Region

UNITED NATIONS, United States — Gazans are "in the midst of an epic humanitarian catastrophe before the eyes of the world", UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday, while calling for an expansion of the current pause in the Israeli war on Gaza. 

"Intense negotiations are taking place to prolong the truce, which we strongly welcome, but we believe we need a true humanitarian ceasefire," he said at a United Nations Security Council meeting.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki told the meeting that the Palestinian people "are faced with an existential threat" amid the conflict.

"We are owed respect to our inherent dignity... Israel has no right to self-defence against a people that it occupies," he said.

The ongoing truce in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas is scheduled to expire early Thursday after a six-day pause in the fighting, which was sparked by sudden Hamas attacks on October 7 that prompted a devastating Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

With 60 Israelis and180 Palestinian prisoners already released and more set to walk free on Wednesday under the agreement, conflict mediator Qatar said negotiators were working for a "sustainable" ceasefire.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that “[a resumption] in fighting would only most likely turn into a calamity that devours the whole region”.

48-hour truce extension 

After a 48-hour extension of an initial four-day truce, a new group of 12 hostages, 10 Israelis plus two Thais, was freed from Gaza on Tuesday, with 30 Palestinians released by Israel.

“I welcome the arrangement reached by Israel and Hamas, with the assistance of the governments of Qatar, Egypt and the United States,” Guterres said.

The truce has brought a temporary halt to the fighting that began last month following sudden attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7.  Israel’s subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, mostly civilians, according to health officials in Gaza, and reduced large parts of the north of the territory to rubble.

“Meanwhile, an estimated 45 per cent of all homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed,” Guterres said.

The truce in Gaza has not ended violence in the occupied West Bank, where an eight-year-old Palestinian boy and a teenager were killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Since the October 7 sudden attacks, more than 230 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to the ministry.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Hamas is willing to extend a truce for four days and release more Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a source close to the militant group said on Wednesday, as mediators sought a lasting halt to the conflict.

A current truce is scheduled to expire early Thursday after a six-day pause in a conflict sparked by sudden Hamas attacks that prompted a devastating Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

With 60 Israelis and 180 Palestinian prisoners already released and more set to walk free on Wednesday under the agreement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to travel to Israel later Wednesday to push for an extension of the pause in fighting.

Hamas earlier "informed the mediators that it is willing to extend the truce for four days", a source close to the group told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Under that arrangement, "the movement would be able to release Israeli prisoners that it, other resistance movements and other parties hold during this period, according to the terms of the existing truce", the source added.

Speaking after a NATO meeting in Brussels, Blinken said he would be "focused on doing what we can to extend the pause so that we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in".

With tensions high despite the truce, the Palestinian health ministry in the occupied West Bank said an eight-year-old boy and a teenager were shot and killed by the Israeli forces on Wednesday in the territory.

The Israeli forces said it was "verifying" the information.

Violence has flared in the West Bank since the conflict erupted, with nearly 240 Palestinians killed there by Israeli forces or settlers, according to the ministry.

After a 48-hour extension of an initial four-day truce, a new group of 12 hostages, 10 Israelis plus two Thais, was freed from Gaza on Tuesday, with 30 Palestinians released by Israel.

An AFP journalist saw masked and armed fighters from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad hand over hostages to Red Cross officials in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

The Israeli hostages freed were all women, including 17-year-old Mia Leimberg, who returned to Israel with her mother and aunt.

Hamas has released more than 20 other hostages outside the scope of the truce agreement, mostly Thais.

Thailand’s foreign ministry said 17 of the released Thai hostages would arrive back in the kingdom on Thursday. It said about 13 Thais remained among the hostages held in Gaza.

Among the Palestinian prisoners freed in Tuesday’s exchange was 14-year-old Ahmad Salaima who returned to his home in occupied East Jerusalem to cheers and hugs from relatives.

Israel’s government has received a list of the new hostages to be freed on Wednesday, Israeli media reported. There was no official confirmation.

Some of the hostages in Gaza are in the hands of another Palestinian fighter group, Islamic Jihad.

Its spokesman Musab Al Breim told AFP on Tuesday in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis that “the war is now continuing in indirect negotiations with the Israeli occupier”.

He said his group and Hamas were “committed” to respecting the truce agreement “as long as the occupier does so, and we are ready to pursue a political route to make the occupier pay”.

FUJAIRAH, United Arab Emirates — High in remote mountains in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, a new plant will soon take atmospheric CO2 and pump it into rock, part of attempts to target planet-heating emissions without abandoning fossil fuels.

