Mondoweiss – January 29, 2024
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 115:
Israel pushes Gazans further south; U.S threatens further regional violence
The U.S. government threatens further regional violence on the heels of drone attack that killed three American troops in Jordan. Human rights groups slam countries for pulling funding for UNRWA as Palestinians in Gaza face famine and starvation.
By Leila Warah
Casualties
** This figure is released by the Israeli military.
In the 48 hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) interim ruling on Israel, which placed the state on trial for genocide, the military has continued attacking Gaza with full force.
Within the last two days, at least 373 Palestinians, including 345 civilians, have been killed and at least 643 wounded, reported Human Rights Monitor (HRM).
The entire city of Khan Younis, located in the second-most southern district in the Gaza Strip, is being pounded by Israeli bombardment.
The Al Amal Hospital in the city is being subjected to a military siege that has lasted several days, trapping medical staff, patients, and displaced people inside.
“Israeli shelling and heavy gunfire continue in the vicinity of PRCS Al-Amal Hospital,” reported the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Monday afternoon.
PRCS also announcedᅠthe burial of three people in the courtyard of the al-Amal Hospital due to the “difficulty of transporting them to an official cemetery due to the ongoing blockade imposed on the hospital.”
On Sunday, PRCS shared a video from inside the Hospital, documenting two members of the medical charity distracting a child amid the sounds of clashes around them. In the video, the young girl shared with them her dreams of returning to her home and school as she expressed her determination to become a dentist.
Meanwhile, Al Nasser Hospital, also located in the city of Khan Younis, is similarly being subjected to a brutal blockade where medical and non-medical waste is piling up “everywhere,” says Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The medical waste, which could be toxic, may contribute to the spread of the diseases amid already deteriorating public health conditions in southern Gaza.
To make matters worse, bodies are also piling up on hospital grounds due to Israeli military vehicles blocking people in, resulting in the inability of citizens to reach the cemeteries in the city, Al Jazeera reported.
Staff and residents of the Hospital are digging a mass grave on hospital grounds to bury the bodies. At least one other mass grave has already been dug on the property.
Palestinians pushed farther south in Gaza
Growing numbers of Palestinians are being forced to flee their homes and shelters in Khan Younis as the army pushes them further south into Rafah, the last remaining place for Palestinians.
“Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate and are going through security checkpoints with facial recognition technology. Women and children are separated from the men. A large number of people have been detained and dehumanized during the process,” reported Hani Mahoud from Rafah for Al Jazeera.
“They are making different groups of people raise their ID cards as they pass through these military checkpoints. In many cases, Palestinian men have been abducted and arrested by the Israeli military, and others have been taken for investigations,” Al Jazeera added.
The displaced civilians are fleeing Israeli attacks on Khan Younis only to arrive in the already overcrowded district of Rafah, where people are sleeping on the street and in tent camps flooded with sewage amid the harsh weather conditions.
“Scenes of forcibly displaced people are a disgrace to humanity,” the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“Over half a million Palestinians in Khan Younis were instructed by the occupying forces to evacuate their homes, including hospitals and health centres, in a cruel expansion and deepening of forced displacement from southern regions,” the ministry continued.
“Israel has ramped up its efforts to starve [Palestinians] as well as forcibly displace them from their homes in the Strip,” Human Rights Monitor said.
“In defiance of the ruling of the world’s highest court and in violation of its own international obligations, including to international law and principles, Israel persists in committing egregious violations that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide against the Palestinian people,” the humanitarian group continued.
Gazans starve as world powers cut off funding to UNRWA
Japan and Austria are the most recent countries to join the approximately dozen others who have announced plans to suspend funding to The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the main agency delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The countries are awaiting the outcome of an investigation into allegations that 12 staff members participated in Hamas’s October 7 operation, collectively punishing Gaza’s population in the process.
UNRWA, which has provided primary healthcare to Gaza’s nearly two million residents since before October 7, is already collapsing under Israel’s military attacks and struggling to provide social and primary care to the besieged enclave.
According to the humanitarian organization, only four out of 22 of its health centers in Gaza are operational due to Israeli bombardment and access restrictions.
“UNRWA is the lifeline for over 2 million Palestinians facing starvation in Gaza,” Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, said in a post on X, stressing that the potential participation of 12 staff does not justify measures to starve an entire nation.
