LIVE GAZA. King Abdullah of Jordan joins flight as emergency aid is dropped over Gaza Strip – Biden demands “credible and workable plan” to protect population in Rafah | Israel-Palestine conflict

Jordan’s King Abdullah met with the Jordanian Air Force on Sunday dropped medical supplies over the Gaza Strip, reports Reuters news agency, among others. The Jordanian news channel Roya News shared images of the 62-year-old monarch on X, which can be seen in a military aircraft. The dropped goods are intended for the field hospital that Jordan manages in the Gaza Strip.

The previous dropping took place over a week ago. The Jordanian Air Force carried this out together with the Dutch Air Force, who was therefore involved in such an operation for the first time.

In mid-December, the daughter of the Jordanian royal couple also flew the 23-year-old Princess Salma, along with the air force. That flight was also intended to supply the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza.

US President Joe Biden on Sunday urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to conduct a military operation in Rafah “without a credible and workable plan to protect the population“.

In a telephone conversation, the US President “reaffirmed his position that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and workable plan to guarantee the safety (…) of the more than one million people seeking refuge there”, says a press release from the White House.

“He also called for urgent and specific measures to maintain the pace and regularity of the humanitarian help to innocent Palestinian civilians,” the White House added.

Just Thursday evening, Biden said: “I think, as you know, the response in the Gaza Strip excessive has been. There are a lot of innocent people going hungry, a lot of innocent people in trouble, dying, and this has to stop.”

Reports of Israel’s plans to evacuate Palestinians from Rafah to expand its ground offensive have extremely worrying. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this on Sunday on X, formerly Twitter.

“Continuing with the plans could have serious consequences for the… 1.4 million people who have nowhere to go and almost no access to medical care,” said Tedros. “All hospitals in Rafah are overloaded and in the rest of the Gaza Strip they are barely functioning or even non-functional.”

Tedros calls on all parties to a ceasefire. “Humanity must come first,” it says.

In the past four days, two Israeli hostages have been killed in attacks on the Gaza Strip. At least that is what the armed branch of Hamas claims. Eight other prisoners are said to have been seriously injured.

The condition of the injured is becoming increasingly dangerous because they cannot receive proper treatment, the terrorist group said. “Enemy Israel bears full responsibility,” it said

If Israel starts a ground offensive in the border town of Rafah, it will pose a serious threat bomb under negotiations about the exchange of hostages. A Hamas leader said this via his own television station. Hamas still holds more than a hundred Israeli hostages.

It sounds much criticism internationally on Israeli plans to also eliminate Hamas fighters in Rafah with a ground offensive. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned against this “a humanitarian catastrophe” and said that “the people of Gaza cannot disappear into thin air.”

The Egyptian government fears a flow of refugees to the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Rafah. If the ground offensive comes, Cairo threatens to suspend a decades-old peace treaty with Israel.