There is no hope for a better future for Palestinian children when living under the violence of Apartheid
In January, Israel accused a handful of UNRWA staff of collaborating with Hamas militants as part of its years-long campaign against the agency. But Israel has refused to provide evidence for these claims, and subsequent investigations by an independent UN panel, foreign experts in multiple countries (including the EU’s humanitarian chief), and journalists across many outlets have found that there is no evidence supporting the accusations.
This is the situation Israel has been aiming for
These attacks have led UNRWA to declare that Gaza is currently the most dangerous place on Earth for aid workers, making it extremely difficult for groups to carry out the work necessary to stem the famine and various epidemics raging across Gaza — that is, when Israel even allows the materials needed for such efforts to cross the border.
Of humanitarian groups, UNRWA has borne the brunt of Israel’s horrific extermination campaign. According to agency Chief Philippe Lazzarini, Israeli forces have killed 193 UNRWA workers in Gaza since October and massacred 250 aid workers in total so far. Israeli forces have continually targeted UNRWA facilities, often in refugee camps, damaging or destroying 190 UNRWA facilities in Gaza, or about half of the agency’s facilities in the region.
Multiple UN aid agencies do work in Gaza, providing food, shelter, health care and other crucial services.
>The letter called for Israel to open up channels for humanitarian workers to communicate with Israeli officials about ensuring their operations are safe from the Israeli military, a process known as deconfliction, the letter reportedly said. The talks between UN and Israeli officials are ongoing, and no final decision has been made.
>The UN has already reported having to suspend its operations through the U.S. military’s pier in Gaza due to allegations that Israeli forces used the area around the pier in a brutal military operation in which they massacred nearly 300 Palestinians, raising safety concerns for workers.
>Though the UN is calling for better deconfliction, groups have emphasized that even deconflicted operations have been targeted by Israeli forces.
>If the UN were to suspend its operations in Gaza, it would likely be seen as a win for Israel, which has spent years targeting humanitarian workers and groups across Palestine. Its unfounded accusations against the UNRWA in January — which caused many countries to suspend funding — were just one incident among many in which Israeli officials have tried to attack and delegitimize UNRWA over the years.
The Israeli army struck major media institutions in Gaza despite assurances of safety, and appears to have deliberately targeted cameras that were broadcasting the military offensive, a new investigation shows.
>Today, after four months of collaborative work, we are together publishing “The Gaza Project.” Below is one of two articles from the project that +972 is co-publishing with Forbidden Stories (read the other here). For the full list of articles comprising “The Gaza Project” and more information about the collaboration, click here.
I think it is a little bit. People who own up and admit to their mistake shouldn't be downvoted. Everyone makes mistakes, but it's not always easy to admit. That's why sharing sources is important too
I added the link, those quotes show why most historians consider the comparison of the Nakba and Jewish exodus from the Muslim world to be a false equivalence. While there were certainly pogroms, the vast majority of Jewish immigrants were able to sell their possessions and willingly move. This is in contrast to the Nakba, where all 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed by a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign. Whether you recognize it or not, when you bring up the exodus as a reaction to the Nakba with the conclusion that both sides are bad, the point of that argument is a justification for the Nakba.
If you're Iraqi, how do you not see that all the different Arab countries have their own interests? While there was some semblance of pan-Islamism and pan-arabism during the British Mandate, it ultimately was a failed project. Jordan, Egypt, and other countries were not operating on the 'behalf of Palestine,' and their actions are not the fault of Palestinians.
You bring up the 1913 Pogroms and the 1930s Riots in Palestine in reaction to the Nakba too, as if they were fueled by Antisemitism instead of anti-settler-colonialism. Even the commissions done by the British disagree with that.
The Concept of forcible transfer the native Palestinians population was central to Zionism since the 1880s when Palestine was chosen as the location. During the British Mandate, around a 100,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced by land purchases (unlike previous land purchases, where peasants would normally continue working and living on the land). Ben-Gurion used Partition as a tactic to dissuade the British from considering a Bi-National Secular State, and instead create a causi-belli for the beginning of a Jewish ethnostate within Palestine. The Nakba, or Plan Dalet, was deliberately planned for over a year. That ethnic cleansing campaign is directly responsible for the Palestinian Occupied Territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. The 1967 war was a deliberate tactic for Israel to take control of those areas and begin the never ending occupation, once those policies were practiced on the Palestinian population that remained in the Green Line after the Nakba.
So what are you trying to agrue? Because none of that is false.
