Rights and Accountability 31 January 2025
Palestinians walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, 30 January.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 30 January livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Palestinians who have spent the last 15 months displaced from their homes and communities in Gaza have begun to return.
Israeli forces have killed children and besieged multiple areas in the occupied West Bank while attacking Lebanon despite an extended ceasefire with the Hizballah resistance group.
On Wednesday, the Gaza government media office stated that more than 500,000 forcibly displaced persons have returned to the northern governorates since Israel’s withdrawal on Monday from the Netzarim corridor.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City on Wednesday, said, “Everything has been destroyed – from the public facilities to the residential buildings. There’s nothing left.”“There are areas we spent over half an hour driving by where all we saw was sheer destruction,” he added.
“Entire residential neighborhoods have been wiped off the map. In some areas, there are no signs of destroyed homes at all, as everything was completely bulldozed. Not even the rubble exists anymore.”
As people return to their homes, or what is left of their homes, in northern Gaza, civil defense and paramedic crews say they continue to retrieve the decomposed remains of Palestinians in multiple locations along the coastal road that had been occupied and closed by Israeli forces.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that it has recovered at least 14 bodies on the road, and the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that 59 bodies of people killed in previous Israeli attacks have been recovered from the rubble on Wednesday alone.
More than 400 bodies have been retrieved since the 19 January ceasefire.Attacks on Palestinians
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have continued to attack Palestinians in Gaza.
The Palestine Red Crescent reported on 29 January that Israeli snipers shot at one of the ambulances while it was “carrying out an urgent mission in the Tel al-Sultan area, west of Rafah,” in the south.
The United Nations stated that on 27 January a girl was killed and others injured when an animal-driven cart was hit on al-Rashid Road, northwest of Nuseirat, while returning towards the north.On the same day, the UN says, a man was reportedly killed and others injured when a bulldozer was hit in the al-Nuweiri area, northwest of Nuseirat.
Abubaker Abed, reporting for Drop Site News, writes that more than 80 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began, including 49 in Rafah alone.
Dr. Zaher al-Wahaidi, the Palestinian health ministry’s information director, told Abed, “We need caterpillars and bulldozers to clear up the wreckage and recover these corpses. People are getting back to literally nothing. Rafah is destroyed, and the killing and bombing continue there. Nearly 700 bodies are still trapped under the rubble in Rafah; retrieving them mainly depends on allowing this essential machinery that can help with this cumbersome mission.”
The Gaza government media office reported on 28 January that civil security crews have worked to neutralize dangerous remnants of Israeli weaponry across the Gaza Strip.
“Specialized teams have made strenuous efforts over the past days to remove unexploded ordnance and missiles and secure residential areas, which contributed to reducing potential risks to the lives of civilians, especially children who are exposed to these remnants while playing in the affected areas,” the media office stated.
Humanitarian aid arrives, UNRWA ban looms
The steady flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the work of local mutual aid organizations, are providing life-saving supplies for Palestinians starved and sickened by Israel’s genocidal siege.
A fleet of Turkish aid ships carrying more than 800 tons of supplies, power generators, portable toilets, and thousands of tents and blankets, arrived at the al-Arish port in Egypt on 29 January.
The Egyptian government said that the Rafah border crossing is set to reopen within days, and that the Egyptian side of the crossing is ready for operation.
North Sinai Governor Khaled Mojawer told the Anadolu news agency, “The problem lies with the Palestinian side due to damage caused by the Israeli military operations.”
The Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing has been destroyed and forcibly closed by Israel since early May.
The World Food Programme stated that it brought more food to people in Gaza during the first four days of the ceasefire than what it could previously dispatch on average per month.
The UN reports that on Tuesday, 28 January, 13 of its supported bakeries began operating at full capacity, eight in Deir al-Balah and five in Khan Younis. These include eight bakeries that had previously closed due to flour shortages and five new ones, the UN added.
