Palestinian children inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on January 1, 2025. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)
Israel’s military bombed two refugee camps in the besieged enclave, pushing the official death toll since October 7, 2023 to 45,553.
Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip continued unabated on the first day of 2025, with airstrikes and drone attacks across the besieged enclave killing more than 20 people on Wednesday, including women and children.
One Israeli strike on the Jabilia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 15 people, including four children and one woman, according to Al Jazeera. Others are still missing under the ruins of the house targeted by Israeli forces, which have systematically destroyed the Palestinian territory’s civilian infrastructure during the nearly 15-month assault.
The Associated Press reported that “another strike overnight in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a woman and a child, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.”
“A third strike early Wednesday in the southern city of Khan Younis killed three people, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital, which received the bodies,” AP added.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said Wednesday that the Israeli military’s latest attacks pushed the official death toll in the enclave since October 7, 2023 to 45,553—a count that experts believe dramatically understates the actual toll.
Israel’s incessant attacks and obstruction of humanitarian assistance have turned Gaza into what one aid group recently called a “death trap,” with no safe place for civilians who are at growing risk of disease and starvation—emergency conditions exacerbated by winter weather.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Tuesday that six babies have frozen to death in Gaza in recent days.
“More babies will likely die due to the cold, lack of shelter, and basic winter supplies,” the organization warned. “Blankets, mattresses, and warm clothes are sitting outside Gaza waiting for approval to get in. The siege must be lifted.”
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, said Tuesday that “horrors continue” in Gaza “under the world’s watch,” pointing to Israel’s killing of aid workers, attacks on U.N. shelters, and torture of detainees.
“In northern Gaza, since the intensification of the military operation nearly three months ago, there has been a significant increase in attacks on our staff, buildings, and operations,” said Lazzarini. “I reiterate my call for independent investigations into the systematic disregard for the protection of humanitarian workers, premises, and operations. This cannot become the new standard and impunity cannot become the new norm.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), speaks at a news conference on November 19, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“The United States government is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A group of U.S. senators led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a press conference Tuesday urging their colleagues to support resolutions that would block the sale of tank rounds, bomb kits, and other weaponry to the Israeli government, which has repeatedly used such arms to commit horrific war crimes in the Gaza Strip over the past 13 months.
“The truth of the matter is, from a legal perspective, these resolutions are not complicated; they’re cut and dry,” said Sanders (I-Vt.), who introduced the joint resolutions of disapproval in September alongside several other members of the Senate Democratic caucus.
“The United States government is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions,” Sanders continued, pointing to U.S. statutes prohibiting the sale of weaponry to countries violating internationally recognized human rights or obstructing American humanitarian aid.
Sanders was joined at Tuesday’s press conference by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), each of whom made their case to fellow senators ahead of a scheduled floor vote on Wednesday.
“What’s unfolding before our very eyes right now is mass starvation and the spread of disease,” said Welch. “Is the United States and its foreign policy… forced to be blind to the suffering before our very eyes?”
Surrounding the senators as they spoke were photographs of destruction and emaciated children in Gaza, where most of the population is displaced and crowded into small segments of the enclave as Israeli bombs rain down and famine takes hold.
Watch the full press conference:
The resolutions will hit the floor for a vote Wednesday with the backing of a broad coalition that includes Jewish Voice for Peace Action, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, J Street, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Oxfam, and other organizations and activists.
“For over a year, the Biden administration has funded the Israeli government’s brutal genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, despite overwhelming opposition from across the country,” said Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which said it has driven more than 56,200 letters and more than 20,790 phone calls to senators imploring them to support the measures.
“These joint resolutions of disapproval are one of the last chances that Senate Democrats have before Republicans take control in January to uphold human rights, honor the will of the American people, and stand on the right side of history by blocking weapons to the Israeli military,” Miller added.
“It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation of our moral values.”
Since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the U.S. has supplied its ally with more than 50,000 tons of weaponry and approved billions of dollars in additional arms and military equipment to be delivered in years to come. U.S. military support has helped Israel carry out a large-scale military assault on Gaza, killing more than 43,000 people so far—a majority of them women and children.
