Local sources from Israel: CNN, The New York Times.
UK coverage: The Mirror.
Former CIA chief Jack Devine has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin may not live to see the end of the war in Ukraine and could be ousted in a ‘Black Swan’ style coup. Devine believes that Putin is more likely to end his reign himself than face assassination, as the chances of a coup are increasing due to the ‘permanent stalemate’ in Ukraine. Despite allegations of assassination attempts, Putin has managed to stay in power since 1999.
The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution calling for stepped-up aid for Gaza’s embattled civilians, but aid workers have warned that this will fail to stop the spiraling humanitarian crisis as it does not demand a full halt to the fighting. The resolution called on the U.N. Secretary General to appoint a special coordinator for aid to Gaza and establish a mechanism to speed up aid delivery in consultation with all relevant parties.
Guillemette Thomas, the medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Jerusalem, said that right now it is impossible to deploy humanitarian aid as people need to be able to get food and water without the fear of being bombed or killed. She added that the only thing that would be helpful is a cease-fire.
The resolution also referenced a measure passed last month calling for ‘humanitarian pauses’ and called for the ‘immediate and unconditional release of all hostages’, a demand that Hamas, which still holds about 120 Israelis, was unlikely to heed, hoping instead to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israeli leaders have vowed to keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed and insist on checking all goods bound for Gaza to prevent the entry of weapons and other supplies that could benefit Hamas’s military effort. After 11 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, international alarm has risen over the plight of the territory’s more than 2 million people, who are increasingly cut off from the outside world, displaced, cold and hungry.
Juliette Touma, the director of communications for U.N.R.W.A., the largest U.N. agency in Gaza, said it may be too soon to know the full impact of the resolution, but welcomed it. She added that the aid entering Gaza during the war was woefully insufficient, less than 10 percent of what Gaza received before the war.
Human Rights Watch this week accused the Israeli government of ‘using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’, which it called ‘a war crime’. With the increasing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the international community is in desperate need of a cease-fire to ensure the safety of civilians and to provide much-needed aid and assistance.
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