No hostage release until attacks on Gaza stop

Hamas will not release more hostages until Israel stops its military operation in Gaza, said Ghazi Hamad, senior leader of the Palestinian militant group.

“We will not hold any form of talks over prisoners exchange under the continuation of the Israeli genocidal war,” said Hamad in an English-language video statement issued on Thursday. 

He added Hamas was “open to any initiative that contributes to ending the aggression on our people.”

“The people in Gaza are on the verge of famine under the Israeli tightened and suffocating siege,” Hamad continued. 

US to agree on UN Security Council vote

The UN Security Council on Thursday again delayed a vote on a watered-down resolution to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza, though the revision has now secured Washington’s backing. 

Many diplomats at the UN said they needed to consult their capitals before the vote, expected Friday, because of significant changes. 

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters after consultations her country now backs the new text, and if it is put to a vote will support it.

The key provision of resolution with teeth was eliminated — a call for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

Instead, it calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” 

The steps are not defined, but diplomats said if adopted this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities.

More than 570,000 people starving in Gaza

More than half a million people in Gaza are starving, according to a report by the United Nations and other agencies. 

The findings highlight the dire humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory, with desperate people raiding humanitarian convoys earlier in the week.

The extent of the population’s hunger eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, the report noted. 

It warned the risk of famine is “increasing each day,” blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza.

“It doesn’t get any worse,’’ said Arif Husain, chief economist for the UN’s World Food Program. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”

The Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who is in Paris to meet the French senators, claimed Israel “can enable the entry of 300 or even 400 trucks a day, but due to a decisive failure of the UN… they are unable to bring in more than 125 trucks a day.”

The UN says that it is purely impossible to coordinate logistics properly while being constantly under bombing.

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using starvation as a method of warfare in Gaza by obstructing essential resources.