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
Israel Martial Law and Defence (Emergency) Regulations practiced in the occupied territories after 1967
Those weren't ignored, they were addressed with the last link. Palestinians are not responsible for the Jewish exodus. Your argument is trying justify the Israeli Apartheid and Genocide by conflating Palestinians with all Arabs/Muslims and conflating all Jewish people with Israel.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
Forced expulsion of Palestinians has been central to Zionism since the 1880's
There are a lot of factors of the Jewish exodus from the Muslim world, but your conflating of the two as justification or minimization of the Nakba doesn't work; unless you somehow think all Arabs or Muslims are the same. But it's pretty clear your racist towards Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims when your argument boils down to 'they are violent primitives and deserve to die,' just going straight to dehumanization and ignoring all material conditions of Apartheid
Iraqi-born Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, speaking of the wave of Iraqi Jewish migration to Israel, concludes that, even though Iraqi Jews were "victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict", Iraqi Jews aren't refugees, saying "nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted." He restated that case in a review of Martin Gilbert's book, In Ishmael's House.
Yehuda Shenhav has criticized the analogy between Jewish emigration from Arab countries and the Palestinian exodus. He also says "The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation." He has stated that "the campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a 'right of return' on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of 'lost' assets."
Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath has rejected the comparison, arguing that while there is a superficial similarity, the ideological and historical significance of the two population movements are entirely different. Porath points out that the immigration of Jews from Arab countries to Israel, expelled or not, was the "fulfilment of a national dream". He also argues that the achievement of this Zionist goal was only made possible through the endeavors of the Jewish Agency's agents, teachers, and instructors working in various Arab countries since the 1930s. Porath contrasts this with the Palestinian Arabs' flight of 1948 as completely different. He describes the outcome of the Palestinian's flight as an "unwanted national calamity" that was accompanied by "unending personal tragedies". The result was "the collapse of the Palestinian community, the fragmentation of a people, and the loss of a country that had in the past been mostly Arabic-speaking and Islamic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
Because it's been a deliberate tactic of De-development
The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.
- Amnesty International Report pg 26-27
Other reports about how Israel is an Apartheid State: Human Rights Watch Report, B'TSelem Report with quick Explainer
The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the 'disengagement' in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of 'dual-use' Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted.
Gaza Policy Forum summary: Experts agree that Israel’s dual-use policy causes acute distress
Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986. (Arguably, the economic terms of the Gaza—Jericho Agreement modify the situation only slightly.)
- page 240
In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60 percent over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50 percent decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (com- bined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.
- Page 402
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy
A former Israeli minister imagined the campaign as a military unit that conducts PR missions abroad.
>A report by The Guardian released Monday reveals that the same group behind a covert Israeli social media campaign to influence U.S. politicians has also spent months coordinating with dark money groups, Israel advocacy organizations and lawmakers to spread pro-Israel sentiment between 80 different ongoing programs. The campaign is organized under Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, headed by Minister Amichai Chikli.
>Between October and May, the investigation found, officials have spent the equivalent of $8.6 million on the campaign, which includes a program known as Voices of Israel, which officials are resurfacing specifically to spread propaganda attempting to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In the U.S., the campaign has influenced political discourse about college protests and has even seemingly had a role in passing pro-Israel bills at the state and federal level.
>Voices of Israel has existed since at least 2017, first conceived under the name “Concert,” the report found. Former minister of strategic affairs Gilad Erdan, under whom the campaign was born, aimed for the campaign to be a “PR commando unit” for Israel’s reputation abroad; previous iterations have worked on issues like the passage of bills in the U.S. that ban participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Historically, it has funded American Zionist organizations like Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the Israel Allies Foundation.
First responders and medical care were readily available after 9/11, thankfully.
In Gaza, Israel has crippled the medical system by attacking the vast majority of hospitals and much international aid. Additionally, the bombings and Rafah invasion haven't stopped.
>There are over 20,000 children in Gaza who are missing, Save the Children estimates, in addition to the over 15,000 children who have been killed amid Israel’s genocide and campaign of extermination.
>In February, UNICEF estimated that at least 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families, or about 1 percent of the 1.7 million Palestinians who Israel has forced out of their homes. Many children have been separated from their families in recent weeks amid Israel’s bloody assault on Rafah, Save the Children says.
>Based on the UN’s May estimate that 10,000 people are buried under the rubble in Gaza, Save the Children calculated that 4,000 of these people are children. This means that an estimated 21,000 children are missing, based on estimates by humanitarian groups, with many likely dead.
>The number of children missing may be far higher. Save the Children notes that there is an unknown number of children buried in mass graves, and the UN has reported that children have been found in mass graves with signs of torture and executions in recent months. Additionally, many children have been “disappeared” by Israeli forces — kidnapped and sent to torture camps in undisclosed locations, where many have reported being subject to assault and horrific conditions by Israeli guards.
>Indeed, on top of the mass killing of children and their families, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Monday that Israel has been escalating arrests of children in the West Bank, with seven children arrested in the past 24 hours and an estimated 240 children still imprisoned by Israeli forces.