Using novel technology developed by Omani start-up 44.01, the solar-powered plant will suck carbon dioxide from the air, dissolve it in seawater and inject it deep underground, where it will mineralise over a period of months.

The new site on the Gulf of Oman is funded by state oil giant ADNOC, whose CEO Sultan Al Jaber is president of the UN's COP28 climate talks and chairman of Masdar, a renewable energies company.

The first CO2 injection is expected during COP28 which starts on Thursday in nearby Dubai, and where the debate over hydrocarbons will be a key battle between campaigners and the oil lobby.

“We believe this volume of rocks here in the UAE has the potential to store gigatons of CO2,” ADNOC’s Chief Technology Officer Sophie Hildebrand told AFP during a tour of the facility this week.

“ADNOC has committed $15 billion to decarbonisation projects,” she added, declining to say how much was spent on the Fujairah plant.

The UAE is the world’s seventh largest oil producer, and plans to invest $150 billion by 2027 to expand its oil and gas production capacity. 

Oil producers are throwing their weight behind carbon capture and storage technology as a global warming solution despite criticism from climate experts who caution it is insufficient to tackle the crisis.

With little investment and few projects in operation around the world so far, the technology is currently nowhere near the scale needed to make a difference to global emissions.

‘Unproven at scale’ 

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the existing fossil fuel infrastructure — without the use of carbon capture, will push the world beyond the desired limit of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.

At the plant in Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven sheikhdoms, giant fans extract CO2 directly from the surrounding atmosphere.

Liquid CO2 is stored in vertical tanks, then converted into gas and dissolved in seawater that will be injected into a well that is one kilometre deep.

“It will be around eight months for the CO2 to be fully mineralised in the subsurface from the moment of injection,” said Talal Hasan, CEO of 44.01.

The company, one of the 2022 winners of the UK’s Earthshot Prize, has already carried out a test injection of around 1.2 tonnes of CO2 in Oman.

“This is a 10 to 15 times scale-up of the Oman pilot,” said Hasan.

The “target rate is 1 tonne of CO2 per day for an initial period of 10 days”, he added.

When asked about cost, he said the aim is to make it competitive with more conventional carbon storage techniques.

“Our target is to eventually reach a cost of about $15 per ton of CO2 sequestered, not including the cost of the actual capture of the CO2,” he said.

Jaber, the COP28 president and head of ADNOC, has said climate diplomacy should focus on phasing out oil and gas emissions, not necessarily the fossil fuels themselves.

Climate campaigners have raised concerns about the influence of fossil fuel interests at COP28, where the benefits of carbon capture will be strongly pushed.

“When negotiating parties speak of phasing down unabated fossil fuels, they are excluding those fuels whose emissions were mitigated by carbon capture and storage,” said Karim Elgendy, associate fellow at Britain’s Chatham House think tank.

“The issue with carbon capture and storage technologies is that they are unproven at scale,” he said.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — A red keffiyeh scarf around her neck and a beaming smile on her face, Rouba Assi fell into her friends' arms after being freed from an Israeli prison.

"I missed you so much," said the 23-year-old activist, as the crowd around her hoisted her to their shoulders, chanting "Welcome back! Welcome back!"

Her parents, still in visible disbelief at her release after six months in an Israeli jail, could not take their eyes off her.

In the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday night, as every evening since Friday, crowds gathered to welcome home the latest group of Palestinians freed under a prisoner-hostage exchange deal struck between Israel and Hamas that paused fighting in the Gaza Strip.

And on Tuesday, like every other night, the arrival of the white bus carrying the freed prisoners was greeted with an explosion of joy in the Palestinian territory.

"I'm really happy. I feel like I'm in a movie," said Mohammad, a young man from Hebron, who declined to give his last name.

"It's crazy. The Palestinian prisoners are back in Palestine."

Victory signs 

Like many others, Mohammad had come to follow the bus bringing Palestinian detainees released by Israel in return for some of the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas.

The sudden attack,  left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials.

Israel launched a punishing air and ground campaign against the militant group in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-run government says the offensive has killed more than 15,000 people, also mostly civilians.

But the truce facilitating the prisoner-hostage exchanges has largely silenced the guns on both sides for six days now.

It is set to remain in effect until at least Thursday morning, and could be extended further.

Each night since Friday, Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza have freed around a dozen hostages, all women and children, with Israel releasing three times as many prisoners, women or males under the age of 19.

