of aid following the peace deal.”
Mr Katz has threatened to resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas does not return 19 remaining bodies, after handing over nine and saying it had recovered all the bodies it could easily access.
“If Hamas refuses to comply with the agreement, Israel, in co-ordination with the United States, will resume fighting and act to achieve a total defeat of Hamas, to change the reality in Gaza and achieve all the objectives of the war,” a statement from Israel Katz's office said.
Hamas said it needed specialised equipment to continue the search for the remaining corpses and that it had so far returned all those it could find. It has so far handed over the remains of nine of 28 dead hostages, along with a 10th body that Israel said was not a captive.
“The resistance has fulfilled its commitment to the agreement by handing over all living Israeli prisoners in its custody, as well as the corpses it could access,” said a statement on social media by Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
“As for the remaining corpses, it requires extensive efforts and special equipment for their retrieval and extraction. We are exerting great effort in order to close this file.”
After the Israeli threat, senior US advisers reassured that Hamas was intending to abide by the deal. “We continue to hear from them that they intend to honour the deal. They want to see the deal completed in that regard,” one adviser said.
Speaking shortly after the latest two bodies were returned, US President Donald Trump said Hamas was looking for the remaining dead.
“It’s a gruesome process … they’re digging and they’re finding a lot of bodies,” he said at the Oval Office. “Then they have to separate the bodies.”
“Some of those bodies have been in there a long time and some of them are under rubble. They have to remove rubble. Some are in tunnels … that are way down under the earth.”
Mediators involved in the ceasefire deal, as well as Hamas, had warned it may take weeks to find the bodies of all the captives due to the level of destruction left behind by Israel's war on Gaza.
Sources had told The National while the deal was being agreed on that mediators had considered sending in teams to help with the search.
But the Israeli government has tied the return of hostages to the desperately needed humanitarian aid. With the deal under way, Mr Fletcher urged Israel to immediately open all crossings into Gaza for humanitarian aid.
Lorries carrying aid were seen moving into the Rafah border crossing linking Egypt and the Gaza Strip on Wednesday but were unable to cross into the enclave due to the Israeli blockade.
