TDT | Manama
Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
There will be no “significant pause” in the Israel-Hamas war, a senior US official said yesterday, as reports emerged that more than 80 people were killed in two Israeli attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in Bahrain. He spoke at the Security Council.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who also attended the Bahrain conference, strongly opposed this, saying it was “unacceptable” to link the humanitarian shutdown with hostage release.
Jabalia is Gaza’s largest refugee camp, with approximately 1.6 million people displaced by more than six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
US President Joe Biden’s chief of staff for the Middle East said at the annual IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain that the Israel-Hamas war would be “significantly temporary” if the hostages held in Gaza were released. “It will be suspended,” he said.
Brett McGuirk, speaking in Manama, said: “There will be a surge in humanitarian aid, a surge in fuel, a pause… when the hostages are released.”
He said the release of a large number of hostages would bring “a significant pause and a massive scale-up of humanitarian assistance.” Mr McGuirk said the situation in the besieged Palestinian territories was “horrible” and “intolerable”.
He said Biden discussed the issue Friday night with the ruler of the Gulf state of Qatar, which is leading mediation efforts toward a ceasefire and the release of prisoners.
In his speech at the summit, Safadi also expressed doubts about whether Israel would be able to achieve its goal of wiping out Hamas with heavy shelling and incursions into the Gaza Strip, long controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement. “Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas,” he said.
There are a lot of military personnel here. I simply cannot understand how this objective can be realized,” Ayman Safadi said at the annual IISS Manama Dialogue and Security Conference in Bahrain.
“We must…consider that the war is also an expression of the political and diplomatic failure of the international community. We all have not been able to solve this problem,” he said. Solved. “
The comments came amid what a health ministry official in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said was “an early-morning Israeli attack on the United Nations-run al-Fakhra school in the camp, in which “at least 50 “person” died. The school was being renovated. to a shelter for displaced Palestinians. ”
Citing social media videos, the report claimed that several bodies were seen covered in blood and dust on the floor of the building, with mattresses wedged under school desks.