Gaza update

Gaza has remained under a communications blackout for a fourth straight day – the longest of several outages over the course of the war.  Aid groups say this hampers rescue efforts after bombings, can impede life-saving operations and makes it even more difficult to monitor the war’s toll on civilians.

The UK’s foreign minister, David Cameron, and his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, published a joint article calling for a “sustainable” ceasefire, saying the goal must be peace lasting “generations”. France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, later pressed for an “immediate and durable” truce in the Gaza war while visiting Israel. She was quoted as saying that Paris is “deeply concerned” over the situation in the Palestinian territory, and that too many civilians were being killed.

Amid the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, there have been reports of dozens of Palestinians surrounding aid trucks after they drove in through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.People were seen climbing onboard the trucks, pulling down boxes and carrying them off. Other trucks appeared to be guarded by masked people carrying sticks, the Associated Press reports.

Columnist David Ignatius spent three days last week in the West Bank — talking with officials, seeing old friends, traveling from Hebron to Nablus (and points between) in an Israeli taxi with a Palestinian driver. It was a grim tour of both worlds.  “What I saw,” he writes, “was a pattern of Israeli domination and occasional abuse that makes daily life a humiliation for many Palestinians — and could obstruct the peaceful future that Israelis and Palestinians both say they want.”