TEL AVIV/GAZA - Machinery to repair roads has been sent through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip in preparation for the delivery of some of the aid to people besieged in the enclave, two security sources said on Thursday.

Rafah is the only crossing not controlled by Israel.

It has been out of operation since the first days of the latest round of heightened violence between Israel and Hamas.

The war between the two sides began after the militant group launched an attack in southern Israel on Oct 7. More than 1,400 people were killed.

Israel retaliated with an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas. Israel said it wants to destroy the militant group.

The Israeli military action has killed nearly 3,800 people in Gaza and the blockaded enclave is currently under tighter restrictions.

The United States and Egypt have been pushing for a deal with Israel to get aid delivered to Gaza.

The White House said on Wednesday it had been agreed for up to 20 trucks to pass through, with hopes for more trucks later.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents depended on aid before the spike in violence on Oct 7.

About 100 trucks daily were providing humanitarian relief to the enclave, according to the United Nations.

On Thursday, more than 100 trucks were waiting close to the crossing on the Egyptian side, though it was not expected that aid would enter before Friday, Egyptian security sources said.

More aid is being held in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, about 45km from Rafah.

Western governments have been negotiating for the evacuation of foreign passport holders from Gaza, something Egyptian officials have conditioned on aid getting in. Details of potential evacuations are unclear.

On Wednesday, after talks with US President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel would not block civilian aid entering Gaza from Egypt as long as those supplies do not reach Hamas.

It said it would continue a blockade of humanitarian aid from Israel into Gaza until hostages held by Hamas since Oct 7 are returned.

Israel and Egypt have upheld a blockade of Gaza since Hamas took control of the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the movement goods and people.

During his visit on Thursday to show solidarity with Israel, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed the decision to allow aid into Gaza.

“I know that you are taking every precaution to avoid harming civilians, in direct contrast to the terrorists of Hamas which seeks to put civilians in harm’s way,” he said alongside PM Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

The situation in the enclave remains volatile in the aftermath of an explosion at Gaza’s Al Ahli Arab Hospital late on Tuesday.

Palestinian officials said 471 people were killed in the blast which they blame on Israel.

Israel and the US said the cause was a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza. The group has denied responsibility.

Mr Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that at the hospital “several dozen people were apparently killed”, a much lower toll than reported by Palestinian officials.

Amid outrage over the hospital explosion, demonstrations erupted in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and elsewhere.

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank during protests, Palestinian officials said, while Lebanese security forces fired tear gas and water cannon at protesters throwing projectiles near the US embassy, TV footage showed.

While flying home from a less than eight-hour visit to Israel, US President Joe Biden discussed aid for Gaza with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi by phone late on Wednesday.

Mr Biden told reporters that Mr Sisi agreed to open the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza to allow aid into the enclave, where people are desperately short of food, water, fuel and other essentials.

Mr Biden did not give a timeline for the opening but US national security spokesman John Kirby said it would occur in coming days following repairs to the road.

While the agreement was a breakthrough, the flow of relief will still fall short of the perceived need.

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told the Security Council on Wednesday that the organisation sought to bring aid deliveries to Gaza back to 100 trucks a day.

Mr Biden was due to speak from the White House at 8pm Eastern Time on Thursday (8am on Friday Singapore time) about the US response to Hamas’ attacks against Israel and Russia’s war against Ukraine, the White House said.

Egypt, which previously said the Rafah crossing was not technically closed but was inoperable due to Israeli barrages, said Mr Sisi and Mr Biden agreed to provide aid to Gaza “in a sustainable manner”.

They were coordinating an aid effort with international organisations under the UN.

Mr Biden faced intense global pressure to secure an Israeli commitment to ease the plight of civilians in the small, densely populated coastal enclave.

The US President pledged US$100 million (S$136.8 million) in assistance for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Earlier, Mr Biden said he would ask Congress for an unprecedented aid package for Israel this week, although no action is possible until the House of Representatives elects a new speaker.

Mr Biden said the US would do everything it could to ensure Israel was safe while also urging Israelis not to be consumed by rage, reiterating that the vast majority of Palestinians were not affiliated with Hamas.

He said: “What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every human life.”

If that was not respected, “then the terrorists win”.

Biden summit with Arabs cancelled

Mr Biden’s Middle East trip was designed to calm the region, but Jordan called off his planned summit there with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority after the hospital blast.

The accounts of destruction at the hospital were horrific even by the standards of the past 12 days, which have confronted the world with relentless images, first of Israelis murdered by Hamas gunmen in their homes and then of Palestinian families buried under rubble from Israel’s retaliatory strikes.

“We don’t know what (the shelling) was but we found out what it could do, after it targeted children, who were cut into pieces,” said Mr Mohammad Al-Naqa, a doctor at the hospital, who said 3,000 people were sheltering there when it was hit.

Israel last week ordered more than one million civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate to avoid being hit in attacks on Hamas strongholds there, and displaced Palestinians face a worsening humanitarian crisis.

The immediate Israeli strategy, said three regional officials, is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure, even at the cost of high civilian casualties, push the enclave’s people towards the Egyptian border and then go after Hamas by blowing up its labyrinth of underground tunnels.

Neighbouring Egypt and Jordan have squarely rejected the notion that Palestinian refugees could move into their territories.

Egyptian President Sisi and Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday denounced forced displacement of Gaza civilians.

Palestinian leaders called it a “red line” that could not be crossed.

Fury across Middle East

World leaders from UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres to Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the Gaza hospital blast in statements that nonetheless avoided addressing who was to blame.

The blast unleashed anger across the Middle East.

State-sponsored marches were held across Iran, backer of Hamas and Israel’s sworn foe, with demonstrators carrying banners that read “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.

There were new clashes on Israel’s border with Lebanon, part of the deadliest violence between the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israel since the last all-out war in 2006. REUTERS