U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to the press onboard of Air Force One en route from Israel, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on October 18, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said Egypt’s president has agreed to open a border crossing into Gaza to allow in 20 trucks with humanitarian aid.

Mr. Biden said he spoke with Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi after his visit to Israel, where leaders there agreed to allow the aid in.

Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, stopping all entry of food, water, medicine, and fuel to its 2.3 million people following the Hamas attack on October 7.

White House officials said the aid would flow in the coming days. Mr. Biden said if Hamas confiscates the aid, “it will end”.

Palestinians take part in a protest after an Israeli air strike hit Al-Ahli Hospital, according to Gaza Health Ministry, in Tubas, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on October 17, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Gulf Cooperation Council on Tuesday announced $100 million in emergency aid for the Gaza Strip, as Israel bombards targets in the enclave during its war against Hamas militants.

After an extraordinary meeting in Muscat, the bloc’s foreign ministers pledged “an urgent humanitarian relief operation” with “relief aid worth $100 million”.

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The top diplomats of the six GCC countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — met as several people were killed in strikes on a Gaza hospital compound sheltering displaced people, said Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Israel blamed a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based militant group which has claimed to be fighting alongside Hamas.

After the Palestinian militants of Hamas burst through Israel’s heavily fortified Gaza border 11 days ago, shooting, mutilating and burning more than 1,400 people in southern Israel, Israel’s retaliatory bombing raids have killed around 3,000 Gazans.

The GCC meeting’s final statement stressed “the necessity of ensuring the urgent delivery of this aid” without specifying how it will get to Gaza.

In recent days, Gulf countries have sent plane-loads of assistance to Egypt’s El Arish, hoping to send it through the Rafah border point — Gaza’s only crossing that is not under Israeli control.

On Tuesday, hundreds of laden trucks headed along the 40-kilometre (25-mile) road from El Arish to Rafah, aid officials said.

So far Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing closed, both to aid going in and foreign nationals trying to flee, as Israel has repeatedly struck the Palestinian side of the crossing.

GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi “called on the international community to… demand an immediate halt to all forms of military escalation against defenceless civilians in Gaza”, an English statement on the GCC website said.

The international community must also “categorically reject any calls to forcibly displace the Palestinian people from Gaza, as this represents a violation of basic human rights and international principles”, it added.