Mohammad filmed with his phone as a group of smiling young women just freed from prison saluted the crowd with a “V” for victory sign and danced in front of the bus.

Some people sported the colours of various Palestinian movements, among them the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Fateh Party of President Mahmoud Abbas, but the green flag of Hamas was the most popular.

“We are Mohammed Deif’s people!” the crowd chanted at one point, referring to the elusive leader of Hamas’s armed wing, one of the alleged masterminds of the October 7 attacks.

To those in the crowd, albeit smaller than previous nights, forcing Israel to free 180 Palestinians so far constitutes a major victory, but the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group notes that roughly 3,300 others have been arrested since October 7.

There are more than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

According to health officials in the West Bank, a young Palestinian was killed overnight on Monday as the prisoner bus passed through Beitunia, an industrial town between Israel’s Ofer prison and Ramallah.

Each evening, crowds of young people have set up barricades and burned garbage and tyres in front of Israeli soldiers.

On a hill overlooking Ofer prison, dozens of people waited for hours to watch the release, some warming themselves near fires. Others in cars and on motorcycles cruised around nearby housing blocks.

All the while, the waiting Palestinians and the Israeli forces stationed around the prison and along the route kept a wary eye on each other as an Israeli drone whirred overhead.

DOHA — Mediator Qatar said on Tuesday it would use a two-day extension to a humanitarian pause in Gaza to work towards a "sustainable truce" between Israel and Hamas.

"Our main focus right now, and our hope, is to reach a sustainable truce that will lead to further negotiations and eventually to an end... to this war," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Majed Al Ansari told a Doha news conference.

"However, we are working with what we have. And what we have right now is the provision to the agreement that allows us to extend days as long as Hamas is able to guarantee the release of at least 10 hostages."

Qatar has been engaged in intense negotiations, with support from Egypt and the United States, to establish and extend a truce in Gaza, and has previously said that it was designed to be broadened and expanded.

The Gulf state announced late on Monday that successful talks with Israel and Hamas had resulted in a two-day extension to the truce.

Over the initial four-day pause, which had been due to expire on Monday night, a total of 50 civilian hostages, all women and children, were freed in return for 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Ansari confirmed the truce would continue with the release of 20 further hostages. "We are hopeful that in the next 48 hours we will be getting more information from Hamas regarding the rest of the hostages," he added. 

The spokesman said "minimal breaches" in recent days had not "harmed the essence of the agreement". 

Qatar has led parallel negotiations between Hamas and other nations which led to the release of 17 Thais, one Filipino and one dual Russian-Israeli national.

Before Friday, just four hostages had been released by Hamas. A fifth had been rescued by Israeli troops and two more found dead.

Israel says a total of around 240 hostages were seized when Hamas fighters stormed across Gaza’s militarised border on October 7.

Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which the Hamas government says have killed almost 15,000 people, most of them women and children.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will pay a new crisis visit to the Middle East this week and also attend the UN climate summit in Dubai, a US official said Monday.

The official, speaking as Blinken arrived in Brussels for NATO meetings, said the top US diplomat would visit both Israel and the West Bank in his third trip since the Hamas-Israel war.

A senior official said the United States was sending three military aircraft to Egypt to bring vital humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza during a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas

The first plane bringing medical items, food aid and winter gear will land in North Sinai on Tuesday and the other two will arrive “in coming days,” the US officials said in an embargoed briefing call on Monday.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A temporary truce in fighting between Israel and Palestinian resistance group Hamas has been extended by two days, mediator Qatar said on Monday hours before the initial agreement was set to expire.

The extension opens the way to further releases of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and for more aid to flow into war-devastated Palestinian territory.

The initial four-day agreement was scheduled to end at 7:00am (05:00 GMT) on Tuesday but has been extended by another 48 hours.

"The State of Qatar announces that, as part of the ongoing mediation, an agreement has been reached to extend the humanitarian truce for an additional two days in the Gaza Strip," Qatari Foreign ministry Spokesman Majed Al Ansari said on X, formerly Twitter.

Hamas confirmed agreement on the two-day extension and associated hostage and prisoner releases.

"Hamas announced that an agreement has been reached with the brothers in Qatar and Egypt for an extension of the temporary humanitarian pause for an additional two days, with the same conditions as the previous truce," the Palestinian Islamist movement said in a statement.

In the first three days of the agreement, Hamas has freed 39 Israeli hostages and Israel has released 117 Palestinian prisoners under the terms of the four-day truce.

A further 19 foreign nationals, mostly Thais, have been released from Gaza under separate arrangements.

