To get urgently needed food, clean water, temporary sanitation facilities and medical supplies to more than 2 million Palestinians, President Biden ordered construction of a floating dock. Building it will take weeks.

In the interim, aid trickles into the narrow strip of land between southwestern Israel and the Mediterranean. A Spanish-supplied ship from Cyprus offloaded rice and flour at a makeshift jetty formed from some of the ample rubble left by weeks of Israeli bombing. Some trucks are permitted to enter through “Gate 96,” a hole in the barrier that seals off Gaza from Israel. Some food is dropped by parachute. So far it is insufficient to slow the steady advance of severe hunger.

A Hamas fighter injured during an Israeli attack on Shifa Hospital is treated at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip on Sunday. 

In the northern part of Gaza, largely destroyed by the Israeli air and ground assault that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, people are desperate. Some have reportedly raided the few aid trucks that get in. Others were killed and seriously injured by air-dropped cargo when parachutes failed to open. Emergency aid is hardly a substitute for peace.

In the southernmost part of Gaza, in and around Rafah, hundreds of thousands who fled the Israeli strikes in the north now wait in terror —and hunger — for a threatened final assault.

The dock, welcome though it may be, is an almost perverse footnote to Biden administration policy that supplies and supports the Israeli destruction at the heart of the crisis.

By demanding an immediate and lasting cease-fire, thus permitting the return of regular supply convoys, the U.S. would save many more lives and stave off far more hunger than any number of docks and airdrops.

But the best the administration could muster Monday was an abstention in a United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution. It represented a modest shift in policy (although Biden administration officials denied it) after three U.S. vetoes of previous resolutions.

Nearly six months into the Israel-Hamas war, more U.S. officials, including dozens of members of Congress, are belatedly demanding an end to the Gaza horror. Or, as in the case of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a change in the Israeli government.

Such calls should not be mistaken as support for the religio-fascist Hamas regime, whose brutal attack began this latest tragedy, and which continues to hold more than 100 hostages.

It is high time for Biden to acknowledge that there are at least three parties in the Gaza disaster. Israel of course is one. Hamas is another.

Palestinians just trying to avoid starvation are a third.

It may be convenient for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pretend that Hamas combatants and innocent Palestinian civilians are a single adversary, and that bombing and starving Palestinians is putting pressure on Hamas to release the hostages.

But Hamas likely has little regard for the innocents and is only too willing to permit their slaughter to further its own power.

The deaths of more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and the grief and misery of the survivors is not merely tragic, but gratuitous. Whatever clout the U.S. retains in the region should be used to end this madness. It is a fourth party to the conflict. As is the rest of the world.

And then build the dock.

Intense Israeli bombardment hits southern Gaza, calls for more aid grow

The southern Gaza Strip came under intense Israeli bombardment overnight, despite international pressure for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territory where famine is looming.

Besieged Gaza is in desperate need of aid and the United States said it would continue airdrops, despite pleas from Hamas to stop the practice after the Islamist group said 18 people had died trying to reach food packages.

A fireball lit up the night sky in the southern city of Rafah, the last remaining urban centre in Gaza not to have been attacked by Israeli ground forces. About 1.5 million people are crammed in the area, many having fled south towards the border with Egypt.

The sound of explosions was also heard and smoke was seen rising in Gaza City in the north, where Israeli troops have been attacking the city's largest hospital for more than a week.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said early Wednesday that 66 people had been killed overnight, including three killed in Israeli air strikes in and around Rafah.

The fighting went on unabated two days after the UN Security Council passed its first resolution calling for an "immediate ceasefire" and urging the release of the roughly 130 hostages Israel says remain in Gaza, including 34 captives who are presumed dead.

Israeli forces have also surrounded two hospitals in Khan Yunis, where the health ministry said 12 people, including some children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a camp for the displaced.

The Palestinian Red Crescent has warned that thousands were trapped in the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis and "their lives are in danger".