>Meanwhile, in Gaza, children are facing death around every corner due to Israel’s all-out assault. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported last week that there are at least 50,000 children who require medical treatment for malnutrition due to Israel’s starvation campaign.
There is only Gaza and Palestinians Israel is dealing with, and I leave that out of context because those are outside of political regime definition for me.
Then you fail to understand the reality of the Apartheid Regime
You're more sorry about that than justifying genocide?
So, when we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three — that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, “a death sentence.” So, we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.
“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza
No, they weren't the same thing. Zionist Land Purchases were unlike anything prior, leading to the forced expulsion of over hundreds thousand Palestinians under the British Mandate. This, along with the Zionist leadership being very open about the Concept of Transfer since the 1880s, stocked Palestinian fears of being violently forced out of their homes by these new arrivals. There is a lot of context that gets ignored during these events, and it's not easy to summarize. I'll include a few paragraphs but if you want more context I suggest you read the whole chapter.
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
The fear over control of the Temple Mount and a failure by leadership on both sides to quell the fears (and instead, incite them) sparked the terrible pogroms of Jewish Settlements.
In 1928, this meant simultaneously calling for the defence of Jerusalem and discouraging direct action on the ground. But the Palestinian masses found this kind of co-opted nationalism impossible. They lived near the holy places and saw Jews praying there in unprecedented numbers, which they saw as part of a larger scheme to ‘de-Islamize’ Palestine. A minor incident concerning prayer arrangements near the Wailing Wall, the western wall of the Haram, sparked violence that soon swept through Palestine as a whole in 1929. In all, 300 Jews and a similar number of Palestinians were killed.
The spillover of anger from Jerusalem into the countryside and other towns was not a co-ordinated plan by the leadership. Rather, it started with uprooted Palestinians who had lost their agricultural base for various reasons, including the capitalization of crops and the Jewish purchase of land. These former peasants lived on the urban margins, from where they participated in what to them was their first ever political, and violent, action. Their dismal conditions were not the fault of Zionism, but it was easy to connect Zionist activity in Jerusalem with the purchase of land or with an aggressive segregationist policy in the labour market.
The British army was slow to respond to the unrest. The 1920s had been quiet, apart from limited outbursts of violence in Jerusalem in 1920 and Jaffa in 1921. These had seemed inevitable in a mixed community, and quite normal in the vast British Empire. But the events of 1929 exceeded the level of containable violence, and the British government decided in 1930 to appoint a commission of inquiry, the Shaw Commission. After touring the country, its members pointed out the deterioration in the peasants’ living conditions and reported the growing frustration among a large number of Palestinians with British pro-Zionist policy.
- Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine Pg 138
1929 Riots: Forward and 972Mag
The 1936-39 revolt began as a protest against the British Mandate and Zionist Expansion, and escalated in violence as the protests were met with lethal force.
One of the problems was the leadership vacuum in rural Palestine, and the failure of most attempts to fill it. One of these attempts was that of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian preacher who settled in Haifa in the mid 1920s. Many history books assert that Izz al-Din al-Qassam ignited the 1936 revolt by fusing Islamic dogmas with national ideology. But his recipe for revolution was welcomed only among a particular segment of the population. This was the poor of the cities and the unfortunate inhabitants of harat al-tanc, the shanty neighbourhoods that surrounded towns such as Haifa. In 1933, Izz al-Din al-Qassam initiated a guerrilla war in the north, recruiting fighters from around Haifa and leading them to the surrounding hills, attacking any Jews or British soldiers they encountered on the way. In 1935, al-Din al-Qassam was killed by the British army, but this was enough to make him a martyr and provide an example of a new kind of resistance.
While the expansion of Zionist settlement gave the nationalist notables a chance to reach a wider audience, there was still no genuine solidarity with the peasants, apart from rare displays of unity and firmness of purpose. Such a moment took place in March 1933 in Jaffa, where leaders of all the political factions joined in a united call for a concrete campaign of sustained pressure on the British government to change its policy. Five hundred representatives of the Palestinian elite, in a rare show of resolve, declared their intention of boycotting British and Zionist commodities, and for the first time ever rejected the legitimacy of the Mandate in the land of Palestine.
In May 1936, the Arab Higher Committee declared a general strike and organized nationwide demonstrations, the principal one held in Jerusalem, where about 2,000 demonstrators gathered inside the walls of the Old City. The demonstrations became more violent three weeks later, when British police opened fire on demonstrators in Jaffa.
