Qatar and France mediated a deal to allow medicine deliveries to hostages in Gaza, as well as aid deliveries in the occupied territory, Doha announced Tuesday. In a statement to the official Qatar News Agency, the foreign ministry announced the deal “between Israel and (Hamas), where medicine along with other humanitarian aid is to be delivered to civilians in Gaza in exchange for delivering medication needed for Israeli captives in Gaza”. Amid the ongoing brutal aggression on Gaza, Israeli forces Tuesday targeted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warehouse in Deir al-Balah city in the besieged enclave. The warehouse, which was a critical part of the UN body’s efforts to provide essential supplies in Gaza, suffered significant damage during the artillery shelling, intense gunfire, and the impacts of surrounding air attacks. Jordan’s Prime Minister Bisher Al Khasawaneh said on Tuesday that peace with Israel remained a strategic choice but any push to drive Palestinians to the kingdom would pose an “existentialist” threat. Jordan, which shares a border with the West Bank, fears that the Gaza conflict could spread with wider violence by armed settlers encouraged by the army triggering a large-scale Palestinian exodus to the other side of the Jordan River. “In the event that there are actions and conditions that generate and create mass displacement of populations, that is a clear violation of the peace treaty,” Khasawneh said, referring to the country’s 1994 deal with Israel during a session in Davos. “It poses an existentialist threat that we will have to react to and we hope we will never arrive at that point or juncture because we are firmly committed to a comprehensive peace [process].” “Today under the existing conditions it’s quite inconceivable for any Jordanian minister to just sit on a podium and have that type of interaction and transaction with an Israel counterpart. “The horrific scenes that are on the screens day in day out and hour in hour out of the carnage wreaked on Gaza by the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, majority children and women is something that renders that unimplementable under the existing circumstances,” the prime minister said. The only solution to avoid deeper conflict and regional instability was to put in place a political process with a time frame that leads to a two-state solution where a Palestinian state would emerge alongside Israel, he added.
Qatar, France broker deal to get aid, medication to civilians in Gaza