To sustain the flow of American weapons, the Biden administration has contradicted the findings of its own experts and outside analysts by declaring publicly that it has not found Israel to be illegally blocking U.S. humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, aid groups on the ground say humanitarian assistance has plummeted to an all-time low in recent weeks, with an average of just 37 aid trucks entering Gaza per day in October.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Sanders said the “most important point to be made” ahead of Wednesday’s vote is that “the United States of America is complicit in these atrocities.”
“That complicity must end, and that is what these resolutions are about,” said Sanders. “It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation of our moral values.”
This post has been updated to correct when Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the resolutions.
Palestinian children sit with pots near makeshift tents as they wait to receive food aid in Khan Younis, Gaza on October 28, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza,” warned a spokesperson for the U.N. Children’s Fund.
Humanitarian groups and United Nations officials issued dire warnings Tuesday about the potentially catastrophic consequences of Israeli lawmakers’ vote to ban the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the body primarily responsible for delivering lifesaving aid to the people of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said Tuesday that if the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is unable to operate due to the measures passed overwhelmingly by the Israeli Knesset on Monday, “it’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza.”
“So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children,” said Elder.
The legislation that Israeli lawmakers passed in a 92-10 vote bars UNRWA—a frequent target of Israeli smear campaigns and military attacks—from operating or providing “any service” within “in the sovereign territory of the state of Israel.”
Israeli lawmakers also passed a measure declaring UNRWA a “terror” group, barring Israeli officials from engaging in any contact with the agency.
The Guardian noted that the newly passed measures—which are set to be implemented within 90 days—are “expected to lead to the closure of UNRWA’s East Jerusalem headquarters and would effectively block the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza via Rafah.”
“The severing of diplomatic relations would preclude Israel from issuing entry and work permits to foreign UNRWA staff and prevent coordination with the Israeli military to permit aid shipments,” the newspaper added.
“Humanitarian actors rely on coordination with UNWRA to deliver aid and alleviate suffering. UNWRA cannot be replaced by NGOs.”
Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, warned in a statement Tuesday that the measures represent “an outright attack on the rights of Palestinian refugees.”
“It is clearly designed to make it impossible for the agency to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory by forcing the closure of the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem and ending visas for its staff,” said Callamard. “It amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.”
“This appalling, inhumane law will only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinians, who have endured unimaginable hardship since the horrific attacks by Hamas and other armed groups in southern Israel one year ago, and whose need for global support is greater than ever. The international community must be quick to condemn it in the strongest possible terms and exert any influence they have on the Israeli government to repeal it.”
The U.N. General Assembly established UNRWA in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, and the agency is central to humanitarian operations in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip—a role that aid groups described as necessary and irreplaceable. According to a World Health Organization official, roughly a third of the healthcare workers assisting the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza work with UNRWA.
“UNRWA plays a critical role in serving civilians in desperate need in Gaza,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said Tuesday. “Humanitarian actors rely on coordination with UNRWA to deliver aid and alleviate suffering. UNRWA cannot be replaced by NGOs like IRC.”
“The bill passed in the Israeli parliament is an unprecedented attack on a U.N. agency and, if implemented, would only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe,” IRC added. “We strongly urge that this legislation is not applied. We continue to advocate for an immediate ceasefire to get aid in, to release the hostages, and to meet the growing and dire needs of the civilian population.”
Sam Rose, deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, said in a CNN interview that “the entire humanitarian system” in the Palestinian enclave “relies every minute of every day on UNRWA to deliver services to 2 million people living in the worst possible conditions.”
Implementation of the ban, Rose warned, “would be devastating for us, devastating for other aid agencies—but more importantly, for the population here that’s suffering so much.”
Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK’s air force has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide.
People remove a body from the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, Gaza on October 29, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
“Put simply, those children who have survived so far are running out of time,” said one aid group. “We are pleading with the international community to urgently intervene.”
Israeli forces on Tuesday bombed a crowded residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing around 93 people—including at least 20 children—in the latest atrocity in a region that has been under heavy military siege for weeks.
Eyewitnesses described an appalling scene at the building decimated by the Israeli strike. One person who was helping to remove victims from the rubble told Reuters that there were “body parts hanging on the walls.” Another eyewitness said that “most of the victims are women and children.”