At first the magnitude and nature of the protests impressed the British. They appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, who visited Palestine in 1937 before making his recommendations. His commission recommended the annexation of most of Palestine to Transjordan, and urged the maintenance of a direct British presence in vital strategic positions such as Haifa and the newly built airport in Lydda, as well as in the Negev. A small portion of the land was designated as a future Jewish state. This plan was rejected, not of course by Prince Abdullah in Transjordan; but in a way it was endorsed by Ben-Gurion, who had the foresight to understand that you take what you are given when the balance of power is not yet in your favour. For Ben-Gurion, the proposal was a basis for negotiations, not a final map, hence his willingness to be content with such a small portion of Palestine.
- Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine Pg 156-159
1936-1939 Revolt: JVL, Britannica, MEE
The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world was also not the same
Criticism of the Human Rights Abuses of the Israeli State and Anti-zionism are not antisemitism. You are choosing to be willfully ignorant. Israel does NOT represent all Jewish people, nor does their actions. There have been prominent Jewish people extremely critical of Zionism since it's inception, are you seriously saying they are antisemitic too?
Israel is the one that intentionally conflates the two in order to deflect from criticizm. When Israel commits war crimes, or human rights abuses, or land grabbing, they are the ones that claim they do so for all Jewish people. When Zionist actions are criticized, they call it antisemitic. The conflation of the two is genuinely antisemitic, as the actions of Israel in no way represent all Jewish people.
If you don't want to be naive, I suggest you read the reports by human rights organizations. They are not antisemitic, unless you think advocates for a Secular Bi-National State with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians is also antisemitic, which is insane.
Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace
2023 is 'deadliest year' for Palestinian children say human rights groups (Oct 6th)
The Apartheid is very much real, and, while to a much lesser extent than the Palestinian Occupied Territories, also applies to the Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Socio-economic gaps between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens are the result of discriminatory policies pursued over decades. Historically, Israel prevented its Palestinian citizens from accessing livelihoods under its 18-year-long military rule, and used them, at different times, as a source of cheap labour in order to preserve the interests of the Jewish majority. In addition to cruel land seizures, other discriminatory policies have led to Palestinians’ social and economic deprivation: the exclusion of Palestinian localities from high priority areas for development, the discriminatory allocation of land and water for agriculture as well as discriminatory planning and zoning, and the failure to implement major infrastructure development projects in Palestinian communities.
The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.
- Amnesty International Report pg 26-27
Other reports about how Israel is an Apartheid State:
B'TSelem Report with quick Explainer
Maybe not explicitly a Dictatorship, but practically all parties of Israel, from Labor to Likud, have all been pro-apartheid since their origins as the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. I certainly agree that Netanyahu is not the cause of Israel engaging in Ethnic Cleansing. Forced Transfer has been core to Zionism since the late 1800's. Even Netanyahu's only substantial opposition, Benny Gantz, is just as bloodthirsty. My point is that an Apartheid State is incompatible with Democracy.
Massgrave.dev can help you get an LTSC version of windows that have no ads
They really care about (terrorizing) civilians
This is not a normal temporary occupation. The West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories were created by the Ethnic Cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people from the Zionist Campaign of Plan Dalet starting in 1947. The West Bank, Gaza, and the rest of Israel are all Historic Palestine. The permanent occupation / apartheid is a direct result of Settler Colonialism.
These are not 'neighboring territories' like France and Spain would be. Would you also ignore the bantustans of Apartheid South Africa when determining if that government was a dictatorship or not? Or the Native American reservations of America during Manifest Destiny?
It's about Netanyahu. Are you going to pretend he is responsible for all of that?
Considering he's part of the Likud party which was created out of the Lehi and Irgun, it's certainly relevant.
Dictatorship is about having a power against the will of too many citizens, also silencing them, jailing them, killing them etc.
That is the reality for Palestinians, yes
Palestinian citizens are about 20% of Israeli population. Black people are about 14% of the US population. Both of them hold legal citizenships and rights but often face disparities. Does that make the US an apartheid by your logic?
Again, you are conveniently ignoring the Palestinians within the Occupied Territories. And yes, America during Chattel Slavery, where Black people did not have citizenship, was certainly a form of Apartheid.
The UNHCR analyzed six seemingly indiscriminate attacks likely carried out using US-provided bombs.
>Israeli forces have demonstrated a pattern of systematically targeting densely populated civilian areas across hundreds of attacks in Gaza that likely violate international wartime laws, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found in a report released Wednesday.
>“Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with the following fundamental principles of international humanitarian law in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza since 7 October: the principle of distinction, the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, the principle of proportionality and the principle of precautions in attack,” the report said.
>According to the analysis, in 87 percent of Israel’s attacks since October, over five people have been killed, while 10 or more have been killed in over 60 percent of Israel’s attacks. This proportion alone suggests widespread war crimes, the report said. Meanwhile, the very use of 2,000, 1,000 and 250 pound bombs in these densely populated areas could amount to wartime violations. Further, the UNHCR wrote, the launching of such large bombs in this way could indicate direct attacks on civilians.