- 'Man-made famine' -

Underscoring the desperation of civilians trapped by the fighting, Hamas has asked donor countries to stop their airdrops after 12 people drowned trying to recover parachuted food aid from the sea off Gaza's Mediterranean coast.

Hamas and the Swiss-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also said another six people were killed in stampedes trying to get aid.

"People are dying just to get a can of tuna," Gaza resident Mohamad al-Sabaawi told AFP, holding a can in his hand after a scramble over an aid package.

Hamas has also demanded that Israel allow more aid trucks to enter the territory, which the United Nations has warned is on the brink of a "man-made famine" after nearly six months of fighting.

The war, triggered by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, has shattered Gaza's infrastructure and aid agencies say all of its 2.4 million people are now in need of humanitarian help.

The UN children's fund, UNICEF, said vastly more aid must be rushed into Gaza by road rather than by air or sea to avert an "imminent famine".

UNICEF spokesman James Elder said the necessary help was "a matter of kilometres away" in aid-filled trucks waiting across Gaza's southern border with Egypt.

The US National Security Council said in a statement it would continue trying to get aid in by road, but also said it would continue airdrops.

AFPTV footage showed crowds rushing towards aid packages on Tuesday being dropped by parachute from planes sent by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.

- 'Political isolation' -

The October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 32,414 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.

Israeli troops have shown no sign of a let-up in the fight against Hamas, with the military saying its jets had struck more than 60 targets, including tunnels and buildings "in which armed terrorists were identified".

The UN Security Council resolution passed Monday demanded a ceasefire for the remaining two weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that should lead to a "lasting" truce.

The United States, Israel's top ally, which had blocked previous resolutions, abstained from the vote, prompting Israel to cancel a planned US visit by senior officials.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Israel was experiencing "unprecedented political isolation" and losing US "protection" at the Security Council.

Washington has baulked at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to launch a ground assault on Rafah, and the United States has also expressed increasing concern over the humanitarian toll.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said before meeting his Israeli counterpart that "the number of civilian casualties is far too high, and the amount of humanitarian aid is far too low" in Gaza.

- Talks 'ongoing' -

Officials from the two sides are in indirect mediated talks in Qatar aimed at agreeing on a ceasefire and the release of hostages.

However, both Hamas and Netanyahu said the talks were failing and blamed each other.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said this week the talks were "ongoing".

In Khan Yunis, dozens of Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles surrounded the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

The health ministry said shots were fired around the sprawling complex but no raid had yet taken place.

Israeli troops have also been engaged in heavy fighting at Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, the territory's largest, for nine days.

Israel said it has killed 170 Palestinian militants and arrested hundreds there.

Israel has labelled its actions "precise operational activities" and said it has taken care to avoid harm to civilians, but aid agencies have voiced concern for non-combatants caught up in the fighting.

Palestinians living near Al-Shifa have reported corpses in the streets, constant bombardment and the rounding up of men who are stripped to their underwear and questioned.

UN Palestinian agency chief says funding secured until end of May

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has enough funds to keep operating until at least the end of May, its chief told Swiss media on Tuesday.

UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

This led many donor nations, including the United States, to abruptly suspend funding to the agency, threatening its efforts to deliver desperately-needed aid in Gaza, where the UN has warned of an impending famine.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini had warned last month that the funding crunch was so great the organisation might not be able to operate beyond March.

But after a number of countries recently resumed or increased their funding, including Spain, Canada and Australia, Lazzarini told Switzerland's Keystone-ATS news agency Tuesday that "the situation today is less dramatic".

"But we are still working from one month to the next," he said, adding that now "we have funding until the end of May".

Lazzarini was in Geneva to brief Switzerland's parliamentary foreign policy commission on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and to address questions about Israel's accusations against the UNRWA employees, the commission said in a brief statement.

The Swiss national is hoping to convince his country to follow the lead of the nations that have resumed their funding to UNRWA.

Switzerland, which in recent years has dished out around 20 million Swiss francs ($23 million) annually to UNRWA, said in late January the 2024 payment was in doubt following Israel's allegations against the agency.