The Israeli strike on the residential building—which was reportedly sheltering roughly 200 displaced people—also wounded dozens, but hospitals in the region are overwhelmed and barely functional after relentless Israeli raids and attacks, leaving them unable to handle an influx of bombing victims.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, told Al Jazeera that “more than 150 dead and wounded had arrived after the attack.”
“However, he warned that many of those injured may die because of a lack of resources,” the outlet reported. “Israeli forces detained dozens of medical staff at the hospital last week, leaving only three doctors.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851243781451895240
Israel’s attack in Beit Lahiya was one of a number of massacres committed in recent days in northern Gaza, where an estimated 100,000 Palestinians are trapped with virtually no access to food, medicine, and other essentials.
“There is nothing. You are talking about tens of days that they are not receiving any supplies,” said Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam’s food security and livelihood lead in Gaza. Alsaqqa said people are “starving to death” in northern Gaza as Israelimpedes humanitarian aid shipments and moves to ban the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency.
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, noted Tuesday that “in the last day, Israel passed bills that would block most aid delivery in Gaza and the West Bank and bombed a building sheltering displaced civilians, reportedly killing mostly women and children.”
“Yet [U.S. President Joe] Biden keeps arming Israel counter to U.S. and international law,” Williams wrote on social media.
“Every possible step must be taken to secure a definitive cease-fire and to ensure adherence to international law.”
Internet blackouts in the region, meanwhile, have made it difficult for aid workers and reporters to relay news of northern Gaza’s dire conditions to the world.
“Communication between hospitals, health workers, and aid agencies is becoming sporadic, and ground fighting has made travel increasingly dangerous, making it hard to coordinate care and treatment and accurately collect casualty data,” The Guardian reported Tuesday. “The civil defense service suspended activities last Wednesday after crews were attacked by Israeli forces and tank shelling destroyed their last fire engine.”
Last week, Save the Children decried deadly Israeli attacks on 13 residential buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp and warned that “the threat of attacks and lack of fuel and supplies have left rescue services unable to operate” in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave.
“Attacks by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip have killed scores of people, including many children and an 11-month-old baby,” said Jeremy Stoner, Save the Children’s regional director. “The attacks have targeted a school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat, Kamal Adwan Hospital, and residential homes in Khan Younis—the very places where children are supposed to be safest, protected under international law.”
“Put simply, those children who have survived so far are running out of time. We are pleading with the international community to urgently intervene,” Stoner added. “Every possible step must be taken to secure a definitive cease-fire and to ensure adherence to international law. Governments must stop fueling the conflict with a supply of weapons and ammunition.”
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staffer Hasan Suboh was among those killed in the wave of Israeli attacks on residential homes in northern Gaza last week, the humanitarian group said in a statement Monday.
“Hasan’s tattered MSF vest, which he wore all the time, was found under the rubble,” the group said. “This vest symbolizes Hasan’s commitment to helping people in distress, but more globally it also symbolizes healthcare and humanitarian assistance.”
“To see it destroyed,” MSF added, “is representative of how in this war, Israel, the U.S. government, and the rest of Israel’s allies have disregarded the protection of healthcare workers, and ripped the rules of war to shreds. The claim that humanitarian workers are protected, that civilian lives are protected, has once again been exposed as a lie for all the world to see.”
Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK’s air force has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Al Shifa Hospital after a two-week Israeli siege, April 2024.
After a year of unrelenting Israeli attacks, Gaza’s healthcare system lies in ruins. Yet, health workers continue their steadfast efforts to provide care
After a year of relentless bombardment, Gaza’s healthcare system lies in ruins, and the warnings Palestinians have issued for decades are being confirmed: hospitals, clinics, and health workers are deliberate targets of Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). What was once a systematic campaign against healthcare has escalated into an all-out assault, resulting in the decimation of most of the infrastructure. As the one-year anniversary of this ongoing genocide approached, Israeli forces continued their siege on northern Gaza, intensifying their attacks on health facilities.