>Meanwhile, Israeli officials have been clear about their objectives, as the report points out. In October, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Major General Ghassan Alian referred to “Hamas and the residents of Gaza” as “human beasts” and told them, “you wanted hell, you will get hell.” The report quoted another IDF spokesperson saying at the beginning of Israel’s current incursion into Gaza that they’re “focused on what causes maximum damage.”
Desperate shortages of essentials in Gaza have left the enclave’s most vulnerable individuals struggling to carry on amid stifling heat, heavy fighting, disease spread and a breakdown in law and order, UN humanitarians warned on Thursday.
>In an alert, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reiterated deep concerns that people uprooted by ongoing hostilities in southern Gaza remain traumatized and are crammed into a narrow area along the beach “in the burning summer heat”.
Visible signs of wasting >Among the alarming shortages facing the people of Gaza, UN aid coordination office, OCHA, highlighted a lack of milk and formula for babies, along with nutritional supplements for children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
>“Despite visible signs of wasting among children, no nutrition screenings have been conducted to assess the scale of malnutrition and treat identified cases due to limited capacity,” the UN agency noted in its latest report published late Wednesday.
Rafah emptied >Meanwhile, in the southernmost governorate of Rafah, “people continue to be displaced amidst active fighting and bombardment,” OCHA said. It cited estimates by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, that only around 65,000 people remain in Rafah governorate. Six weeks ago, before Israeli evacuation orders and military operations which have crippled aid relief work, the area hosted 1.4 million.
>“At displacement sites, internally displaced persons are living in overcrowded makeshift shelters and tents which are in dire need of repair and do not offer any protection from extreme heat,” OCHA said, citing latest assessments covering four sites in Deir al Balah, Khan Younis and Al Mawasi - a total population of more than 130,000 people.
>In a related development, OCHA also reported that for the first time since early June, five fuel trucks entered Gaza. But supplies remain scarce “as no fuel had been delivered in the Strip for the past two weeks”.
Aid stores hit >According to WFP's Mr. Skau who visited Gaza last week, one million displaced people in south Gaza remain “trapped, without clean water or sanitation. It’s a public health and protection disaster.”
>In northern Gaza, he noted that aid deliveries have improved although people need a variety of more nutritious food. But delivering lifesaving relief is increasing difficult, as UN staff “spend five to eight hours waiting at checkpoints every day. Missiles hit our premises, despite being deconflicted.”
>“The breakdown of law and order means we also face looting and violence amid a large security vacuum,” Mr. Skau continued, amid scenes of “large-scale destruction, rivers of sewage (and) “traumatized and exhausted people…from the south to the northernmost tip of the Strip”.
>Meanwhile, OCHA said that ground incursions and heavy fighting continue to be reported in locations including Beit Hanoun, south of Gaza city, eastern Deir al Balah, northeastern Khan Younis, as well as in central and southern Rafah.
Deadly harvest >Latest UN assessments also indicate that in addition to the lack of access in southern Gaza to shelter, health, fresh food, water and sanitation, more than half of the enclave’s cropland has been damaged.
>Although more than 40 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s total area is covered by fields, vegetable plantations and orchards - about 150 square kilometres (93 square miles) the UN agencies highlighted a “significant decline” in crop potential from “razing, heavy vehicle movement, bombing, shelling and other conflict-related operations”.
>As of May this year, about 57 per cent of Gaza’s cropland is estimated to have been damaged, compared to more than 40 per cent in mid-February, according to FAO and UNOSAT.
>Hundreds of agricultural structures have also been damaged, FAO said, including 537 home barns, 484 broiler farms, 397 sheep farms and 256 agricultural warehouses, in addition to almost half of Gaza’s agricultural wells (1,049 out of 2,261) as of 20 May.
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“We can no longer accept the statement that Israel is taking ‘all precautions’ — this is just propaganda.”…
>From June 1 to June 11, Israeli forces killed over 800 Palestinians and wounded over 2,400 as they carried out bombardments and raids across Gaza, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported. This is an average of over 72 Palestinians killed each day at the hands of Israeli forces.
>This includes Israel’s assault of Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday that killed 274 Palestinians, including 64 children, and injured 698 others, with Israeli forces carrying out one of the most deadly single attacks of their genocidal siege so far in order to retrieve four Israelis held hostage in Gaza. The attack was carried out on a bustling civilian center in the middle of the day, raising questions about whether Israeli forces violated international law.
>The 11-day death toll also includes at least 70 Palestinians killed and over 300 wounded due to heavy Israeli shelling in central Gaza on June 4, MSF said; and at least 40 Palestinians killed and 74 wounded on June 6, when Israel bombed a UN school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat. The killings of hundreds of Palestinians in other Israeli attacks, ranging across southern, central and northern Gaza, in the first days of June have otherwise been largely ignored by news outlets, and are hardly documented by official sources.