“It shouldn’t be collectively punished upon allegations against 12 persons out of its 13,000 staff. UNRWA acted responsibly and began an investigation. We urge countries that suspended funds to reverse the decision,” Safadi continued.
Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, has called the cuts a “heartless decision” by some of the world’s richest countries “to punish the most vulnerable population on earth because of the alleged crimes of 12 people.”
“Right after the ICJ ruling finding risk of genocide. Sickening,” Callamard added.
Similarly, the Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said that “cutting off funding” to UNRWA at this “critical moment” will only “hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support.”
“We appeal to donors not to suspend their funding to UNRWA at this critical moment,” Ghebreyesus said.
Israeli politicians discuss plans to ‘re-settle’ Gaza
As Gaza’s population continues to be systematically wiped out by Israel, high-ranking Israeli cabinet ministers and parliament members are planning for the besieged enclaves’ re-settlement with Jewish Israelis.
On Sunday, the politicians attended the モReturn to Gaza Conferenceヤ in Jerusalem. At the conference, plans were made for the re-establishment of 15 Israeli settlements and the addition of six new ones on top of recently destroyed Palestinian communities.
The fact that Israeli officials would “convene a high-level meeting to plan an act of aggression – the acquisition of occupied territory and its colonization – is an early indication of intent to breach the provisional measures order by the ICJ,” says Israeli humanitarian lawyer Itay Epshtain.
Hamas has also released a statement saying the conference goes against the interim rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the war on Gaza by openly calling for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians at the conference.
“We call on the international community and the UN to take a firm stance … and condemn it clearly as a fascist conference based on the idea of ethnic cleansing,” Hamas said.
U.S. threatens to escalate regional violence
The United States Central Commandᅠ(CENTCOM) announced three service members were killed and and 34 were wounded on Sunday during a drone attack on US forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, which is likely to cause further escalation in regional violence.
“While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,” President Joe Biden said shortly afterward but did not cite any evidence.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin says he is “outraged and deeply saddened” by the killing of the three troops.
“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops, and our interests,” he said in a statement.
Iran later denied their involvement in the fatal drone attack. The country’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying the “baseless accusations” connecting them to the attack are aimed at fanning the flames of war.
“This is a conspiracy by those who see their interests in again dragging the US into a new conflict in the region,” Iranian spokesman Nasser Kanani said, as cited by Al Jazeera.
“Resistance groups across the region do not take orders from the Islamic Republic of Iran in their decisions and actions. And even though Iran does not welcome expanding fighting in the region, it also does not interfere in the decisions of resistance groups on how they support the Palestinian nation, or defend themselves and their countries’ peoples against any violations or occupation,” Kanani continued.
Later on Monday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for the drone attack, explaining it was “in response to the massacres of the Zionist entity against our people in Gaza.”
Al Jazeera analyst Marwan Bishara says that the US “recognizes” that it is in a sort of “proxy conflict with Iran,” noting that this is the first time American troops have been killed since the war on Gaza started.
“This is important because this is another landmark day where we are seeing escalation, a widening of the war. Clearly America is slowly – but surely – getting stuck in the Middle East.”
“This is the president who famously said we have to end the “forever wars,” and now he’s making threats about punishing the perpetrators and those who are responsible. America is already involved in a number – I’m not sure if we’ve reached a dozen strikes against Yemen. It has employed its most sophisticated aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean,” Bishara continued.
Many right-wing hawkish US politicians have responded to the attacks by calling for military retaliation, including republican Tom Cotton.
“The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East. Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander in chief,” Cotton said in a statement.
David Des Roches, former Pentagon director of Arabian peninsula affairs, told Al Jazeeraᅠthat the US reaction to the drone attack that killed three service members “will be a significant one.”
“I don’t think it will be directed solely against proxies; I think there will be something higher up the hierarchy of Iranian interests destroyed,” he said.
“It’s a calculus that’s very hard to get right and it’s fraught with danger. The greatest danger is that both sides might create a sort of unwanted momentum towards a confrontation that neither side truly wants,” Roches concluded.
However, Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, said it’s likely US interests will continue to be threatened without an end to the war in Gaza.
“It’s important to note that there were zero attacks during the six days between November 24-30 when there was a ceasefire in Gaza,” Parsi told Al Jazeera, adding that the Biden administration appears willing to put US service members at risk to allow Israel to push on with the war.
“In fact, the carnage in Gaza is increasingly clear now. It is posing a threat to US interests because we’re seeing how it’s threatening the US in the Red Sea,” Parsi said.
