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Israel president says ‘moral imperative’ to bring home Gaza hostages

Israel’s president said in Poland on Thursday the return of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza was a “universal moral imperative” and called on the international community to help end “this horrific humanitarian crime”.Isaac Herzog spoke from the southern city of Oswiecim, the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the occasion of the annual March of the Living to commemorate its victims.Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps built by Nazi Germany and has become a symbol of the Holocaust of six million European Jews. One million Jews and more than 100,000 non-Jews died at the site between 1940 and 1945.”With a broken heart, I remind us all that even though after the Holocaust we swore ‘never again’, today — here and now — the souls of dozens of Jews are once again yearning within a cage, longing for water and freedom,” Herzog said at a ceremony.Nearly 60 “of our brothers and sisters remain held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity”, he added.”The return of the hostages is a universal moral imperative, and I call from here — from this sacred place — for the entire international community to mobilise and end this horrific humanitarian crime.”Some 251 people, including women and children, were seized during Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which left 1,218 Israelis dead according to an AFP tally based on official data, and sparked a deadly war in Gaza.Fifty-eight hostages are still being held there, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.Israel’s military response in Gaza has unleashed a humanitarian crisis and killed at least 51,355 people, mainly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.Herzog did not mention Israel’s military operations in Gaza at the ceremony in Auschwitz.Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, brokered a truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside the exchange of hostages and prisoners.Israel resumed its intense air strikes and ground offensive across Gaza on March 18 amid disagreement over the next phase in the ceasefire that for two months had largely halted the fighting.Last month, Herzog said he was shocked that the hostage issue was no longer a top priority in the country and criticised the war policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.Thousands of Israelis have been holding daily protests in Jerusalem, angry over the government’s policies including a return to war, which many see as forsaking the hostages still being held in Gaza.burs-amj/jhb

Moving heaven and earth to make bread in Gaza

In Gaza, where hunger gnaws and hope runs thin, flour and bread are so scarce that they are carefully divided by families clinging to survival. “Because the crossing points are closed, there’s no more gas and no flour, and no firewood coming in,” said Umm Mohammed Issa, a volunteer helping to make bread with the few resources still available.Israel resumed military operations in the Palestinian territory in mid-March, shattering weeks of relative calm brought by a fragile ceasefire.The United Nations has warned of a growing humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the besieged territory, where Israel’s blockade on aid since March 2 has cut off food, fuel and other essentials to Gaza’s 2.4 million people. Israel has repeatedly said it will not allow aid in, accusing Hamas of diverting the supplies, a claim the Palestinian militant group denies.Once again, residents have had to resort to increasingly desperate measures to feed themselves.To cook a thin flatbread called “saj”, named after the convex hotplate on which it is made, Issa said the volunteers have resorted to burning pieces of cardboard.”There’s going to be famine,” the Palestinian woman said, a warning international aid groups have previously issued over the course of 18 month of war. “We’ll be in the situation where we can no longer feed our children.”- ‘Bread is precious’ -Until the end of March, Gazans gathered each morning outside the few bakeries still operating, in the hope of getting some bread. But one by one, the ovens cooled as ingredients — flour, water, salt and yeast — ran out.Larger industrial bakeries central to operations run by the UN’s World Food Programme also closed for lack of flour and fuel to power their generators.On Wednesday, World Central Kitchen (WCK) sounded the alarm about a humanitarian crisis that is “grows more dire each day.”The organisation’s bakery is the only one still operating in Gaza, producing 87,000 loaves of bread per day. “Bread is precious, often substituting for meals where cooking has stopped,” it said.”I built a clay oven to bake bread to sell,” said Baqer Deeb, a 35-year-old father from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.He has been displaced by the fighting, like almost the entire population of the territory, and is now in Gaza City.”But now there’s a severe shortage of flour,” he said, “and that is making the bread crisis even worse.”There is no longer much food to be found for sale at makeshift roadside stalls, and prices are climbing, making many products unaffordable for most people.- ‘Mould and worms’ -Fidaa Abu Ummayra thought she had found a real bargain when she bought a large sack of flour for the equivalent of 90 euros at Al-Shati refugee camp in the north of the territory.”If only I hadn’t bought it,” the 55-year-old said. “It was full of mould and worms. The bread was disgusting.”Before the war, a typical 25-kilo sack like the one she bought would have gone for less than 10 euros.”We are literally dying of hunger,” said Tasnim Abu Matar in Gaza City.”We count and calculate everything our children eat, and divide up the bread to make it last for days,” the 50-year-old added.”We can’t take it any more.”People rummage through debris searching for something to eat as others walk for kilometres (miles) to aid distribution points hoping to find food for their families. Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”. According to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, displaced people at more than 250 shelters in Gaza had no or little access to enough food last month.Hamas, whose unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel ignited the war, accuses Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. True to their reputation for resilience after multiple wars, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have devised countless ways to cope with growing hardship.But in interviews with AFP, many said these improvised solutions often make them feel as though they’ve been thrust back centuries.