>Behind each death is a horrifying story of a Palestinian who lived through months of displacement, constant bombardment, hunger and likely the loss of family members, bearing witness to the 37,000 people killed by Israel in Gaza over eight months just to themselves be killed by Israeli forces. Survivors recall horrors, like children who recount being pulled out of the rubble of their homes, and the pervading smell of death.
Reports have found that it is Israel that won’t agree to the ceasefire deal’s framework, despite Blinken’s claims.
>Following the UN Security Council vote to approve a three-phase ceasefire in Gaza, U.S. officials and other international allies of Israel are cynically placing blame on Hamas for a stall in current ceasefire negotiations — even as Israel has insisted on indefinitely continuing its massacre in Gaza and Hamas has said its main request is a guarantee that Israel would actually honor the ceasefire.
>But reports from a wide variety of news sources on how both Israel and Hamas are approaching the ceasefire proposal suggest that Blinken is lying about which party is accepting of the deal. Indeed, reports have found that it is actually Israel that won’t agree to the deal’s framework: an immediate ceasefire with a limited prisoner and hostage exchange, then a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and ultimately the reconstruction of Gaza and return of Palestinians to their homes.
>Israel’s insistence on continuing its genocide has been consistent throughout the last eight months, including in reaction to the most recent ceasefire proposals of the past weeks. Officials have said Israel will only stop bombarding Gaza when they decide that Hamas has been eliminated and Palestinians there no longer pose a threat to Israel — a pledge that requires the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians, as military procedures and Israel’s own public statements have shown.
>But the main demand from Hamas appears to be straightforward, according to other officials familiar with the negotiations. Multiple outlets citing such sources have echoed what Hamas officials have said: that they are primarily concerned with getting guarantees from the U.S. and Israel that the deal will actually lead to a ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza.
>Specifically, Hamas is concerned about a lack of assurances from the current proposal about the transition between the first and second phases of the plan, Reuters reports, citing multiple sources involved with the talks. The first phase involves a six-week ceasefire, with the release of some Israeli hostages, while the second phase calls for a permanent ceasefire and Israeli troop withdrawal.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/vNwMx
Crimes against humanity are typically considered the most serious violations of international law.
In a report released on Wednesday by the UN Commission of Inquiry that covers the period from October 7 to the end of 2023, the commission found that Israel has committed a large range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The crimes against humanity that investigators found Israel has committed include the crime of extermination, which is the intentional mass killing of an entire group of people, “including by inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.”
The report also lists gender persecution as a crime against humanity, with Israel Defense Forces creating a “culture that allowed – and may have even encouraged – [soldiers] to humiliate and degrade Palestinians on the basis of gender.”
In terms of war crimes and international law violations, the commission concludes that Israel has directly targeted civilians and civilian objects and meted out collective punishment against Palestinians; has been using starvation as a weapon of war; has forcibly displaced at least 1.7 million people in Gaza; has systematically committed sexual violence against Palestinians; and has seen its senior officials inciting numerous calls to extinguish Palestinian civilians and life in Gaza.
“[B]oth the 7 October attack in Israel and Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza should not be seen in isolation. The only way to stop the recurring cycles of violence, including aggression and retribution by both sides, is to ensure strict adherence to international law,” the report read. “That includes ending the unlawful Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, discrimination, oppression and the denial of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and guaranteeing peace and security for Jews and Palestinians.”
“There are no fully functional hospitals any longer in Gaza,” says an emergency doctor, who just returned from Gaza.
More than eight months into Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, the territory’s healthcare system is barely functioning, with the World Health Organization reporting this week that there have been 464 Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system since October 7, affecting 101 health facilities.
Gaza’s Health Ministry warns that the few remaining hospitals still partially functioning could completely shut down due to Israel’s near-total blockade of the territory, which is keeping out parts needed to maintain hospital diesel generators, as well as crucial medical supplies.
Over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, and nearly 85,000 Palestinians have been wounded. “The situation in Gaza … remains catastrophic,” says Dr. James Smith, an emergency medical doctor just back from Gaza, where he treated patients for nearly two months.
“There are no fully functional hospitals any longer in Gaza and no health facilities that are able to absorb the sheer scale of need now.”
In the time immediately surrounding the vote, Israel killed at least 15 Palestinians in Gaza, including children.
As the UN Security Council passed a binding U.S.-sponsored resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday, Israel continued to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza — despite U.S. officials’ insistence that the ceasefire is backed by Israeli officials.
Hamas officials have said that they accept the resolution and look forward to negotiating details like how many Palestinian prisoners will be released, Reuters reports, citing senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri. Zuhri added that it is up to the U.S. to decide whether or not it will put proper pressure on Israel to abide by the plan.
