The latest strikes killed 756 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, bringing the total dead in the enclave to 6,546, more than a third of them children. Israel says more than 1,400 people were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
The U.N. relief agency that provides the lion’s share of humanitarian aid to Gaza warned Wednesday that it was near the breaking point and would be forced to halt operations within hours if fuel was not allowed in.
“Our shelters are four times over their capacities — many people are sleeping in the streets as current facilities are overwhelmed,” the agency said in a post on X, formerly called Twitter.
In Israel, official anger continued to burn over comments by U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, who condemned Hamas but also referred to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and called for a cease-fire.
After first calling for Gutteres’s resignation, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, told Israeli media Wednesday that “we will refuse visas to U.N. representatives. … It’s time to teach them a lesson.”
Erdan charged that U.N. officials have presented “a false picture” of the conditions in Gaza and that “everyone knows” that the U.N. agencies in Gaza are controlled by Hamas. He said a next step should be to expel “hostile U.N. officials” from Israel.
But Guterres is not a lone voice.
In a fiery speech to lawmakers from his party, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday condemned Israel, defended Hamas and called for international pressure for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan described Hamas as “a liberation group” waging a battle to protect its homeland, rather than the terrorist organization it is branded by Israel, the United States and much of Europe.
Turkey, a NATO member and one of the first Muslim-majority countries to open diplomatic relations with Israel, had been rebuilding ties that had been strained in recent years — until the latest outbreak in hostilities.
Erdogan described Israel’s airstrikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip as “not self-defense, but deliberate brutality aimed at committing crimes against humanity.”
He called for pressure on Israel for a cease-fire and proposed an “International Palestine-Israel Peace Conference,” in which “all influential actors in the region will take part.”
“This conference should be held in the light of the lessons learned from the failed outcome of many similar meetings held in the last 30 years, from Madrid to Oslo, from Sharm el-Sheikh to Annapolis,” the Turkish leader said, referring to past Middle East peace conferences.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected “with horror the Turkish president’s grave words about the terrorist organization Hamas.”
Fears of a regional conflagration prompted King Abdullah II of Jordan to tell visiting French President Emmanuel Macron that the international community “needed to urgently pressure Israel to stop the war, protect civilians, and end the siege on the strip,” according to a statement by the palace.
The Biden administration has rejected the calls for a formal cease-fire, saying it would only benefit Hamas. But many Western diplomats have pivoted to call instead for a brief “pause” in rocket fire from Hamas and airstrikes by Israel.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed with Washington on Wednesday, saying that “a wholesale cease-fire would only serve to benefit Hamas,” but added that “humanitarian pauses, which are temporary, which are limited in scope, can be an operational tool.”
Foreign ministers from Australia, Canada and New Zealand have added their voices to the urgent calls for the establishment of safe areas and for a humanitarian pause in the fighting to help civilians.
Only three small aid convoys have arrived in Gaza since Israel announced a “complete siege.” Those trucks, crossing from Egypt to Gaza, did not carry fuel, meaning that the backup generators used to pump water, operate ambulances and keep the lights on are failing.
Gaza residents say that it is typical for a school that once educated 500 students to now house 5,000 people, and that those sheltering inside are provided with just a liter of water a day. The U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees said nearly 600,000 people are now living at 150 of its facilities in the Gaza Strip, mostly schools.
A spokesman for al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, Mohamed al-Haj, told The Washington Post that the facility will run out of fuel within two days. For now, it has just enough solar power to ration among the most critical needs, such as newborns in neonatal intensive care, dialysis patients and lifesaving operations.
At the night, the solar power cuts out.
A 52-year-old teacher who lives nearby said she had no access to news and only intermittent access to electricity, internet, clean water and cooking gas.
“No one here asks how you are. We just communicate when we hear bombings and we try to estimate where it is,” the educator said by phone, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her safety.
Several bombs fell during the spotty phone conversation. “We are just trying to survive,” she said. “Just to know that in those 30 minutes who is alive.”
Booth reported from London.
