RABAT: Morocco has sent 40 tons of humanitarian supplies for Gaza via an Israeli airport, a diplomatic source said Tuesday, the latest bid to diversify aid routes into the war-battered territory.
The food aid has arrived at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv before being transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent at the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza, the Moroccan diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Rabat’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “Morocco is the first country to transport its humanitarian aid via this unprecedented land route.”
Since the war began on October 7, aid trucks have generally entered the Gaza Strip via Egypt.
Israeli officials were unable to immediately confirm whether the Moroccan initiative was the first such land route for foreign aid through Israeli territory.
The diplomatic source said Morocco’s ties with Israel, formalized in a US-brokered normalization pact in 2020, helped the operation go ahead.
“Morocco has always said that its relationship with Israel is intended to serve peace in the region and the interests of the Palestinians,” the source said.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine in Gaza, under an Israeli siege imposed in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack that triggered the war, now in its sixth month.
Most aid enters through Rafah, on the Hamas-ruled territory’s southern border with Egypt, but UN and other relief agencies say only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain Gaza’s population of 2.4 million people has made it in.
A Spanish charity boat carrying 200 tons of food aid to Gaza set sail on Tuesday from Cyprus in hopes of opening a maritime corridor to alleviate the dire humanitarian crisis.
Also on Tuesday, four US Army vessels left the United States, carrying equipment to build a temporary port on Gaza’s shores for aid deliveries.
The war started with the October 7 attack that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive have killed 31,184 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Morocco inaugurates Gaza aid route via Israel
https://arab.news/ghnf6
Morocco inaugurates Gaza aid route via Israel
- The food aid has arrived at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv before being transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent
- Rabat’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “Morocco is the first country to transport its humanitarian aid via this unprecedented land route”
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
