As fighting halts, IDF chief promises help to rehabilitate GazaIsrael and the IDF will do everything in their power in order to help rehabilitate the Gaza Strip and assist civilians in the Palestinian enclave, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday,http://www.timesofisrael.com/as-fighting-halts-idf-head-promises-help-to-rehabilitate-gaza/Writers
Adiv Sterman
Israel and the IDF will do everything in their power in order to help rehabilitate the Gaza Strip and assist civilians in the Palestinian enclave, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday, as four weeks of fighting appeared to grind to a halt.
“We are entering a complex period of assistance and rehabilitation,” Gantz said. “We will assist [the people in Gaza] not because of a strategic consideration, but because of the humanitarian aspect,” he added.
Israel has allowed transfers of humanitarian goods into Gaza throughout the conflict, but officials in the Strip and the United Nations have warned of a humanitarian disaster, as 28 days of bombing raids have left homes destroyed and vital infrastructure crippled.
The IDF Chief of Staff stressed that Israel was already providing civilians across the Gaza border with food and medical supplies, adding that neither he nor anyone in Israeli leadership positions wished to deliberately inflict harm on the Palestinian people.
“We are sparing no efforts to send them food,” Gantz said. “It is morally important and we have nothing against the people of Gaza; they have a right to live just like everyone else.”
Three hundred trucks carrying medical equipment were set to pass from Israel into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing later Tuesday, Ynet reported.
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz visits near the border with the Gaza Strip, on July 26, 2014, (photo credit: Yehudah Gross/IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz visits near the border with the Gaza Strip, on July 26, 2014, (photo credit: Yehudah Gross/IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)
Earlier Tuesday, Mufeed al-Hasayneh, the minister of public works in Gaza, accused Israel of causing over $5 billion worth of damage in the Gaza Strip since its military launched a large offensive there on July 8, Palestinian Media reported.
Health officials in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip say that some 1,800 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting began, most of them civilians and many of them children. Israel says some 900 of the dead in Gaza were combatants.
Hasayneh said tens of thousands of homes had been completely or partially destroyed, and that infrastructure in the Strip had sustained severe damage as well, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported Monday.
Israel has blamed Hamas for the death and destruction in Gaza, since it emplaced its rockets, rocket launchers, cross-border tunnel openings and other military infrastructure in homes, schools and mosques, and thus used Gazans as human shields.
A map distributed by the IDF depicts terror infrastructure in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya (Photo credit: IDF)
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A map distributed by the IDF depicts terror infrastructure in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya (Photo credit: IDF)