TRANSCRIPT
At a crowded medical centre in the south of the Gaza Strip, displaced Palestinian Ikram Nasser holds her child in her arms.
She is waiting for a polio vaccine to be administered.
"We live on the basis of fear, from the bombing, from the terror, from the destruction, from the injuries. We add to that the fear of diseases that have spread, such as skin diseases, from the lack of cleanliness and from the crowding. The issue of polio also came up, which increased our fear. We were afraid that the vaccinations would not arrive."
There is no cure for polio; it can only be prevented by immunisation.
The first detected case of polio in Gaza is the first in 25 years. The one-year-old baby with the disease has been partially paralysed as a result.
Health workers in central Gaza say they exceeded the target for the first stage of the vaccination campaign, vaccinating 30,000 more children than the initial goal of 157,000.
Now, Gaza's Health Ministry says Israel refused to co-ordinate the entry of medical teams for polio vaccination east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military says it is checking the report.
Previously, Israel has said it would allow the vaccination program to continue until September 9.
Eight-hour pauses in the fighting daily - between Israel and Hamas - is allowing health workers to administer the vaccines.
Ikram Nasser says the daily pauses in fighting are a rare moment of hope in the nearly year-long war in Gaza.
"We hope that this is a good sign and a sign of peace that they have brought in the vaccinations. We hope the world will sympathise with us; and they stop the strikes and terror that we are living through. Stop the destruction and the war we are living."
Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of the main United Nations agency supporting people in Gaza, says navigating access for humanitarian workers has been a fraught issue for months.
He says the collapse of the health system in Gaza - one of the world's most densely populated places - has made the work of his agency very challenging.
Speaking to media company Zeteo, he says the ban on international media crews since October 7 has added to the barriers on public's understanding of the extent of the humanitarian crisis.
"Traditionally when you are in a conflict situation you might be displaced once or twice. But you are settled until the end of the war. This is not the case in Gaza. If you listen to the people there, people have been displaced up to 20 times. They have absolutely nowhere to go. But the other element that struck me is the absence of international media. How is it possible after 10 months to be in such a highly militarised context that international media are not able to see by themselves what is really going on?"
At least 116 media workers have been killed since October 7 as they cover the war.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says that number is unprecedented, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation started collecting data in 1992.
There is also heightened concern about the conflict spilling over into other regions of the Middle East, after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in an airstrike [[a month ago; confirmed on 31 July]].
He was a key figure in ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel.
The United States has for the past three months insisted, a ceasefire and hostage release deal is on the cusp of being finalised.
A crucial sticking point involves Israel’s demand for lasting control over a strategic corridor in Gaza.
[[Israel calls the narrow buffer zone along the Gaza-Egypt border the Philadelphi corridor.]]
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he believes the deal is 90 per cent of the way complete.
"As close as we have gotten - and as close as I believe we are to getting a ceasefire agreement. Everyday that goes by where it is not finalised - and the parties don't say yes period, is a day which something else happens. And there is an intervening event; which simply pushes things off and runs the risk of derailing a pretty fragile apple cart."
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has continued its operation in the West Bank over the last week, one of the largest assaults in the Israeli-occupied territory for months.
The operation began in the early hours of Wednesday with hundreds of Israeli troops backed by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers raiding the flashpoint cities of Tulkarm, Jenin and areas in the Jordan Valley.
The governor of Jenin says the Israeli army is preventing water and food from getting to families trapped in the besieged areas and that families have been forced to leave their homes by gun point.
Israel says the military raids are aimed at preventing attacks.
The Palestinians see them as a widening of the war in Gaza and an effort to perpetuate Israel’s decades-long military rule over the territory.
In Tel Aviv, families of the hostages held by Hamas carried symbolic coffins - as they protest for the fifth consecutive day.
A third of the 101 Israeli and foreign captives still in Gaza are believed to be dead, while the fate of the others remain unknown.
The death of the six hostages, after nearly 11 months in captivity, sparked a wave of protests over the weekend [[1 September]], with around 500,000 people taking to the streets in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Yair Moses says he is worried about his 80-year-old father [[Gadi Moses]] who remains a hostage of Hamas.
"Today is another day for showing our how much we miss our loved ones that are still in Gaza and this day is dedicated to all the people that were murdered in Gaza. We all know that there were alive there and now they're not. They came back in coffins, 21 people that already came back dead from Gaza. And, you now, we still have people there that are dead and need to be bring back to be buried in Israel. But still, we have many people alive and we shout for them that we get to seal the deal and bring them home before the dead too, while they are still alive and they will be able to live again in Israel like they should be."