Gaza fighters took about 240 captives from southern Israel in an unprecedented October 7 surprise attack. Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas and unleashed an aerial bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza that the Hamas government says has killed nearly 15,000 people, mostly civilians.

Another 13 hostages were freed on Sunday under the terms of the truce, in exchange for 39 Palestinian prisoners.

The group separately freed three Thai nationals and a Russian-Israeli citizen.

Hamas is expected to free a total of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel over the course of the four-day pause brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

Truce extension hopes

Calls grew for the truce between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip to be extended. Israel faces pressure from the families of hostages, as well as allies, to extend the truce to secure more releases.

US President Joe Biden, top EU Envoy Josep Borrell and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg have all joined a global chorus urging the parties to extend their temporary break in fighting.

Tearful reunions of families and hostages, released in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners, have brought the first relief from images of civilian death and suffering in the seven-week war, with hopes high for an extension.

“That’s our goal, to keep this pause going beyond tomorrow so that we can continue to see more hostages come out and surge more humanitarian relief into those in need in Gaza,” Biden said Sunday, calling for operations to remove Hamas to be paused for “as long as prisoners keep coming out”.

The EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell echoed this call as the truce entered its final 24 hours, saying: “The pause should be extended to make it sustainable and long lasting while working for a political solution.”

NATO chief Stoltenberg also weighed in, ahead of a meeting of allied foreign ministers in Brussels.

“I call for an extension of the pause. This would allow for much needed relief to the people of Gaza and the release of more hostages,” he told journalists.

In another sign of mounting international concern, UN rights experts called on Monday for independent investigations into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity..

Morris Tidball-Binz, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, and Alice Jill Edwards, the special rapporteur on torture, issued a joint statement stressing the need for “prompt, transparent and independent investigations”.

Iran on Monday called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza to stop Israel’s “crimes” in the territory as the truce between Israel and Hamas entered its final day.

“As the Islamic Republic of Iran, we want and expect... that the crimes of the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people will be stopped completely,” said Nasser Kanani, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman.

Kanani told reporters during his weekly press conference that Iran is “following” the extension of the truce “with the regional party active in this field, the state of Qatar”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was on a visit to the Qatari capital Doha on Thursday.

BEIRUT — From Lebanon, Palestinian Fatima Al Ashwah has been praying for relatives in Gaza, but received grim news that Israeli bombing killed around 12 of them days before a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.

"They bombed their house," leaving some of them "in pieces", said Ashwah, drained by weeks of anguish and days of grief.

She is among an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, most of them in poverty, according to the United Nations.

When AFP first spoke with Ashwah, 61, earlier this month from southern Beirut's Burj Al Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp, she had expressed grave fear for the safety of about 70 extended family members in the Gaza Strip whom she had visited in July.

She was later told that Israeli bombardment had killed her cousin’s daughter Sanaa Abu Zeid, 30, along with Abu Zeid’s daughters aged 12, eight and six, and other relatives who were in the same building.

“Around a dozen people were killed,” she said.

 ‘Under the bombs’ 

Abu Zeid and her family had taken refuge in a school in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.

But they returned to their home in northern Gaza, still standing, unlike those of some other family members, because the children weren’t coping at the shelter, Ashwah said.

Abu Zeid’s husband and their three other children survived because they had been wounded in bombing the day before, one losing a leg, and were in hospital when the house was hit, Ashwah said.

“They buried them together in a mass grave,” Ashwah said, with Abu Zeid’s devastated mother unable to pay her final respects.

Ashwah showed photos and video taken before the bombing of smiling members of the family, including Abu Zeid’s daughter Nour Al Moqayyed, aged six, dancing.

Abu Zeid’s husband and the surviving children fled back to Rafah “under the bombs” to reunite with Abu Zeid’s mother, Ashwah said, and were staying in a garage.

Beirut’s Burj Al Barajneh camp and others like it in Lebanon were set up after what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, when more than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.

A fragile four-day truce between Hamas and Israel is to expire on Tuesday morning. Ashwah expressed hope that it would last, saying the family “can’t take it anymore”.

“We’ve seen wars, but like this? My God, not like this.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli occupation said on Sunday that 13 released hostages were back on Israeli territory and another four were on their way to Egypt.

Twelve were headed to a military base, accompanied by Israeli special forces, it said in a statement, and one had been flown directly to hospital. Four additional released hostages were on their way to the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, it added.

