Rights and Accountability 12 October 2024
Palestinains walk during the evacuation of Jabaliya refugee camp and the Sheikh Radwan and Abu Iskandar neighborhoods of northern Gaza City on 12 October.
ZUMA PressIsrael is tightening its vise on civilians in both Gaza and in Lebanon, issuing new evacuation orders in both places on Saturday.
“The conflict in Lebanon, coupled with intensified strikes in Syria and the raging violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, points to a region dangerously teetering on the brink of an all-out war,” a senior UN official warned the Security Council on Thursday.
Rosemary DiCarlo, the under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, made those remarks after an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in a suburb of Damascus on Tuesday, killing seven civilians, including women and children.
More than 300 people were killed in Lebanon in the past week alone, DiCarlo told the UN body, warning that time for a diplomatic resolution was quickly running out.
Hizballah continued to fire rockets and drones into Israel from Lebanon on Friday and Saturday, with a drone striking a residential building in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, on Friday evening and causing no injuries.
Washington was reportedly viewing the crisis in Lebanon and the perceived weakened position of Hizballah following the assassination of key leaders as an opportunity to break the political impasse in that country, which has been without a president for nearly two years.
The US seeks to sideline Hizballah, which it has designated as a terrorist organization, and install a new president in Lebanon as it seeks to remove Hamas as the de facto governing authority over Palestinians’ internal affairs in Gaza.Main parties including the US have seemingly dropped any pretense of a diplomatic track to end a year of catastrophic violence in Gaza and now Lebanon, ushering in unprecedented catastrophe and bloodshed.
Amal Saad, an analyst and expert on Hizballah, said that we are witnessing not only “the end of international law, but the possible demise of diplomacy itself, which predates it by millennia.”
Saad added that “the US’ weaponization of ceasefire negotiations to systematically ravage Gaza and Lebanon have turned US diplomacy into a weapon of mass destruction.”
Israel besieges northern Gaza
Al Mezan, a prominent Palestinian human rights group, warned that since last Saturday, Israel had “unleashed a renewed wave of genocidal violence against Palestinians in northern Gaza … with the clear intent of eliminating any Palestinian presence” in the area.
This has involved the Israeli military dropping new evacuation orders in northern Gaza and announcing “a new phase of the war.”
The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of two neighborhoods in northern Gaza City on Saturday.
At least 150 people have been killed in the new offensive in northern Gaza that began a week ago.
No food has entered northern Gaza since the beginning of the month, putting one million people at risk of starvation, according to the World Food Program.
“Some 400,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza are facing threats of either displacement or death,” Al Mezan stated.
On Tuesday, Israel ordered the evacuation of three hospitals in northern Gaza and besieged Jabaliya refugee camp – the largest refugee camp in the territory, established after the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian cities and villages around during Israel’s establishment in 1948.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that Israeli warplanes attacked homes and other buildings near Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, that same day, “inflicting massive damage and injuries.”
Meanwhile, Israeli drones “opened fire on anyone moving through the main and side streets in the area,” preventing casualties from being transferred to the hospital “and spreading panic among patients and medical teams,” PCHR said.
Israeli forces bombed a group of people outside a bakery in Jabaliya refugee camp killing 13 people, the rights group added. The attack on one of the only bakeries still operating in the area proves Israel’s “intent to deliberately destroy all facilities indispensable for the population’s survival,” according to PCHR.
Journalist killed, another critically injured
On Wednesday, Israel launched airstrikes on tents sheltering displaced people in the yard of al-Yemen al-Saeed Hospital in Jabaliya camp, killing 17 Palestinians.
That same day, Israeli warplanes struck a group of journalists at a roundabout west of the camp, killing Mohammad al-Tanani and injuring Tamer Lubbad. A third journalist, Al Jazeera’s Fadi al-Wahidi, was shot in the chest and critically injured.