In response to President Joe Biden’s announcement of the U.S.’s three-phase ceasefire agreement at the end of May, Netanyahu said that a ceasefire was a “non-starter” until Gaza “no longer poses a threat to Israel.”
Further undermining U.S. officials’ claims that Israel agrees to the ceasefire resolution is the fact that Israel has continued shelling Gaza and killing Palestinians in the time around and after the vote.
The Gaza health ministry reported on Tuesday that Israel had killed 40 Palestinians and wounded 120 in the previous 24 hours, while video posted online showed Israel shelling tents in a supposed safe zone in central Gaza on Tuesday.
Israeli forces carried out the strike on the Al-Shati UN school just after killing at least 40 in an attack on Nuseirat.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed a UN school-turned-evacuation center in Al-Shati refugee camp, near Gaza City, as they carried out an intense series of bombardments on Friday. Palestinian officials have reported that three Palestinians were killed and 15 were injured.
The military boasted of the attack on social media, saying it struck a shipping container in the school grounds and attaching a picture of the container with a large UN logo visible on the adjacent building. The IDF claimed that it was targeting Hamas militants, an unverified claim that Israel has parroted many times in accounting for its countless bloody airstrikes over the past months.
This is the second time that Israel has struck a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school over the course of 48 hours. On Thursday, Israeli forces deployed U.S.-made bombs in an attack that killed at least 40 Palestinians, including 14 children, in Nuseirat refugee camp.
Since Israel began its Rafah invasion, the amount of aid entering the region has dropped by two-thirds.
According to a food survey conducted by humanitarian aid groups in May, 85 percent of children under 5 were deprived of food at least one day over a three day period. Official death counts reported by Gaza’s government do not include deaths by starvation; at least 30 children have been recorded starving to death in Gaza so far.
Since May 6, when Israel seized and closed the main humanitarian aid crossing into Gaza, only about eight trucks of aid have entered on average each day — or about 1 percent of the 500 to 600 trucks that the UN has said need to enter each day in order to meet Palestinians’ needs.
Two weeks ago, the UN reported that its food and tent storage warehouses in Gaza are empty because of Israel’s blockade; now, families are reporting having to pay $700 just for a basic tent that they would then have to pitch in cemeteries due to overcrowding.
Over a million people have fled Rafah as Israel carries out its invasion, fleeing to nearby Khan Younis, Al-Mawasi and Deir al-Balah, Oxfam reports. As a result, two-thirds of Gaza’s population, or 1.7 million people, have now been forced into an area that’s less than one-fifth of the area of the Gaza strip — an area that Israeli forces have been bombing anyway, despite declaring it to be a safe zone.
Violence in the occupied West Bank linked to the war in Gaza passed a deadly milestone with more than 500 Palestinians killed since 7 October, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights chief Volker Türk said on Tuesday.
“Since the start of 2024, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed by the ISF, compared with 113 and 50 killed in the same periods in 2023 and 2022 respectively,” the statement from the UN rights chief’s office said.
And despite the absence of armed hostilities in the occupied West Bank, the ISF carried out at least 29 operations “involving airstrikes by unmanned aerial vehicles or planes and the firing of ground-to-ground missiles on refugee camps and other densely populated areas”, it continued.
During these operations, 164 Palestinians were killed, including 35 children, according to OHCHR, which pointed to a “prevalence” of Palestinian victims shot in the upper part of the body and denied medical assistance.
This suggests “intent to kill in violation of the right to life, rather than a graduated application of force and an attempt to de-escalate tense situations…in cases where those shot clearly did not represent an imminent threat to life”, the UN rights office said.
Meanwhile, humanitarian corridors have shut down, with many agencies and aid groups pausing operations in Rafah.
The assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, has left the displaced in “unspeakable” conditions, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on social media. Approximately 1.7 million displaced people are now in Khan Younis and “Gaza Middle Areas,” according to UNRWA.
Israeli forces subsequently launched attacks on designated safe zones, including in Al-Mawasi. Two strikes killed 45 and 21 people last week, mostly women and children. The first of the attacks, known as the “tent massacre,” was carried out with U.S. weapons, later analysis showed.
More than 18,500 pregnant women have been forced to leave Rafah, while about 10,000 pregnant women remain in the city in “desperate conditions,” the U.N. reported.
“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” Hollingsworth added.
Continued Israeli Assault Forces 1 Million Palestinians From Rafah
Archived version: https://archive.ph/fRCDy
Shootings, car bombs, and drone attacks: violence in Arab towns has reached historic levels amid a proliferation of weapons since Oct. 7.
Some may say this is an exaggeration, and insist that Palestinian citizens of Israel lead normal lives, better than most Palestinians and Arabs. But in addition to widespread discrimination against and increasing political persecution of Palestinian citizens by the Israeli government, the number of Palestinian victims of organized crime continues to rise at a frightening rate.
