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Every effort continues to be made by the United Nations and partners to get aid supplies into Gaza following the Israeli order to evacuate the north of the enclave, the UN’s emergency relief chief said on Monday.

“History is watching,” Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told UN News in Geneva, highlighting the desperate situation facing around one million Gazans uprooted in the last week, after the Israeli military warned of an imminent offensive following the deadly 7 October attacks on Israel by militant group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza strip since 2006.

“Aid access is our overwhelming priority. And we are in deep discussions hourly with the Israelis, with the Egyptians, with the Gazans about how to do that,” Mr. Griffiths said, adding that he was optimistic about hearing “some good news” soon that a solution could be found to the political impasse which has prevented aid convoys crossing from Egypt’s Rafah into southern Gaza.

The top UN aid official was speaking before heading to the Middle East, “trying to help, working with diplomats from all countries” to secure aid access and de-escalate the tinderbox situation, which UN Secretary-General described on Sunday as being on the “verge of the abyss”.

International responsibility

“It's all Member States who have obligations…not just those in the region” to defuse the worst Israeli-Palestinian conflagration in decades, Mr. Griffiths continued. “The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the Arab world all have obligations” to ensure that the lives of civilians are protected and the rules of war observed.

“Don't attack civilian infrastructure, protect civilians when they move,” the UN official insisted. “Make sure they get the aid they need and make sure that there are corridors which allow them some respite from the relentless attacks that are happening upon them.”

Hostage crisis

Among the key issues facing diplomats is securing the release of a reported 199 Israeli hostages, seized during the Hamas raid, the UN emergency relief chief continued.

“This war was started by taking those hostages. Of course, there's a history between Palestinian people and the Israeli people, and I'm not denying any of that. But that act alone lit a fire, which can only be put out with the release of those hostages.”

Amid ongoing airstrikes in Gaza and concerns over a regional escalation of the conflict - especially on the northern border with Lebanon - Mr. Griffiths reiterated the need for humanity to prevail.

“History is watching to see if the consequences of this war are going to be generationally bad or if there are going to be ways in which swiftly that can be rebuilt, some kind of comity or neighbourliness between those two tragic peoples. …(Those are) the messages I'll be taking to the region about biased in favour of one or the other, that biased in favour of humanity.”

Toll mounts

Since the start of the war, which has claimed the lives of some 1,300 Israeli citizens and injured 3,200 more, a reported 2,750 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 7,500 wounded.

Fourteen staff from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, have also been killed. “They were teachers, engineers, guards and psychologists, an engineer and a gynecologist,” Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told journalists on Sunday.

Medical aid to Lebanon

The World Health Organization (WHO) has rushed critical medical supplies to Lebanon in order to be ready to respond to any potential health crisis there.

Two shipments arrived in Beirut on Monday from WHO’s logistics hub in Dubai, and include enough surgical and trauma medicines and supplies to meet the needs of 800 to 1000 injured patients. The Lebanese Ministry of Health is in the process of identifying the referral hospitals that will receive these vital supplies.

Lebanon’s health system has been crippled as a result of an economic crisis, the Beirut port blast that occurred in August 2020, and the additional burden of the Syrian refugee crisis. There are severe shortages of specialized medical doctors and health workers, and medicines and medical equipment.

Since violence escalated between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory last Saturday, there have also been reports of clashes on the border between Israel and south Lebanon, resulting in casualties among civilians.

Speaking in Beijing, Mr. Guterres said that a ceasefire would “provide sufficient time and space” to realize two essential appeals which he made earlier this week: to Hamas, for the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages held in Gaza, and to Israel, to immediately allow aid to enter the sealed-off enclave in the throes of a devastating humanitarian crisis.

“The region is on the precipice,” he warned.

The call came a day after hundreds were killed in a strike at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, which Mr. Guterres strongly condemned, stressing that hospitals and all medical personnel are protected under international law.

Both sides have blamed each other, with Gaza’s de facto authorities accusing the Israeli military, who in turn held misfired rockets launched by Islamic Jihad militants towards Israel responsible.

The UN Security Council is set to meet on Wednesday morning in New York to discuss the crisis, with diplomatic tensions rising in the wake of the deadly hospital blast.

US President Joe Biden has arrived in Israel where he was met by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Biden pledged support for Israel and said he was "deeply saddened and outraged" by the lethal explosion at the hospital in Gaza City.

Aid stuck at the border

Trucks carrying lifesaving aid remained lined up at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. In a post on social platform X on Wednesday, UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus deplored that WHO supplies have been “stuck” at the border for four days.

“Every second we wait to get medical aid in, we lose lives,” he said.

Relentless diplomatic efforts by senior UN officials in favour of humanitarian access were set to continue, with the organization’s relief chief Martin Griffiths on the ground in Cairo, where he will be joined by Secretary-General Guterres on Thursday.

Mr. Griffiths wrote on X on Wednesday that providing aid to the people of Gaza is “a matter of life or death”.

“Doing so in a “sustained, unimpeded, predictable manner” is a “humanitarian imperative,” he added.

‘Too many lives in the balance’

Food, water, critical medicines and health supplies are running out fast in the enclave, where over a quarter of the population has been displaced since the start of the conflict. WHO said on Tuesday that out of 35 hospitals there, four are not functioning “due to severe damage and targeting”. Only eight of the 22 primary healthcare centres run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) are partially functional.

Mr. Guterres underscored that aid is desperately needed to respond to the “most basic needs” of the people of Gaza, the “overwhelming majority” of whom are women and children.

“Too many lives – and the fate of the entire region – hang in the balance,” he said.