Al-Wahidi’s colleagues appealed for his urgent evacuation outside of Gaza for life-saving medical treatment:
More than 10,000 patients requiring urgent medical treatment unavailable in Gaza have been prevented from evacuating after the Rafah crossing with Egypt was shuttered in May, according to the World Health Organization.Israel claims its renewed siege on Jabaliya and other areas of northern Gaza is aimed at routing regrouped Hamas forces. Three reserve soldiers were killed while fighting in northern Gaza on Thursday.
Entire families were being killed in their homes in the camp, where thousands of people are trapped and starving.“Nobody is allowed to get in or out; anyone who tries is getting shot,” Sarah Vuylsteke, a project coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, stated.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said its researchers had “received reports of several dead bodies and injured people strewn across the streets and under the rubble of homes as it is incredibly difficult for rescue teams and civil defense to move and retrieve them.”
Israel has imposed a total siege on northern Gaza, “preventing the entry of food, water and medicine,” according to Al Mezan.
Dr. Husam Abu Safieh, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, warned that hospitals in the north would be turned into mass graves if hospitals were forced to evacuate. He said that dialysis patients, including children, have gone for eight days without dialysis treatment due to lack of fuel:
The Palestine Red Crescent Society and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that humanitarian personnel were unable to reach the hospital for three consecutive days: The World Health Organization said that seven missions to northern Gaza “were denied or impeded” over the past week and urged Israel to “stop evacuation orders and protect hospitals.”“North Gaza has barely any health services left,” the UN health organization added.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of WHO, called for a commitment to uphold humanitarian pauses, “especially given the evacuation orders in the north of Gaza,” for the implementation of a second round of polio vaccinations scheduled to begin on 14 October.
“To stop transmission, at least 90 percent of all children need two doses,” Ghebreyesus said.
Al Mezan, the human rights group, warned that developments on the ground indicate that the Israeli military is carrying out the “Generals’ Plan” devised by reservist commanders and soldiers to systematically depopulate northern Gaza “through atrocity crimes, including mass killings, displacement and starvation.”
Aid organizations said on Wednesday that “Israel intends to expand the Netzarim corridor to reinforce the separation between the north and south [of Gaza], effectively preventing people from returning north and further restricting aid flow to a population already enduring catastrophic levels of hunger.”
Mothers, children, health workers killed
“Nowhere in Gaza is safe for civilians,” the aid organizations warned once again.
Israel continues to attack schools and other facilities being used as shelter for displaced Palestinians throughout Gaza. At least 28 people were killed and more than 50 injured in an Israeli attack on school being used as a shelter in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, on Thursday.
While Israel claimed to have targeted a Hamas “command and control center” in a “precise strike” – as it has claimed without evidence in countless other attacks on shelters for civilians its military has displaced – witnesses told the BBC that “there were two air strikes that hit two rooms in the school where food aid was being stored and distributed.”
“Many mothers and children queuing at a malnutrition point were killed and injured” in the attack, Adele Khodr, a regional director for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said. Two health workers belonging to a UNICEF partner organization were among those killed, Khodr added.
Aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months, the UN monitoring office OCHA warned. “People have run out of ways to cope, food systems have collapsed and the risk of famine persists,” the office said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that far-right and virulently anti-Palestinian ministers allied with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are moving for the Israeli military to “take responsibility for every stage” of the aid distribution process in Gaza – “purchasing the aid, transporting it, securing it and distributing it to Gaza’s residents.”
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who recently complained that international pressure was preventing Israel from starving Palestinians in Gaza to death, controls COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that would oversee and coordinate the aid distribution process.
As reported by Haaretz, COGAT infamously “calculated the number of calories a person needs to avoid starving” and from there “calculated the amounts and types of food that would be allowed to enter Gaza” and the number of trucks to bring in that food.
“The figure came to precisely 170.4 trucks five days a week, excluding the 68.8 truckloads that were equivalent back then to Gaza’s own food production, which today is virtually nonexistent,” according to Haaretz.