Three hospitals still barely functioning in the area — including Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan — were just issued so-called “evacuation orders,” which, as pointed out by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), are nothing short of forced removal orders. Kamal Adwan’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, stressed the impossible position the hospital faced soon after the orders were issued. With critically injured children in their care, no means to safely evacuate them, and no other facility able to accept them, health staff are faced with the excruciating decision of either abandoning their patients or staying at the risk of their own lives.
“In between the constant bombardment occurring on the hospital and the surrounding buildings, the healthcare staff have become terrorized to a point where they are struggling to do their jobs,” Abu Safiya stated. Their situation is similar to that faced in other health facilities. Around the same time Abu Safiya recorded his statement, medics in Al-Awda were also issued forced removal orders—for the third time in a year—says Matilde De Cooman from Viva Salud, a Belgian organization partnering with the hospital.
The risks health workers face are all too real. Israeli forces have systematically besieged and destroyed healthcare infrastructure over the past 12 months, including Gaza’s largest hospitals, such as Al-Shifa. Under the pretext of searching for resistance fighters, the IOF raided operating rooms, destroyed medical equipment, and abducted patients and medical staff. In the aftermath of the attacks, civil defense teams discovered seven mass graves containing 520 bodies on hospital grounds.
Over 1,000 health workers have been killed since the genocide began, with hundreds more kidnapped and held in Israeli concentration camps. Those who have been released share harrowing accounts of torture: shackles, electric shocks, broken limbs, and sexual violence. Families of those still missing, like Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, are not granted any official information about prisoners’ conditions. Dr. Muhanna was abducted in December 2023. Since then, no official word has emerged about his mental or physical condition, says De Cooman.
International campaigns to secure the release of Dr. Muhanna and other abducted health workers are ongoing, though disturbing reports of their treatment in Israeli camps have sparked both outrage and fear about what the future holds. Despite these developments, Gaza’s health workers remain resolute, refusing to abandon their patients. Their unwavering commitment, sumud (steadfastness), has been lauded by global health workers since the beginning of the genocide. Operating without pay or essential supplies due to the blockade, they have continued their work tirelessly since last October. “Even with Dr. Muhanna’s fate in mind, Al-Awda’s operating director, Mohammed Salha, never once considered abandoning the hospital,” says De Cooman. “As long as there is even one person left in the area, the hospital will remain open and stand by its people.”
The health suffering in Gaza extends far beyond the hospitals. With more than two million people pushed into poverty by the attacks and the aid blockade, food and clean water are scarce. Recent reports reveal that 35% of children and 40% of pregnant or breastfeeding women in Gaza are surviving on just one type of food. Malnutrition is rampant, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has documented cases of children starving to death as humanitarian aid convoys are blocked at Israeli-controlled checkpoints.
Hunger and disease go hand-in-hand, as the WHO continues to repeat. Gaza is witnessing a hard-to-imagine surge in infectious diseases—respiratory infections, skin diseases, Hepatitis A, and even polio, a virus that had been eradicated decades ago but resurfaced, paralyzing a 10-month-old child. The shortage of basic hygiene products, such as soap and clean water, only adds to the crisis.
The spread of diseases is anything but collateral damage: it is a calculated weapon in Israel’s strategy. As Jewish Voice for Peace remarked, in prisons, “skin diseases are a method of punishment. Prison authorities are allowing scabies to spread by restricting Palestinian inmates’ water supply and depriving them of clean clothes and medical care.”
On top of it all, Gaza’s whole environment is contaminated with asbestos dust raised by the constant bombardment. An estimated 800,000 tonnes of debris in Gaza could contain asbestos particles, as reported by Al Jazeera, raising the prospect of soaring cancer rates in the coming years.
“After a year, the occupying forces continue to practice an unprecedented genocide in modern history. What is particularly painful is the disgusting silence of the international community,” stated Hani Serag, Co-Chair of the People’s Health Movement. “We hope that activists across the world will continue expressing their solidarity to Palestinian people and refuse the barbaric practices of the occupying forces.”
Israeli crimes against healthcare are not confined to Gaza. In less than a month, Israeli forces have killed over 100 health workers in Lebanon and forced the closure of dozens of health centers. The destruction unfolding in Gaza serves as a blueprint for the invasion of Lebanon, raising the question: how long will the West look away while Israel continues its rampage?
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