The United Nations has launched both an internal and an independent investigation but has said Israel has not provided it with any evidence to support the claims against its staff.

Lazzarini has accused Israel of trying to destroy UNRWA, which employs some 30,000 people across the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, providing healthcare, education and other basic services.

He was himself barred last week from entering Gaza, and said at the weekend that Israel had definitively barred the agency from making aid deliveries into northern Gaza, where the threat of famine is highest.

The October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 32,414 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Britain airdrops food into famine-threatened Gaza as nations seek new routes to deliver aid

A wounded Palestinian woman stands beside the rubble of her house destroyed by an overnight Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. Thirty-one Palestinians, most of them children and women, were killed. Britain on Tuesday announced its first airdrop of food into the enclave where Paltesinians face famine conditions.

Britain's military has airdropped more than 10 metric tones of food into northern Gaza, officials said Tuesday, as nations seek alternative routes to deliver humanitarian goods to the Palestinian enclave as it faces famine conditions.

The aid of water, rice, cooking oil, flour, tinned goods and baby formula had departed from Amman, Jordan, aboard a Royal Air Force A400M and was dropped along the northern coastline of Gaza on Monday, the ministry said, adding that it was Britain's first-ever mission to deliver humanitarian aid by parachute.

"The UK's goal is to use every route possible to deliver life-saving aid, whether that is by road, air or new routes via the sea," Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said in a statement.

Britain now adds to name to a number of countries that have turned to airdropping supplies in to Gaza where Palestinians face the risk of starving to death amid Israel's war in the enclave against Hamas.

Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and France have conducted airdrop missions since at late last month, with the United States conducted its first such mission in early March.

Morocco has also conducted airdrops this month, with Singapore conducting its first airdrop mission into Gaza last week. According to Israel, it has permitted more than 40 such air drop missions. The U.S. military has conducted 17 of those missions, based on releases from U.S. Central Command.

Since Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel Oct. 7, Israel has been responding with a brutal ground and air offense that has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians as well as blocking aid to the enclave.

Though diplomacy has resulted in Israel allowing some aid into Gaza, it falls well short of the 500 trucks of supplies that the enclave received daily prior to war and what the Palestinians need to stave off starvation.

At least 25 people in Gaza, including infants, have died from malnutrition and drought, according to figures released earlier this month by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, though the officials suggest the actual figure could be much higher as its number "reflects only what happens in hospitals."

Humanitarian organizations, as well as the United Nations, have blamed Israel for hindering the flow of aid into the enclave, while Israel has blamed the United Nations and its aid organizations inside Gaza for failing to distribute food.

On Sunday, the United Nations said that Israel banned its relief agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA from distributing humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, which faces the gravest threat of famine of the entire enclave.

UNRWA said it has not been able to distribute food to the region in nearly two months. Israel on Monday responded with a short video it published on social media stating it is committed to delivering aid to northern Gaza while stating UNRWA, "on the other hand, has long forsaken its role in facilitating any aid to the north."

US defence secretary says Gaza death toll ‘far too high’ in public rebuke of Israel

US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said the civilian death toll in Gaza is “far too high” ahead of a meeting with his Israeli counterpart on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Pentagon just prior to a sit-down with Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, Mr Austin also made an urgent call for Israel to increase the amount of aid it is allowing into Gaza to prevent a famine.

“In Gaza today, the number of civilian casualties is far too high and the amount of humanitarian aid is far too low,” he said. He added that Gaza is currently “suffering a humanitarian catastrophe” and called for "immediate increases in assistance to avert famine.”

The comments represent a rare public rebuke by the US nearly six months into the war in Gaza, and come at a time of increased tensions between the two historic allies over Israel’s conduct in its devastating offensive, which has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry — most of them women and children.

A senior American defence official told reporters after the meeting that Mr Austin provided his Israeli counterpart with what was described as an alternative to a full-scale invasion of Rafah featuring precise targeting of senior Hamas leaders while securing Egypt’s land border with Gaza and providing for the entrance of humanitarian assistance and the exit of civilians as needed.