“There’s no reason to think the menu of calories drafted in 2008 would change under the brink-of-starvation regimen Smotrich would institute in Gaza,” the paper added.
Deadly Beirut attack
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, an Israeli air raid on a densely populated residential area in central Beirut killed 22 people on Thursday – “marking the third significant attack on the city center since 23 September,” according to OCHA.
The apparent target, senior Hizballah official Wafiq Safa, survived the deadly strike, which occurred without warning, according to reports.
“Among the dead was a family of eight, including three children, who had evacuated from the south,” Reuters reported, citing an unnamed security source.
An Israeli strike injured two UN peacekeepers from Sri Lanka in south Lebanon on Friday, prompting France to summon Israel’s ambassador to the country and provoking outrage from Russia.Two other UN peacekeepers from Indonesia were injured on Thursday after they fell from a watchtower following Israeli tank fire, Reuters reported.
Also on Friday, a Thai worker was killed by a munition in northern Israel.
Two people were killed in Kiryat Shmona, a town in northern Israel, on Wednesday. Hizballah said it fired at least 360 missiles towards Israel from Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday.
The UN children’s fund UNICEF said in a situation report published on Friday that among the 2,110 people killed in Lebanon since October 2023 and through 8 October 2024, 127 were children, with around 70 percent of casualties occurring over the past three weeks.
There have been more than 9,400 strikes in Lebanon over the past year, according to UN figures.
“The escalation in violence in the week of 23 September 2024 has broadened the scope of attacks, causing the deadliest period and largest displacement surge Lebanon has seen in decades,” according to UNICEF.
The new school year has been postponed in Lebanon as more than half of all schools in the country are being used as shelters for displaced people. Around 40 percent of the 1.5 million children registered in Lebanese schools are currently displaced.
Around 1.2 million people – one-fifth of the country’s population – have been internally displaced within Lebanon, according to Save the Children.
On Saturday, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of 23 villages in southern Lebanon, instructing residents to move north of the Awali River.
Between 23 September and 9 October, more than 310,000 Syrians and nearly 110,000 Lebanese citizens fled Lebanon to Syria.
“Israeli airstrikes have not only intensified but also expanded into previously unaffected areas and increasingly targeted critical civilian infrastructure,” OCHA stated on Wednesday.
At least 12 facilities in Lebanon run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, are being used as shelters and three Palestinian refugee camps have been “affected by airstrikes,” according to UNICEF. The agency added that around 24,500 Palestinians have fled refugee camps “due to the recent attacks.”
Meanwhile, 12 hospitals in the country have reportedly been damaged and around one-third of all primary health centers in Lebanon have closed.
“Destruction of generations of Palestinian children”
More than 100 health workers and emergency personnel have been killed in Lebanon over the past year, according to the UN human rights office.
“Hospitals in southern Lebanon are shutting down due to damage sustained in attacks and supply shortages, with at least three suspending operations entirely,” according to UN OCHA.
According to Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who worked in Gaza during the first weeks of the genocide and is currently in Lebanon, “we’re … witnessing a similar pattern to what was happening in Gaza, in that the Lebanese health system is being targeted.”
A new report by an independent UN commission of inquiry found based on its investigation of attacks on four hospitals in Gaza that Israeli forces “attacked these facilities in a similar manner, suggesting the existence of operational plans and procedures for attacking healthcare facilities.”The commission added that “attacks on healthcare facilities are an intrinsic element” of Israel’s “broader assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the physical and demographic infrastructure of Gaza, as well as of efforts to expand the occupation.”
Attacks against healthcare facilities, directly resulting in the killing of civilians, including people receiving medical treatment or seeking shelter, constitute “a violation of the Palestinians’ right to life,” according to the commission.
“Such acts constitute the crime against humanity of extermination,” the commission added.
The commission also said that attacks on medical facilities providing pediatric and neonatal care “have led to incalculable suffering of child patients, including newborns.”
The commission added: “Israel has violated children’s right to life, denied children access to basic healthcare, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group.”
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