There’ll be no progress on President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza unless Israel stops violating the ceasefire. The second phase of Trump’s plan cannot begin as long as Israel “continues violating the agreement and evading its commitments,” Hamas senior official Hossan Badran told the France-Presse news agency, reported TASS. He also recalled that under the agreements, Israel was supposed to reopen the Rafah checkpoint on the border with the Gaza Strip or increase humanitarian deliveries to the enclave but did not do this.
According to Badran, Hamas has already called for pressing Israel to compel it to honor the ceasefire terms. According to Gaza’s government media office, Israel has violated the ceasefire 738 times since it came in force.
AP notes that under the ceasefire deal, the number of trucks of supplies was supposed to ramp up to at least 600 a day. For the past month, the U.N. has recorded an average of around 120 trucks of aid entering Gaza. The figure does not include commercial trucks, whose precise numbers, AP says, are not known.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid entry, has said 600-800 trucks are entering daily. But the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in its weekly report dated Dec. 4 that many of the commercial goods in the market remain unaffordable to many Palestinians, and “dietary diversity remains poor, with essential protein sources still largely unavailable.”
The agency also said the entry of medical supplies has “not increased in any meaningful way” and some hospitals still face severe shortages of essential drugs and supplies.