According to a Taub Institute study, the Palestinian Arab community in Israel had the third-highest murder rate among OECD countries in 2019 — just below Mexico and Colombia — with 11.11 murders per 100,000 citizens, a figure that tripled for those between the ages of 20 and 34. The study also noted that murders in Palestinian Arab communities more than doubled, from 109 cases in 2022 to 233 in 2023, with a consistent climb in the murder rate every month through last September.
Following the October 7 attacks, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir moved quickly to expand gun ownership among Jewish civilians, and recently celebrated the approval of more than 100,000 new gun licenses. With more weapons on the street, according to Handaqlu, gun violence at the hands of criminal organizations has also proliferated.“The weapons distributed today under the pretext of Jewish security will be used against Arabs,” she predicted, “especially with the deteriorating economic situation and the chaos of the war.”
In March 2023, for instance, Ben Gvir decided to freeze the ministry’s cooperation in the “Stop the Bleeding” program, an initiative designed to deal with the rising violence and crime in Arab society. Forced to come up with alternative solutions, Handaqlu convened a roundtable of civil society institutions and representatives from several ministries, and has continued to work with local authorities to help improve their response to criminal activity and assist those affected by it.
In Gaza’s starving north, Palestinians have to decide whether to leave the wounded to die or risk their lives trying to save them.
On the morning of May 11, the Israeli army spokesperson announced that the military had begun a new operation in Jabalia, the city and adjacent refugee camp in northern Gaza. Evacuation orders were issued to Palestinian residents of several neighborhoods, but many have been unable to leave; others have decided to stay, given the lack of any safe areas throughout the Strip.
The latest Israeli attack on the camp, involving both aircraft and ground troops, has had devastating consequences: the army has bombed and bulldozed entire residential squares, markets, and food warehouses, exacerbating the already desperate humanitarian crisis, while corpses remain scattered in the streets.
Hijazi described what is happening in Jabalia as a second Nakba, with the camp’s streets overrun with the dead and wounded, and no one able to retrieve the bodies or save the survivors. In the aftermath of a bombing or shooting, the residents have to make an impossible choice: they must either leave the wounded to die, or to risk their own lives by trying to save them.
“We are surrounded,” Abu al-Eish said. “The bombing does not stop, so we do not leave the school shelter. We are afraid that we will be killed at any moment.” That state of terror has consumed her children: “The sound of their laughter has been replaced by the sound of bombing and missiles raining down on the camp."
Abu al-Eish, the mother of two, described Jabalia as a refugee camp no longer fit for human habitation. “The army is systematically destroying all the homes in Jabalia,” she said, “to the point that the camp has become like a ghost town: devoid of its residents and full only of destroyed homes.” And for those that remain, Al-Batsh predicted, “whoever does not die of hunger will be killed by the bombs.”
The bombing came two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its assault on Rafah.
Emergency workers told NBC News that the death toll was likely to rise, as many people had been trapped in the encampment as it was engulfed in flames.
NBC reported that the strike took place less than a mile away from a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical facility, where at least 180 injured people arrived on Sunday.
Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement, “We will never forget the images emerging from Rafah tonight. Human beings, including babies, were burned alive and torn apart. This genocide must end, it must end now.”
“The U.S. government has facilitated this genocide by continuously sending weapons and funding to the Israeli military, despite mass opposition from the American people,” the group added. “We hold the U.S. government, in addition to the Israeli government, responsible for the slaughter of over 36,000 Palestinians, for the siege and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, and for mass destruction of infrastructure and land. We demand an end to all U.S. funding to the Israeli military now. People of conscience throughout the world are calling for an end to genocide.”
Rafah is the “last stage of total annihilation,” South Africa’s team warned, urging the ICJ to order a ceasefire.
>South Africa’s legal team is seeking provisional measures from the ICJ for Israel to immediately withdraw from Rafah and take every action possible to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza, on top of orders for Israel to comply with provisional orders the court issued in January and March.
>The delegation presented evidence from its document filing for the request for the emergency hearing, including reports that hadn’t previously been brought before the court. These reports highlight the existence of “extermination zones” in Gaza where all Palestinians are considered a target and recent developments like Israel’s closing of the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings in southern Gaza, which has caused severe shortages of basic needs like food.
>It is unclear when the ICJ will make a decision on the request, though South Africa’s team has argued that this may be the ICJ’s last chance to save the lives of countless Palestinians in Gaza. Though the ICJ’s orders are legally binding, Israel has snubbed previous orders to allow more humanitarian access to Gaza and pull back on its genocidal actions, instead intensifying both its blockade and its attacks on Palestinians with no refuge left.