“We’re seeing the casualties now on the Syrian border. There may be a war between Israel and Lebanon as well and, down the line, a new nuclear crisis with Iran. Biden is not pursuing US interests by allowing this to continue. If he really wants to end it and protect US troops, there needs to be de-escalation and de-escalation begins with a ceasefire in Gaza,” Parsi concluded.
Similarly, the US National Iranian American Council (NIAC) says the US and Iran “are now closer to the brink of being pulled into a full-blown regional war by the vortex of violence” unleashed by the conflict in Gaza.
“President Biden must show leadership and recognize that there is no military solution to this crisis that has only been expanded and prolonged by military escalation and a dearth of diplomacy,” NIAC concluded on X.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-115-israel-pushes-gazans-further-south-u-s-threatens-further-regional-violence/
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 114:
UN chief urges Western countries to restore funding to UNRWA
Thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem calling on Netanyahu to resign, while others attempt to block aid trucks from entering Gaza. Meanwhile, the UN said it has suspended the employees who Israel alleges took part in October 7.
BY MUSTAFA ABU SNEINEH
Casualties
** This figure is released by the Israeli military.
The UN chief, Antonio Guterres, called on the U.S. and its European allies to restore the funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as millions in the Gaza Strip are in urgent need of humanitarian support.
Guterres said that UNRWA would investigate the Israeli claim that 12 UN employees took part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7.
Guterres added that nine of the 12 employees accused by Israel of being involved in the attack have been suspended. UNRWA employs 30,000 workers, 13,000 in Gaza, and the rest in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the occupied West Bank.
Since December 1949, it has operated schools, health clinics, food banks, and youth centers, among other humanitarian services essential to Palestinian refugees who were forcibly expelled from homes and towns by Zionist militias in 1948.
The U.S., Canada, Australia, and other European states are now pausing their funding to UNRWA.
“While I understand their concerns, I was myself horrified by these accusations, I strongly appeal to the governments that have suspended their contributions to, at least, guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations,” Guterres said in a statement Saturday evening.
For second time since 2018, U.S. halts donations to UNRWA
The U.S. is the biggest donor to UNRWA, paying $153 million to the agency in 2023, and $343 million during 2022, according to UNRWA official figures.
Guterres said “the tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA, many in some of the most dangerous situations for humanitarian workers, should not be penalized. The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met.”
Israeli bombardment killed at least 152 UN workers in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
Prior to that, the U.S. has ended funding to UNRWA for almost three years. In 2018, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Washington is not going to donate the full sum of money pledged to UNRWA, accusing the agency’s institutions of being “irredeemably flawed.”
Trump’s decision was hailed by Israel and fit perfectly with the Likud ruling party’s agenda to end the cause of Palestinian refugees, who number in the millions and are still calling for their right to return to lands and homes occupied by Zionist militias in what became the present-day state of Israel.
A Likud lawmaker, Anat Berko, summoned the Israeli position at that time, telling CNN that “an end to UNRWA will bring an end to the ‘refugee forever’ status. We cannot solve any conflict with this definition of refugees. Humanitarian aid — yes. But UNRWA — no.”
UNRWA has been a lifeline for tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who sought shelter from Israeli bombardment in its facilities and schools.
UNRWA has also been a reliable and independent source to comprehend the plight of thousands of Palestinians who have endured constant Israeli bombardment, internet and telecommunications blackouts, and forced displacement since October.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel sat in the dock to face accusations of committing genocide, had cited and quoted UNRWA’s officials and reports during the hearings, and also during its ruling on Friday, which ordered Israel to “prevent genocidal actions” in Gaza.
‘I did not find a bite of food or a tent. I slept under the rain.’
Israel’s bombardment in the Gaza Strip has resulted in the displacement of almost two million Palestinians. Most of them were forced into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city bordering Egypt’s Sinai.
The Palestinian population in Gaza is made up of 80 percent refugees from 1948, and have now been displaced yet again 75 years later, reliving the trauma that their grandparents endured during the Nakba.
In Rafah, thousands of Palestinian families spent their Saturday in tents under heavy rains, cooking their meals on stoves, and digging channels to direct the flooded water away from their mattresses.
A Palestinian told Al-Jazeera Arabic while on a ladder fixing his tent with heavy-duty nylon tarps that his family had been displaced three times, from Gaza to Al-Nuseirat, to Khan Yunis, and now to Rafah.
