Deadly aid incident could hamper cease-fire talks in Gaza
- More than 100 civilians were killed while trying to get food
- Israel and Palestine have offered conflicting versions of events
- Talks for a cease-fire during Ramadan have stalled
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(NewsNation) — At least 112 people were killed near Gaza City and hundreds of injuries in an incident that has sparked contesting narratives from Israel and the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Palestinian officials say Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd as they were waiting for food from aid trucks. The Israeli Defense Force says Gazans surrounded the aid trucks and dozens were killed because of pushing and trampling, with some being run over by aid trucks.
Witnesses said many people were hurt because they got rammed by aid trucks that were moving too fast trying to escape Israeli fire.
There’s a lot of finger-pointing between both sides, but the general consensus is that whose fault is beside the point, with a bigger concern being what the impact of the incident will have on cease-fire negotiations and what it says about the consequences of the Israel-Hamas war.
Negotiators from Egypt, the U.S. and Qatar are working to try to get a truce before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins on March 10 and President Joe Biden has said the aid incident just adds more urgency to the talks.
The U.S. has talked about the decay of civil order inside Gaza as a consequence of the ongoing conflict, where evacuation orders from the IDF have pushed more and more civilians into a small area of the Gaza Strip and aid supplies have not been sufficient to address the needs of people trapped in the territory.
Other nations, including Qatar, have called this event a massacre, with even countries friendly to Israel calling for answers.
The incident has also hampered conversations about releasing more hostages who have been held captive by Hamas and other extremist groups since the Oct. 7 attack.
Some hostage families have been demonstrating on the ground in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, with large crowds of people, some carrying 134 stretchers to symbolize the 134 hostages still being held in Gaza.
The demonstrations seem to have shifted focus, with some calling on the U.S. to do more instead of speaking to the Israeli government.
“I think everything President Biden can do to help us is amazing because right now, this is our only hope,” said Zahiro Shahar Mor, whose uncle is still being held hostage. “The government here does not put the hostages on its front concern, it’s horrible. The American administration is sometimes more committed to the hostage situation than the Israeli one. We have to put this to an end.”
Israel has had two objectives since the war began, one is bringing the hostages home and the other is destroying Hamas. On the ground, there has been criticism that some Israelis believe the second objective is being weighed much more highly by the Israeli government than bringing the hostages home.