The official described the talks as “very good,” “productive,” and “quite meaty” and said Mr Austin “expressed the view that Hamas’ remaining battalions in Rafah must be dismantled”.

“That’s a legitimate goal that we share,” the official added.

An Israeli defence ministry readout of the meeting also stated that Mr Gallant and Mr Austin discussed “the progress of the fighting to defeat Hamas, the efforts to return the hostages and the strengthening of the security-strategic cooperation with an emphasis on the procurement processes to preserve Israel’s qualitative edge in the region”.

The meeting between the American defence secretary and the Israeli defence minister came one day after the US withheld its veto at the United Nations Security Council for the first time since the war began and allowed the body to pass a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war — something the Biden administration had blocked three times before in support of Israel’s desire to continue its offensive into southern Gaza.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled the planned visit of a high-level delegation to Washington DC in protest, and accused the US of “retreating” from what he said had been a “principled position”.

The Israeli war in Gaza was launched in response to a surprise attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis. More than 200 were taken hostage by the group in the attack.

Tensions between the US and Israel have been rising in recent weeks over a litany of issues, among them Israel’s blocking of life-saving aid into Gaza, the high civilian death toll caused by the war, and its stated intention to launch a ground operation in the city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians are sheltering after having been displaced from elsewhere in the besieged territory.

The high-level delegation cancelled by Mr Netanyahu was called for Israeli and US officials to discuss alternative plans for a full-on ground assault in Rafah, which the US had cautioned would cause too many civilian casualties.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel would press on until it had achieved its objectives despite the UN vote.

“Israel will not surrender to Hamas’ delusional demands and will continue to act to achieve all the goals of the war: releasing all the hostages, destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and ensuring that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Struggling for a can of food: starving Gazans scramble for aid drops

Mutliple foreign nations have resorted to airdropping aid into Gaza, with the humanitarian situation increasingly dire.

A military plane banked over the war-ravaged ruins of Gaza City dropping dozens of black parachutes carrying food aid.

On the ground, where almost no building within sight was still standing, hungry men and boys raced towards the beach where most of the aid seemed to have landed.

Dozens of them jostled intensely to get to the food, with scrums forming up and down the rubble-strewn dunes.

"People are dying just to get a can of tuna," said Mohamad al-Sabaawi, carrying an almost empty bag on his shoulder, a young boy beside him.

"The situation is tragic, as if we are in a famine. What can we do? They mock us by giving us a small can of tuna."

Aid groups say only a fraction of the supplies required to meet basic humanitarian needs have arrived in Gaza since October, while the UN has warned of famine in the north of the territory by May without urgent intervention.

The aid entering the Gaza Strip by land is far below pre-war levels, at around 150 vehicles a day compared to at least 500 before the war, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

With Gazans increasingly desperate, foreign governments have turned to airdrops, in particular in the hard-to-reach northern parts of the territory including Gaza City.

The United States, France and Jordan are among several countries conducting airdrops to people living within the ruins of what was the besieged territory's biggest city.

But the aircrews themselves told AFP that the drops were insufficient.

US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Anderson noted earlier this month that what they were able to deliver was only a "drop in the bucket" of what was needed.

The air operation has also been marred by deaths. Five people on the ground were killed by one drop and 10 others injured after parachutes malfunctioned, according to a medic in Gaza.

Calls have mounted for Israel to allow in more aid overland, while Israel has blamed the UN and UNRWA for not distributing aid in Gaza.

"Palestinians in Gaza desperately need what has been promised -- a flood of aid. Not trickles. Not drops," UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Sunday after visiting Gaza's southern border crossing with Egypt at Rafah.

"Looking at Gaza, it almost appears that the four horsemen of war, famine, conquest and death are galloping across it," he added.

The war was sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel launched a retaliatory bombardment and invasion of Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas that has killed at least 32,333 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Returning home in Gaza City with little to keep his family going, another Palestinian man said their situation was miserable.

"We are the people of Gaza, waiting for aid drops, willing to die to get a can of beans -- which we then share among 18 people," he said.