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“We call on everyone, especially the Hamas movement, to quickly complete the deal so that we can protect our people and remove all obstacles,” Mr. Abbas said in a statement reported by Wafa, the authority’s official news agency. Mr. Abbas leads Fatah, a political party that is a rival of Hamas.
With food, water and medicine in desperately short supply in Gaza, the Biden administration on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking flour shipments to UNRWA, the main U.N. aid agency for Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday that he had issued a directive not to transfer flour to UNRWA, citing allegations that some of its employees were tied to Hamas, including 12 accused of having roles in the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath.
About 1,050 containers, most filled with flour, were held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told reporters on Friday. That would be enough to feed 1.1 million Gazans for a month, he said.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said: “That flour has not moved the way that we had expected it would move. We expect that Israel will follow through on its commitment to get that flour into Gaza.”
At Nasser hospital, some medical workers were packing their belongings and preparing their families to flee.
“We are all scared,” said Dr. Mohammad Abu Moussa, a radiologist.
But Dr. Moussa said that even though he was worried about an assault on the hospital, he and his wife had decided to remain for now. They and their two surviving children — a third was killed in an airstrike in October — have been staying at the hospital for weeks.
“I have no other choice,” Dr. Abu Moussa said. “I don’t have anywhere to go in Rafah, and I have young children, and they can’t walk long distances like that.”
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