The Sameer Project, a local mutual aid organization, said its volunteers distributed 51,000 liters of fresh water in Jabaliya and Gaza City on 29 January and provided free transportation to around 500 people returning from the south to the north.
The UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that it had significantly scaled up its humanitarian operations in Gaza since the ceasefire began, including delivering more than half a million food parcels in just nine days.The agency said on 29 January that “nearly 370 pallets of essential medications – including insulin syringes sufficient for over 17,000 people suffering from diabetes,” as well as laboratory and dental supplies, “have also been dispatched to UNRWA-run health facilities, including in Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, and al-Mawasi and the Beach Health Center in Gaza governorate where services have been restored this week.”
More than 1,000 UNRWA healthcare providers have held appointments with nearly 14,000 patients, and have supported solid waste collection efforts in four Gaza municipalities.
UNRWA said it also distributed hygiene items, potable and domestic water and shelter supplies, such as tarpaulins and blankets, to hundreds of families across Gaza, while about 22,000 tents are in the pipeline ready to enter the Strip.
However, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, activated legislation it passed last year to order the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, to cease operations as of Thursday, 30 January.
Phillippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, spoke to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, saying that full implementation of the Knesset legislation will be “disastrous.”
In Gaza, Lazzarini added, “undermining UNRWA’s operations will compromise the international humanitarian response. It will degrade the capacity of the United Nations just when humanitarian assistance must be scaled up significantly. This will only worsen the already catastrophic living conditions of millions of Palestinians.”
UNRWA said on Thursday that it has not received any official communication on how the Israeli parliament’s bills banning UNRWA will be implemented.Rebuilding infrastructure
The spokesperson for the Gaza municipality, Asem Alnabih, who is also a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, reported that municipal engineers and workers have been assessing the damage to the city’s water networks and planning the repairs as people return to the north.
The water supply is only reaching 40 percent of the city’s total area, Alnabih stated, and the amount of water available to residents is extremely limited and falls far short of meeting their basic needs.Water networks have suffered severe damage, he added, and 75 percent of the central water wells have been damaged during the war.
However, the delivery of fuel, which Israel had heavily restricted during the last 15 months, is helping to operate some of the sewage systems and water sources.
The UN children’s fund UNICEF says that its delivery of 10,000 liters of fuel has enabled the Palestinian Water Authority to resume operation of sewage pumps and water wells in north Gaza for the first time in three months.
Israeli soldiers shoot children in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israel has carried out a series of airstrikes and attacks on Palestinians in the north over the last week.
On Wednesday, 29 January, 10 Palestinians were killed in an air strike on Tammun, near Tubas, according to the Wafa news agency.
A Palestinian boy was shot and injured by Israeli forces in Tulkarm also on Wednesday, as Israeli soldiers continued a days-long raid into the city.
The United Nations reports that access to water and electricity has been disrupted in Tulkarm and initial estimates suggest nearly 1,000 people have been displaced. On 28 January, Israeli forces carried out several raids around the Ramallah area.Meanwhile, the Israeli siege on Jenin and the Jenin refugee camp has continued for another week.
The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Tamara Nassar reported on Saturday that about 2,000 Palestinian families have been forcibly displaced from Jenin as a result of Israel’s deadly raid.
“The Israeli invasion is a continuation of the Palestinian Authority’s dirty work in the camp,” she adds, which saw the killing of 15 Palestinians, including three children, between early December and 17 January.
The news publication Arabs48 reports that Israeli forces have expanded their military aggression, driving military vehicles and bulldozers into Jenin, demolishing and burning homes and destroying the local infrastructure.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces demolished the Hamza Mosque in Jenin camp and raided Palestinians’ homes in preparation for destroying them.
Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that Israeli army forces will continue to occupy Jenin refugee camp. In a video statement, Katz said: “The camp will not return to what it was. Even after the operation ends, IDF [Israeli military] forces will stay to ensure that terrorism does not return.”
