Rights and Accountability 4 April 2025
Israel’s intensified siege on Gaza has accelerated the levels of starvation and dehydration across the enclave.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 2 April livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Israel has committed massacres across all areas of the Gaza Strip while its forced starvation and displacement policies continue unabated.
As Palestinians in Gaza tried to celebrate Eid, the holiday marking the end of the month of Ramadan, Israeli airstrikes escalated and intensified.
On 30 March, the first day of Eid, Israeli attacks killed more than 50 Palestinians and injured nearly 200.
The next day, the Israeli army issued mass forced displacement orders on the entire Rafah governorate in the south. Similar displacement orders were issued in north Gaza, Gaza City and in eastern Khan Younis.
Samir Zaqout, the Gaza-based deputy director of the human rights group Al Mezan, said that “Israel’s continued closure of crossings and the obstruction of humanitarian aid are worsening the situation in Gaza to an unprecedented degree – even compared to the past 17 months.”
Without fuel, Zaqout added, “essential services such as desalination plants and water wells have ceased functioning, pushing people toward life-threatening levels of thirst and hunger. The scale of deprivation is unlike anything we have seen since the start of the genocide in October 2023. I strongly condemn the international community’s continued failure to take any meaningful action in the face of an ongoing genocide.”
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians since the resumption of their full-scale genocidal attacks on 18 March, and that entire families have been wiped out.
On Wednesday, 2 April, Israeli attacks killed at least 77 Palestinians, according to medical sources. Amongst the various massacres, Israel bombed a UN medical clinic in Jabaliya refugee camp, in northern Gaza, killing more than 20 people, according to the Gaza government media office.
Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif interviewed a mother whose children, including her newborn baby, were killed in the airstrike.
The United Nations children’s fund UNICEF stated this week that an average of 100 Palestinian children have been killed or injured every day since the resumption of the full-scale attacks.Physicians in Gaza say that they spent the last few days cutting off new Eid holiday clothes from dead children.
An American emergency doctor, Razan al-Nahhas, recounted her experience from Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis on 30 March.Paramedics executed, thrown in mass grave
Last week, we reported on the Palestine Red Crescent Society medics and Palestinian civil defense first responders who went missing on 23 March.
They disappeared after one ambulance crew was dispatched in an attempt to treat injured people following an airstrike in Rafah.
Israeli soldiers had fired on the first ambulance, injuring the paramedics. The Red Crescent then sent another three ambulances to find and treat its colleagues, and to rescue those who had been attacked.
But all contact was lost, and rescuers were blocked by Israeli soldiers for a week from trying to locate the paramedics.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that additional ambulances and civil defense crews were able to reach the scene on Friday, 28 March, following international coordination.
They discovered the mission’s director, civil defense officer Anwar Abdul Hamid al-Attar, “dead, with his body shredded. The rescue crews that arrived Friday also found all of the Red Crescent vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances completely reduced to charred metal.”
One week after their disappearances, on 30 March, a mass grave was found containing the bodies of eight Red Crescent paramedics and six civil defense first responders, as well as an employee of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, according to the civil defense.One body was recovered with the hands bound, according to the Red Crescent, and Israeli bulldozers had tried to bury the vehicles.
Dr. Bashar Murad, the Red Crescent’s director of health programs, told The Guardian that one of the paramedics in the convoy had been on a call to his colleagues at the ambulance station when the attack took place.
“He informed us that he was injured and requested assistance, and that another person was also injured,” Murad said.
“A few minutes later, during the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew. The conversation was about gathering the team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”
Jonathan Whittall from the UN monitoring group OCHA was on the scene when the mass grave containing the bodies of the rescue workers was found.
Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for the civil defense corps in Gaza, said that one of the medics “had his clothes removed and another one was beheaded,” and that they had been executed at point-blank range by Israeli soldiers.
A member of the civil defense team involved in the effort to recover the victims’ bodies said in a statement to Euro-Med Monitor that “the bodies had distinct features, but they were in the early stages of decomposition.”When they were examined, the civil defense member said, “it was evident that a barrage of bullets had struck them. Based on my observations, the injuries were located in the chest region. A closer look revealed that some of the victims had still been alive despite their injuries – they were apparently buried alive with their feet bound.”
One body, the civil defense rescue worker added, “was covered in severe bruises and showed evidence of torture, and his legs seemed bound. After being shot in the back of the head, his face was completely ripped apart.”
Another rescue worker, he said, “was shot in the head from a very close distance, causing his skull to shatter. We discovered that every employee of the Palestinian Red Crescent had been shot in the left and right sides of the head.”
The civil defense in Gaza warned that the execution of these medical workers is “aimed at emptying the Gaza Strip of humanitarian and relief services. … In light of these dangerous plans, the international community, the International Civil Defense Organization, and international human rights organizations are called upon today to take effective action and not simply watch these Israeli crimes, which amount to war crimes and genocide.”
One Red Crescent worker, an ambulance officer named Assad al-Nassasra, remains missing.
One month of total siege
Bakeries in Gaza have been forced to close because of Israel’s month-long intensified blockade and the ongoing closure of all crossings.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said that because of the lack of flour and fuel, all 25 of the bakeries it supports are out of service.
Jonathan Whittall of the UN monitoring group OCHA said on 2 April that “the humanitarian crisis is quite literally spiraling out of control.”“On 1 April, all 25 subsidized bakeries by the WFP were closed, and people’s survival is dependent on an aid system that itself is under attack as aid workers are killed and our work is obstructed. And yet we’re told – and I find it very difficult to hear – that Gaza has enough food because supplies have entered during a month-long ceasefire, following a year in which supplies were literally drip-fed into the Gaza Strip.”
Whittall added, “My colleagues tell me that they just want to die with their families. Their worst fear is to survive alone. Day and night, we listen to air strikes shaking Gaza. Bombs are falling nonstop. Hospitals are overflowing with mass casualties, the one just a block away from me included.”
Whittall said, “It’s an endless loop of blood, pain, death. And Gaza has become a death trap. We cannot accept – and as humanitarians, I need to emphasize this – we cannot accept that Palestinian civilians are dehumanized to the point of being somehow unworthy of survival.”
He added that the execution of medical workers by Israeli forces and their burial in a mass grave was “emblematic of the point that we’ve reached in Gaza. What is happening here defies decency. It defies humanity. It defies the law. It really is a war without limits.”
Journalist killed
Another journalist was killed in Gaza this week. On 1 April, Muhammad Saleh al-Bardawil, who worked for Sawt al-Aqsa Radio, was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with his wife and their three children in Khan Younis.
The Gaza government media office stated that with al-Bardawil’s killing, the number of Palestinian journalists and media workers murdered by Israel since October 2023 is 209.The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, which runs the Costs of War project, said this week, “The war in Gaza has, since 7 October, 2023, killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.”
“It is, quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters.”
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to share images of people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Palestine.
The Sameer Project, a local mutual aid group in Gaza, posted this clip of art classes being taught in Beach refugee camp near Gaza City and children being excited for new notebooks. The group says that three art classes are being taught every week by their incredible art teacher, Mr. Anas.
Comments
Gaza these last horrible weeks
Permalink Carol Scheller replied on
SO grateful for your recording everything in detail - the testimonies, the exact details. I will do my best for my letter to the editors of our local (French language) papers. We cannot stop talking about Gaza as Hossam Shabat says, cannot let the world turn its head away. Thank you infinitely.
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