After more than ten months of conflict in the Gaza Strip, a first case of polio has been detected in the besieged Palestinian territory. At the same time, violence continues in the occupied West Bank, where a deadly attack by Jewish settlers has sparked international outcry.
Key information to remember
⇒ UN calls for ‘polio pause’ in Gaza to vaccinate 640,000 children
⇒ Biden believes that a ceasefire agreement has “never been closer”
⇒ Several countries condemn new violence perpetrated by settlers in the West Bank
First case of polio confirmed in Gaza
The Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, has reported the first case of polio in Gaza. The first case was confirmed after stool samples from three Gazan children “with suspected acute flaccid paralysis, a common symptom of polio” were tested at Jordan’s national polio laboratory. The case, according to the Palestinian ministry, was a “10-month-old baby who had not been vaccinated” in Deir al-Balah, in the centre of the besieged Palestinian territory, which is deprived of electricity, heavily rationed in water and where almost all of its 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war.
A few hours earlier on Friday, UN chief Antonio Guterres had called on “all parties to immediately provide concrete assurances guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign” of vaccination. “It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign in the middle of war,” Mr. Guterres had insisted. “A polio pause is necessary.”
Before him, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF had requested “seven-day” humanitarian pauses to allow two vaccination campaigns for more than 640,000 children under ten.
Poliovirus was first detected in July in sewage samples collected in late June in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, and Deir el-Balah, WHO and UNICEF recall, while the Palestinian territory has been free of this disease for twenty-five years, according to the UN. More than 1.6 million doses of the nOPV2 vaccine are to be delivered to Gaza by the end of August, according to the statement.
The UN stresses that vaccination coverage must be at least 95% in each vaccination campaign to prevent the spread of polio, “given that health, water and sanitation systems are severely disrupted in Gaza.”
A widespread threat just forty years ago, polio – which can cause irreversible paralysis in a matter of hours – has largely disappeared from the world thanks to vaccines. But another form of poliovirus can spread: the one that mutated from the source originally contained in the oral polio vaccine (OPV). It is this poliovirus derived from a vaccine strain that was found in Gaza. And polio “does not care about demarcation lines”, insisted Antonio Guterres, stressing the threat “not only to children in Gaza, but also in neighboring countries”.
Biden says ceasefire deal ‘has never been closer’
The United States presented a revised proposal for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza on Friday, August 16, after two days of negotiations in Doha, but Hamas immediately rejected Israeli “new conditions” at a time when diplomatic pressure is intensifying to avoid a regional military escalation.
The mediators – the United States, Qatar and Egypt – announced the resumption of talks next week in Cairo, after the presentation on Friday in Doha of a new compromise with a view to the “implementation” of an agreement on a ceasefire.
A deal has “never been closer,” said US President Joe Biden, who met with Egyptian and Qatari leaders. The leader also called on all parties not to “undermine” the negotiations. “I think we have a chance,” Biden told reporters, saying he was “optimistic.”
His Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is scheduled to fly to Israel on Saturday to seek “to reach an agreement” based on the new proposal, according to the State Department.
But two Hamas officials told AFP that the movement rejected “new conditions” from Israel. Among the Israeli “new conditions” rejected by Hamas, one of its officials cited the “maintenance of troops” along the Gaza border with Egypt and “a right of veto” on the release of certain Palestinian prisoners.
The talks are based on a plan announced on May 31 by Joe Biden, which provides in the first phase a six-week truce accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for that of Palestinian prisoners.
Diplomatic efforts are also aimed at preventing a response from Iran and its allies, including Hezbollah, to the assassination, attributed to Israel, of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in Tehran, and to the death the day before of the military leader of the Lebanese Islamist movement in an Israeli strike near Beirut.
Condemnations over new settler attack in West Bank
Violence is also flaring up in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. On Thursday evening, dozens of Israeli settlers, one of whom was arrested, set fire to buildings and vehicles in the village of Jit (north), according to the army.
The Palestinian Authority reported one Palestinian shot dead, denouncing “state terrorism”. “They were armed with knives, a machine gun and a silencer. Their goal was clear: burn, kill and destroy,” Hassan Arman told AFP in Jit.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog “condemned” the attack, which was also strongly condemned internationally.
The UN, which considers Israeli colonization in the West Bank illegal, has pointed out “the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of such serious violations.” The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, will propose sanctions against Israeli officials. “Any act that would destabilize a process of negotiation and conclusion of an agreement, in particular on the ceasefire” in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages held in the war-torn Palestinian territory, “is unacceptable and even more unacceptable in this period that we are living through,” declared the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné.
At least nine dead in Israeli strike in southern Lebanon
The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced on Saturday, August 17, that an Israeli strike in the Nabatieh area in the south of the country had caused the death of at least nine people, including a woman and her two children. This is one of the deadliest strikes in more than ten months of violence on the Israeli-Lebanese border between the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Israeli army.
The Israeli army, for its part, indicated that it had struck “during the night, a Hezbollah weapons warehouse” in the Nabatieh region, as well as “military structures” of the Lebanese Islamist movement in the Hanine and Maroun El Ras regions, near the border.
The pro-Iranian Hezbollah opened a front against Israel on October 8 in the border sector, to support the Palestinian Hamas. The exchanges of fire, almost daily since then between the Lebanese formation and the Israeli army, intensified with the death, at the end of July, of the military leader of Hezbollah, killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut, the day before the assassination in Tehran of the leader of Hamas, attributed to Israel by Iran and its allies. Tehran and Hezbollah have threatened Israel with reprisals, raising fears of a regional military escalation.
With this new strike, this violence has left at least 579 dead in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also at least 121 civilians, according to an AFP count. In Israel and on the occupied Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed in rocket and missile fire from Lebanon, according to Israeli authorities.