EXPLAINER

As attacks continue in the besieged enclave, Gaza’s population of 2.3 million faces acute hunger and a humanitarian crisis.

Here’s how things stand on Friday, February 23, 2024:

Fighting and humanitarian crisis

• A series of Israeli attacks on central Gaza on Thursday has killed 40 people and injured more than 100, authorities in the besieged enclave said.
• Meanwhile, as Israel’s assault on Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis continues, aid agencies hope to evacuate an estimated 140 patients stranded there. Palestinian authorities reported that Israeli troops withdrew from the complex and then stormed it again.
• Gaza’s health ministry said that 110 patients were waiting to be evacuated. It said eight patients at Nasser had died due to the lack of power and oxygen four days earlier and that their bodies had begun to decompose, posing a risk to other patients.
• Gaza’s population of 2.3 million faces acute hunger and the spread of disease in a humanitarian crisis that aid officials describe as unprecedented.
• Separately, an independent panel investigating Israeli claims of ties between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, will focus on whether the agency has done enough to uphold UN standards of neutrality.

Regional tensions and diplomacy

• Speaking to reporters during the G20 foreign ministers’ summit in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that Israel cannot unilaterally block a Palestinian state.
• In New York City, thousands of protesters have marched to the office of the pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza.
• In the International Court of Justice (ICJ), China said that the Palestinians “must not be denied” justice at a hearing on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
• “Justice has been long delayed, but it must not be denied,” China’s Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser Ma Xinmin told the court in The Hague
• Finally, as tensions continue to build up regionally, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it attacked several Israeli bases and targeted two buildings where troops had gathered in the towns of Metula and Manara.
• The group said its attacks on Israel will stop when the war on Gaza ends.

Violence in the occupied West Bank

• In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli air attack struck a vehicle in the Jenin refugee camp, killing at least one person.
• Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the country’s defence ministry is set to permit the construction of 3,344 new homes in illegal Israeli settlements.
• Israel forces have also demolished two homes, a water well and the electricity network in the Khallet al-Farra community, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported.
• On Wednesday, at least one person was killed and eight wounded when three Palestinian gunmen opened fire on motorists near an Israeli checkpoint near occupied East Jerusalem.