An Israeli armoured vehicle sits on an Israeli army position at the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from southern Israel, December 1, 2024
A TOP aid group accused the Israelis today of “suffocating” humanitarian support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, Ahmed Bayram, said the people of Gaza are suffering from a massive shortage of humanitarian supplies.
Mr Bayram said: “I think, at this rate, Israel is suffocating the support for these people,” adding that Gaza needs 25 supply trucks to enter each week instead of the “10 or 11” that bring aid into the enclave now.
He said the Israelis are not “only constraining access, the roads and the safety of the people and the aid workers, but also there is a systematic attempt here to keep people in the cold and keep them starving.”
In the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, the Israeli army has reportedly continued to target agricultural plots which has caused widespread destruction and worsened the already dire humanitarian situation facing the Palestinian people.
The World Health Organisation reported on Sunday that it had managed to drop off some food, fuel and medical supplies to the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes a delivery of F-35s at Nevatim. (Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO)
Exclusive: Twice as many supplies for Israel’s “most lethal” fighter jets were sent from Britain than previously known.
F-35 components have been shipped from an RAF base to Israel fourteen times amid the Gaza genocide, it can be revealed.
At least two of the deliveries took place this summer shortly after Keir Starmer became UK prime minister.
The shipments were dispatched from a Royal Air Force base in Marham, Norfolk. They were transferred to Nevatim airbase which houses the Israeli air force’s squadrons of F-35 jets.
Declassified previously revealed that seven shipments of F-35 parts had been transported from RAF Marham to Israel since the Gaza bombing began.
The Ministry of Defence has now admitted that there were in fact “14 transfers of F-35 components from RAF Marham to Israel between October 2023 and August 2024”.
There have been no further “exports of F-35 parts direct to Israel via RAF Marham since the licensing suspension” announced by the Labour government in September 2024.
It released the data in response to a parliamentary question tabled by Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South.
The revelation could implicate British ministers in war crimes. An Israeli F-35 fighter jet was used to bomb a designated safe zone in Gaza, killing 90 people, in July.
Sam Perlo-Freeman of Campaign Against Arms Trade told Declassified: “The F-35 plays a key role in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. By not merely permitting but actively facilitating the supply of F-35 components to Israel from RAF bases, UK ministers have made themselves parties to war crimes, and risked making UK military personnel complicit”
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy gives a press conference in Abuja on 4 November, 2024 (AFP/Kola Sulaimon)
Scottish National Party MP Chris Law accuses David Lammy of exposing UK to ‘significant risk’
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been warned that the UK as a state, “alongside individual ministers and government officials as individuals”, is at “significant risk of future legal action for complicity in acts of genocide”.
In a letter to Lammy on Monday, seen by Middle East Eye, Scottish National Party MP Chris Law accused the foreign secretary of failing to “demonstrate any responsibility of the UK government to prevent genocide”.
“Do you accept that the UK’s obligations [under the Genocide Convention] should have been triggered from the moment the government became aware of a serious and imminent risk that genocide could be perpetrated,” Law asks in the letter.
The Scottish politician goes on to accuse the foreign secretary of appearing to “diminish the very definition of genocide”, after Lammy suggested last month in parliament that Israel’s actions in Gaza do not constitute genocide because fewer than millions of people have been killed.
Lammy said that terms like genocide “were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term.”
Original article republished from Memo under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinians, including children, who escaped from the attacks of the Israeli army and took shelter in the Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and who are struggling with hunger due to the embargo imposed on the region by Israel on the Gaza Strip, wait in line to receive meals distributed by charities while Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip continue uninterruptedly in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 01, 2024 [Hani Alshaer – Anadolu Agency]
The UN, on Monday, said that local food systems in Gaza have been “devastated” by Israel’s land and air strikes, highlighting access to food as one of the most pressing concerns, Anadolu Agency reports.
Our humanitarian partners are also warning that local food systems have been devastated by military ground operations, the bombardment of civilian areas and the presence of unexploded ordnance
said UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, during a news conference.
He stated that “access to food remains the most critical concern raised by community members across all groups”.
Dujarric emphasized that food insecurity in Gaza is “worsening” daily, leaving people “more vulnerable”.
Describing the bakeries in Gaza as a “lifeline”, he said they are unable to remain operational due to a lack of fuel and flour.
Responding to Anadolu’s question on World Central Kitchen suspending its aid operations as well as UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) recently halting aid via Karm Abu Salem Crossing due to security concerns, Dujarric referred to his previous comments about the ongoing lack of food, UN’s inability to distribute aid and said “the facts are pretty clear, and they’re pretty horrific”.
Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli security forces demolish buildings and mosque in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, where an evacuation and demolition order has been issued for the construction of Israeli settlements, in Negev Region, Israel on November 14, 2024 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]
Israeli occupation forces have demolished more than 1,500 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year, resulting in the displacement of over 3,600 Palestinians and affecting nearly 164,000 others, according to the United Nations.
Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reveals that between 1 January and 29 November, Israeli forces destroyed 1,528 structures, including 700 inhabited homes, 118 uninhabited homes and 398 agricultural facilities.
The demolitions have primarily targeted vulnerable Palestinian communities, displacing 3,637 people and severely impacting 163,769 others. The most affected area was the Tulkarm Refugee Camp in the northern occupied West Bank where 171 structures were destroyed, followed by the Nur Shams Refugee Camp which witnessed 118 demolitions, Jenin Refugee Camp, Jericho and other parts of the West Bank.
The Israeli government justifies these demolitions by claiming the structures were built without permits, although obtaining such permits is nearly impossible for Palestinians under the occupation’s restrictive policies.
Israeli demolition policies have escalated recently in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. They are intended to displace the Palestinians and expand illegal Jewish-only settlements amid the ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories.
It comes despite a landmark opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July, which declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land unlawful and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
