GAZA: After touring rubble-strewn areas of Gaza hit by airstrikes during fighting between Israel and Hamas, the top UN aid official in the region appealed to both sides on Saturday to observe a ceasefire as aid teams assess the damage.

The ceasefire, which began early on Friday, ended 11 days of Israeli aerial attacks and barrages of rockets fired at Israel by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

“Last night was calm, and we hope obviously that it is going to hold and everybody just needs to stand down and not to engage in any provocative moves,” Lynn Hastings, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said in Gaza City.

Hastings stopped to talk to survivors on heavily damaged Wehda Street, where Palestinian health officials said 42 people had been killed, including 22 members of one family, during the Israeli airstrikes.

“All my ideas and dreams have ended. I have no more hopes in life,” Riyad Eshkuntana, who lost his wife and four of his five children, told Hastings. “Under the rubble, my children were screaming, and I heard them. Their voices stopped one after another.”

Standing by the rubble of residential buildings, Hastings said she had seen more than just damaged infrastructure. “I have been speaking to the families here and what they all said is that they have no hope, they feel that they have no control of their lives and their situation is, one woman said, helpless,” she told Reuters.

US President Joe Biden has said Washington will work with UN agencies on expediting humanitarian aid for Gaza “in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal.”

Hastings said suitable mechanisms were already in place and had been active since a war in 2014.

“We have mechanisms for monitoring to make sure that assistance does not fall into the hands that is not intended to be directed toward,” Hastings said. “So for us we can continue with that type of mechanism going forward here.” She also expressed concern about the spread of COVID-19.

After a ceasefire with Israel, Hamas has claimed “victory” but the Palestinian group’s success lies more in marginalizing its rival Fatah than in battle, analysts say.

A major factor in Hamas’ own claim to victory lies in “being seen as defending Palestinian rights, especially in relation to Jerusalem — and (in) facing down Israel,” Hugh Lovatt, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.

Jamal Al-Fadi, a professor of political science in Gaza, said Hamas feels victorious “because it was able to strike deep inside Israel … (and) Israel could not prevent it.” Fadi also said the militants had proved their ability to build up a substantial arsenal, despite the Gaza Strip having been under blockade for 14 years.

Elections were due on May 22, but President Mahmoud Abbas abruptly postponed them, alienating Hamas afresh.

Hamas saw elections as way “to relieve itself from the burden of governance by eventually bringing back the Palestinian Authority” to poverty-stricken Gaza, Lovatt said.

“The prospect of … a government of national unity which Hamas would (have) supported or been a member of could have allowed for more progress,” he added. “But because the path for political engagement was closed, they had to reconfigure their calculations.”

For Hamas, periodic bouts of violence are its main competitive advantage” against Fatah, said Hussein Ibish, a Middle East expert.

“They claim to be the defenders of Palestine … in contrast to a supine PA government.”

Fadi said: “Abbas has become powerless … His political performance is no longer acceptable to the public.”

Reuters/AFP