Hamas is expected to free a total of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel over the course of a four-day pause brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

An earlier statement said the released hostages included three foreign national who had been handed over to the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip, on the third day of an agreed pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Lead mediator Qatar said 39 Palestinian held by Israel are to be released from prison later in the evening, in exchange for the release of 13 Israelis, another one holding Russian citizenship and three Thais.

Late Saturday, Hamas released a second group later than expected after the fighter group accused Israel of violating the terms of the agreement, which Israeli officials denied.

Hamas said it freed a hostage who holds Russian citizenship in support of Moscow’s foreign policy toward Palestinians.

That release was in “response to the efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin and in appreciation of the Russian position in support of the Palestinian cause”, the militant group said in a statement.

The military wing of Hamas said on Sunday that the commander of its northern brigade and four other senior leaders had been killed during Israel’s offensive against the Islamist movement.

In a statement, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades said Ahmed Al Ghandour was a member of its military council, and named three of the others, among them Ayman Siyyam, head of its rocket division, while its West Bank branch confirmed another leader’s death.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Hamas fighters released a third group of hostages including a four-year-old American girl on Sunday, in exchange for a new group of Palestinian prisoners on the third day of a truce which a source close to the militants said they were willing to prolong.

The transfers under a four-day truce that started Friday have been the first relief for captives' families since the group suddenly attacked Israel on October 7, prompting devastating Israeli bombardments of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials said a total of 17 hostages were back on Israeli territory after the latest release. One, in her 80s, was admitted to hospital which said her life was in danger.

US President Joe Biden announced that among those freed is a four-year-old American girl.

"She's been through a terrible trauma," Biden said.

Along with 13 Israelis, four others including three Thais were released outside the terms of the truce.

Hamas said a Russian-Israeli, Ron Krivoy, was freed "in response to the efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin" and his "support of the Palestinian cause".

Israel launched an air, artillery and naval bombardment alongside a ground offensive to destroy Hamas, killing nearly 15,000 people, mostly civilians and including thousands of children, according to the Hamas government in Gaza.

Sunday's releases bring the total number of Israelis freed under the deal to 39 since Friday.

In exchange, a further 39 Palestinian prisoners were freed on Sunday, the Israeli prison service said, after the release of 78 other Palestinian inmates from Israeli jails over the past two days.

On Friday Hamas released 10 other Thais and a Filipino, in a surprise move separate from the main deal.

Israel has faced mounting pressure to extend the four-day pause mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt.

On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told BFMTV that “it would be good, helpful and necessary” to extend the truce until all hostages, who include French nationals, are freed.

Biden expressed a similar hope “so that we can continue to see more hostages come out and surge more humanitarian relief into those in need in Gaza”.

A source close to Hamas said the movement, which has an armed wing, was willing to prolong the pause.

“Hamas informed the mediators that the resistance movements were willing to extend the current truce by two to four days,” the source told AFP. “The resistance believes it is possible to ensure the release of 20 to 40 Israeli prisoners” in that time.

Under the truce, a total of 50 hostages held by the militants are to be freed over four days in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners. A built-in mechanism extends it as long as at least 10 Israeli captives are released each day.

“In the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, residents received a text message from Israeli forces that said they know hostages are being held there.

“The army will neutralise anyone who has kidnapped hostages,” the message said.

‘That’s enough’ 

Elsewhere in Gaza, following weeks of bombardment, residents ventured back to pick through heaps of rubble where they once lived.

“I came to see if there was anything left, if there was anything I could salvage. We fled with nothing,” said Oussama Al Bass, inspecting the ruins of his home in Al Zahra, south of Gaza City.

“Everything is lost,” he said. “We’re tired. That’s enough. We can’t take it anymore.”

On the outskirts of Gaza City, families took to the road on foot to head south, pushing luggage and relatives in wheelchairs, and carrying children in their arms.

On Sunday in Ramallah and Beitunia, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, white International Committee of the Red Cross buses delivered the freed prisoners as waiting crowds flew Hamas and Palestinian flags.

Noorhan Awad, a female prisoner released on Saturday, said that when she got out of the police car, “It was a great moment. Freedom is priceless.”

Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, said on Sunday that its northern brigade commander Ahmed Al Ghandour and four other senior leaders had been killed, without specifying when.

The pause in fighting has allowed more aid to reach Palestinians struggling to survive with shortages of water and other essentials, but Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, warned of “unprecedented” humanitarian needs.

“We should send 200 lorries a day continuously for at least two months,” he said.

The UN estimates that 1.7 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced by the fighting.