Not every Palestinian could leave northern Gaza or Khan Younis, and many have now opted to build shelters on top the rubble of their levelled houses, using whatever material they could find amidst the rubble to shields themselves from the elements.
Oum Imad, a Palestinian resident of Abbsan town, told Wafa that she walked for three days to arrive in Rafah.
“When I arrived here, I did not find a bite of food or a tent. I slept in the street under the rain…I am accompanied by orphaned children, without a mother or father. This is the hardest war. I witnessed all wars [in Gaza]. I’m 70 years old, this is the toughest of all,” she said.
Palestinians bury relatives in Nasser Hospital as Israeli forces lay siege to Khan Younis
On Saturday evening, Palestinians buried 150 martyrs in the yard of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, as Israeli tanks laid siege to the facility.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that 30 bodies remain unidentified in the mortuary as anyone leaving or entering the Nasser Hospital is at risk of being shot by Israeli forces.
On Sunday, the ministry said that Israel committed 19 massacres in the Gaza Strip, killing 165 Palestinian martyrs and injuring 290 in the past 24 hours.
Israel killed 26,422 Palestinians and 65,087 people in the Gaza Strip since October.
“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads. The occupation prevents ambulances and civil defense crews from reaching them,” the ministry added on its Telegram channel.
The Nasser Hospital, the largest medical facility in southern Gaza, is facing “a severe and dangerous shortage of blood units, and many anesthesia drugs have run out,” the ministry said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) also warned on Sunday that the Amal Hospital in Khan Younis had run out of oxygen due to the ongoing siege imposed by Israeli forces for the past week.
Since Monday, Israeli forces have bombed several areas in the vicinity of the Al-Amal and Nasser Hospitals in Khan Younis. It also stormed the Al-Khair Hospital and arrested a number of medical staff. There are only 14 hospitals partially operating in the Gaza Strip, nine of which are in the south, and the rest are in northern Gaza.
Israeli artillery and military planes bombed several areas in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours. In north Gaza’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, an Israeli air strike killed eight Palestinians and injured dozens, according to Wafa news agency.
Israeli forces also bombed Al-Maghazi refugee camp, Khan Younis’s Batn Al-Sameen, Al-Malalha, and Jourat Al-Aqqad areas.
Protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; thousands march in Europe in support of Palestinians
On Sunday morning, hundreds of Israeli protestors attempted to block the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip from Karam Abu Salem crossing.
The protestors have called for the release of all Israeli captives in Gaza before allowing any aid trucks to enter. The protests are organized by the Order 9 movement, made up of the families of captives, settlers from the occupied West Bank, and Kibbutzniks. Attempts to block aid to Gaza by Order 9 have been growing since last week.
On Sunday, Israeli police dispersed and arrested some protestors in West Jerusalem, calling for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign. Tens of thousands of Israelis also protested in Tel Aviv, calling for an election and the release of captives in Gaza.
In the wake of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, the mayor of Rishon Lezion, south of Tel Aviv, ordered the removal of the South African flag.
Meanwhile, in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of citizens marched on Saturday in demonstrations in several cities and capitals of Europe, including Berlin, Vienna, Denmark’s Odense, and Rotterdam, to name a few.
Israeli forces raid towns in West Bank, Palestinians detonate explosive device in Qabatiya
In the past 24 hours, Israeli forces arrested 22 Palestinians from the towns of Ramallah, Jenin,ᅠBurqin, Bethlehem, and Silwan.
Israeli forces handed the body of Salim Nasser Abu Hajar from the Shweika area, north of Tulkarem, after holding him for several weeks. Israeli forces shot Abu Hajar, 25, and arrested his brother near the village of Deir Al-Ghusoun, north of Tulkarem, on December 16, 2023.
On Sunday morning, Israeli forces stormed the village of Tayasir, east of Tubas, while on Saturday evening, Israeli forces stormed the villages of Beit Rima and Deir Ghassaneh, northwest of Ramallah, which were resisted by Palestinians.
Israeli forces were raiding the house of Othman Al-Assi to arrest his son Nader, who was not at home, and interrogated the family, Wafa reported.
Israeli forces also stormed the towns of Jenin and Qabatiya and clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters. In Qabatiya, the Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades said that it detonated an explosive device in an Israeli infantry force in the town.
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