Bibi faces pushback over Gaza annexation plan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced pushback from the head of the military over his proposal to seize remaining areas of Gaza it doesn’t already control during a tense three-hour meeting, three Israeli officials said.
Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, warned the prime minister that taking the rest of Gaza could trap the military in the territory, which it withdrew from two decades ago, and could lead to harm to the hostages being held there, the sources briefed on the Tuesday meeting said.
The Israeli military says it already controls 75% of Gaza after nearly two years of war, which began when militant group Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities in October 2023.
Much of the crowded, coastal enclave has been devastated in the war, which has destroyed homes, schools, mosques and hospitals. Most of the population has been displaced multiple times and aid groups say residents are on the verge of famine.
Bibi is scheduled to discuss military plans for Gaza with other ministers on Thursday.
In the strip, weakened by hunger, many Palestinians trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water – a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy.
Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign a global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups.
Though some water comes from small desalination units run by aid agencies, most is drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis.
Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war but resumed some supply later though the pipeline network in the territory has been badly damaged.
The United Nations says the minimum emergency level of water consumption per person is 15 litres a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 litres a day according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
A policy lead for aid agency Oxfam in the Palestinian territories said the average consumption in Gaza now was 3-5 litres a day.
At least 38 Palestinians were killed overnight and into Wednesday in the Gaza Strip while seeking aid from UN convoys and sites run by a US-backed contractor, according to health officials.
World