MEDICS in Gaza said today that they had received another 13 Palestinians in hospitals who had been killed by Israelis.

This comes as US Vice President JD Vance arrived in Israel to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shore up the fragile peace process.

Israeli forces have killed at least 100 Palestinians since the ceasefire began on October 10. This adds to the more than 68,000 killed and at least 170,000 wounded since October 2023.

A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and about 200 were taken captive.

Gaza resident Zuhdi Abu Sharia said there are no Palestinians who remain “optimistic” about the prospects for peace.

She said: “Every day is a rollercoaster. In the morning, we hear some news, in the evening we hear the opposite.

“We wake up to hope and joy, yet sleep to sorrow and despair.”

As Mr Vance arrived in Israel, many Palestinians found it difficult to see how another politician arriving to talk about them would make any difference.

Adham al-Sayed told Al Jazeera that: “I don’t care about the US or politics entirely.

“I’m concerned with how to lay food on the table and lead a normal stable life in peace. That’s all that concerns me.”

The US vice-president met his country’s special envoy to the region Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s former White House adviser and son in law.

He was set to give a press conference this evening after meeting the Israeli prime minister.

Mr Vance is expected to stay in the region until Thursday.

Senior Trump officials have been briefing about the growing concern in Washington DC that Israel plans to abandon the deal and go back to full scale assaults on Gaza.

The high level US delegation is said to be in Israel to try and talk about what happens beyond the current first phase of the truce deal.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians continues to worsen.

Only about 986 aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza since the beginning of the ceasefire, out of the 6,600 trucks that should have arrived by Monday evening, Gaza’s government media office said today.

They said the “average number of trucks entering the Gaza Strip daily since the ceasefire does not exceed 89 trucks out of 600 trucks that are supposed to enter.”

This reflects the “continued policy of strangulation, starvation and humanitarian blackmail” practiced by Israel.