Israeli soldiers have now killed at least 16 Palestinians and injured and arrested dozens, and at least 100 homes inside the camp have been destroyed, according to local news sources.
On Saturday, 25 January, Israeli forces shot and killed a 2-year-old girl, Laila Mohammad Ayman Khatib, while she ate dinner with her family in their home near Jenin, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. The group says that Israeli soldiers shot four bullets through the living room window, one of which struck Laila in the back of the head.Laila’s grandfather carried her out of the house and brought her to Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin, where she received emergency surgery. Laila was pronounced dead around 10pm, the rights group stated.
Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP, stated, “Israeli forces regularly and routinely carry out military operations with complete contempt for Palestinian life. Little Laila was having dinner with her family when Israeli forces, unprompted, fired live ammunition into their living room, killing her. It is outrageous that the Israeli military has been permitted by world leaders to kill Palestinian children with impunity in flagrant violations of international law.”
Laila’s mother and aunt sustained injuries from shrapnel during the attack, according to information collected by DCIP.
On Sunday, 26 January, an Israeli sniper shot and killed a 16-year-old child, Adam Majdi Ahmad Sub Laban, near the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem.Defense for Children International-Palestine stated that Adam and two other children were walking in the area when Adam was shot in the left thigh from behind, resulting in severe bleeding due to the injury to his femoral artery.
In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces reportedly arrested 12 Palestinians who celebrated the release of prisoners as part of the Gaza ceasefire.
Israel’s police and internal spy agency, the Shin Bet, said they arrested the Palestinians after videos emerged showing celebrations that included waving Hamas flags and firing guns into the air.
The Israelis alleged that the men violated a ban on “expressions of joy” and “identification with Hamas” that has been imposed since the Gaza ceasefire took hold.
The violent arrests in the context of the prohibition on expressions of joy by Israeli forces have prompted the Palestinian Prisoners Society to appeal to international mediators to intervene against “systematic terrorism” against released prisoners and their families.
According to the prisoners’ rights group, Israeli forces have threatened to bomb places where well-wishers of the released prisoners have gathered, while other released prisoners have faced rearrest and detention.
On Monday, “Israeli forces summoned the released prisoner Ashwaq Awad to meet Israeli intelligence. In this context, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society expressed its fears that Israel could rearrest the released prisoners, especially under Military Order No. 1651 of 2009, which allows this to happen even under exchange deals.”
The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq stated on 29 January that “the genocidal rhetoric and incitement from Israeli officials, which has characterized the atrocities in Gaza, is increasingly applied to all Palestinians.”
“The decades-long failure of the international community, and of high contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions to stand up against Israel’s manifest violations of international law facilitates the climate of impunity by which Israeli authorities are perpetrating its genocidal, colonial violence against the Palestinian people,” Al-Haq adds.Lebanon ceasefire extended, but Israel kills and injures dozens
And in Lebanon, Israeli forces have injured dozens of people in the last four days, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, which was extended three more weeks last weekend after a 60-day truce, the Israeli army was expected to withdraw from southern Lebanon on Sunday.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it would keep soldiers in the country beyond the deadline, Al Jazeera reported.
The Reuters news agency reported that Israeli forces killed at least 24 people and wounded more than 140 in southern Lebanon on 26 and 27 January, citing statistics gathered by the Lebanese health ministry.
Thousands of people tried to return to their homes in the area in defiance of Israeli military orders.
In a speech on Monday, Hizballah’s secretary general Naim Qassem said that Israel has violated the ceasefire 1,350 times while the resistance group has upheld it.
“We are facing an occupation that continues to attack and refuses to withdraw, and the resistance has the right to determine how, when, and in what form it confronts them,” Qassem stated.
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to share images of people expressing determination and resilience in the aftermath of Israel’s 15-month campaign of destruction.
Cats and dogs accompanied the hundreds of thousands of people returning home to the north.
And our contributor Abubaker Abed posted these photos of graffiti along the road where Palestinians marched from the south to the north.
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