Here’s how things stand on Wednesday, March 13, 2024:

Fighting and humanitarian crisis

• An aid ship carrying food and other essential items to Gaza, which set sail from Cyprus, was nearing the Palestinian enclave after days of delay.
• The departure came after announcements that Cyprus, the European Union, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom were jointly working on establishing a maritime corridor to provide aid to Gaza.
• Separately, Israeli forces launched air attacks throughout the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding dozens, including 10 people in Deir el-Balah, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday Israel “will finish the job in Rafah”, reaffirming a ground operation will go ahead in the southern Gaza city.
• UK’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron called for “answers from the Israelis” in response to a BBC report revealing that Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza to mistreatment, including blindfolding, detention, stripping and repeated beatings during a hospital raid in February.

𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 | WFP delivered enough food for 25,000 people to Gaza City early Tuesday in first successful convoy to the north since 20 February.

With people in northern #Gaza on the brink of famine, we need deliveries every day + we need entry points directly into the north. pic.twitter.com/RGxymQXlR9

— WFP Media (@WFP_Media) March 12, 2024

Regional tensions

• Lebanon’s Hezbollah group says two of its fighters have been killed in the Bekaa Valley after Israeli warplanes launched attacks on the area for a second consecutive day.
• Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is “not a natural disaster” and accused Israel of using starvation as a “weapon of war”.
• Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly pledged $1m to support investigations into allegations of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinian women. The move comes two days after Joly said Canada would provide $1m to organisations supporting survivors of sexual violence during Hamas’s attacks on October 7.
• Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte is visiting Israel and Egypt on Wednesday to discuss the crisis in the Middle East.

Violence in the occupied West Bank

• Israeli forces have stormed the grounds of the Jenin Government Hospital, shooting and killing one Palestinian man and wounding five others, according to the Wafa news agency.
• Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has expressed support for Israeli soldiers amid outrage over the killing of a Palestinian boy near the Shu’fat refugee camp checkpoint.