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Palestinians Describe ‘Hell’ in Gaza’s So-Called ‘Humanitarian Zone’

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A view of destruction in the al-Mawasi area after an Israeli attack in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 14, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

“We live in an area that is considered humanitarian and is supposed to be safe, but it is not,” one woman said. “There is no safe place for us or our children.”

Palestinians living in the so-called “humanitarian zone” designated by Israel described extreme and worsening overcrowding on Tuesday, saying that as the Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly struck the area in recent months, displaced people living there have been left feeling they “could die any minute.”

A 37-year-old mother of four, Nisreen Joudeh, told The New York Times that al-Mawasi, a stretch of coastal land to which hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of Gaza have evacuated under Israeli orders, “is no longer a safe area.”

With materials for tents now costing hundreds of dollars instead of an average of $50 as they did before Israel began bombarding Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid last October, families now commonly share the tents that have been erected along the sandy shore area.

“A tent that used to accommodate four to seven people now houses 15 to 17 people from two or more families,” a man named Karel Mohammed told the Times, and overcrowding has intensified in recent weeks as Israel forcibly displaced tens of thousands more Palestinians and ordered them to al-Mawasi.

People face “scorching heat” with very few trees to provide shade, and have access to only “primitive bathrooms,” according to Mohammed.

With Israel continuing to block large amounts of humanitarian aid—actions that United Nations experts last month said have pushed Gaza into famine—Mohammed said there is “no drinkable water, no healthy food” in al-Mawasi.

“The truth is that this area is anything but humanitarian,” said Mohammed. “Our life in these camps is like hell.”

The Times‘ dispatch from al-Mawasi came a day after the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that the “lack of clean water” and the destruction of Gaza’s sanitation and sewage treatment systems” have caused a surge in diseases including diarrhea and skin disorders across Gaza.

Mona al-Farra, another Palestinian who is sheltering in al-Mawasi in a tent crowded with nine other family members, said skin rashes among children have particularly become rampant due to a lack of clean water and medicine.

“We live in an area that is considered humanitarian and is supposed to be safe, but it is not,” she told the Times, adding that her family frequently hears airstrikes nearby. “There is no safe place for us or our children.”

Last month, at least 90 Palestinians were killed in a bombing within al-Mawasi, which the IDF said had targeted Hamas commander Muhammed Deif.

The so-called humanitarian zone covers 18 square miles, according to the U.N., or nearly 13% of the Gaza Strip. The IDF adjusted the area’s borders last month, shrinking it by about one-fifth.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), shared on social media on Monday drawings that had been made by children in a mental health clinic in al-Mawasi, with the artwork exemplifying the “complete psychological destruction” among Gaza’s youngest residents that a report warned of earlier this year.

“Even though the wounds are invisible, the drawings provide a glimpse into what these children have witnessed. It is beyond words,” said Samuel Johann, an emergency coordinator for MSF. “I cannot express what I feel, seeing what these children have experienced, through their eyes and the reality they are facing.”

“Today,” he said, “I heard a Palestinian colleague describe the human suffering of the war as such: ‘Only the dead have been spared this suffering.'”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingPalestinians Describe ‘Hell’ in Gaza’s So-Called ‘Humanitarian Zone’

Israeli Leaders Demand Probe of IDF Rape Video—To Find Out Who Leaked It

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks during a rally in Sderot, Israel on October 26, 2022. (Photo: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is what Israelis rioted to protect, what the Knesset debated—the right to rape Palestinians,” said one critic.

While human rights groups called for an investigation of a leaked recording apparently showing Israel Defense Forces reservists gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military base and detention center, Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday also furiously demanded a probe of the video—not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked it.

Smotrich took to social media Wednesday to call for “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world, and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them.”

Israeli media on Tuesday aired footage in which Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists are seen attacking a Palestinian man at Sde Teiman while trying to hide their actions with shields.

According to Israeli media reports, the victim was hospitalized with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage.

Nine alleged assailants—who include members of Force 100, the military unit tasked with guarding Sde Teiman prisoners—were arrested last week in connection with the attack. A mob of far-right Israelis including senior government officials subsequently stormed two military bases in an attempt to free the suspects.

While many Israelis condemned the alleged rape, others rallied around the accused reservists. Smotrich described them as “heroic warriors.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called them “our best heroes.”

Far-right Israeli lawmaker Zvi Sukkot—who took part in last week’s riot—joined Smotrich in demanding an investigation of the video leak.

“Leaking and disclosure of investigative materials is a criminal offense that harms the proper legal process, the rule of law, public trust, and the principle of justice,” he said Wednesday.

Israeli media reported Wednesday that two of the accused reservists lied on polygraph tests when asked if they had sodomized the prisoner.

Numerous Israelis continued to express support for the accused rapists. Israel Today political reporter Yehuda Schlesinger said Wednesday on a popular morning show that “I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do to Hamas man.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1821121616094412908

“First of all, they deserve it,” Schlesinger said of the abuse at Sde Teiman and other Israeli military prisons. “It’s great revenge that we need to give them.”

“It’s just a shame that we don’t do it in an institutionalized way, as part of regulations for torture of prisoners,” he added, “because then the next guys who think about doing another October 7 will say, ‘Do you see what they’re doing to [us] in Israel?'”

Etan Nechin, the New York correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, accused the media of being the “main culprit” that “has normalized the most extreme voices, letting genocidal brutes, racists, and messianic zealots into Israeli’s TV sets.”

Some American media critics drew attention to the scant coverage of abuse at Sde Teiman in the U.S. corporate media.

“U.S. taxpayers continue to support this military and its torture camps,” Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote on social media. “How is this not front-page news?”

In the United States—which supports Israel’s war on Gaza with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a Wednesday press conference that “there ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee. Period.”

“It is appropriate that the IDF in this case, has announced an investigation, has arrested a number of people who are alleged to have been involved, and I won’t speak to the outcome of that investigation, but it ought to proceed swiftly,” Miller added.

Critics noted the IDF’s chronic failures to credibly investigate its alleged crimes. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said in late 2022 that less than 1% of Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza were indicted over the previous five years.

The Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday took up a petition by rights groups seeking to close Sde Teiman, where widespread—and sometimes deadly—torture has been reported. Last month, Israel’s High Court issued a conditional order seeking to shut down the prison in response to the flood of reports of torture there.

Former prisoners including children and Israeli whistleblowers at Sde Teiman—often called “Israel’s Guantánamo Bay”—have described rampant torture and abuse at the facility, which is used to imprison Palestinians captured in the Gaza Strip. According to their testimonies, prisoners have been raped, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, burned with cigarettes, severely beaten, starved, and subjected to 24-hour shackling sometimes leading to amputations.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said this week that at least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October.

More than 1,100 Israelis and others died during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, during which more than 240 other people were kidnapped. Israel’s response—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left more than 142,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to local and international officials.

Smotrich suggested earlier this week that it is “moral and justified” to starve 2 million Palestinians to death. So far, at least dozens, mostly children, have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care in Gaza amid Israel’s crippling assault and siege.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsraeli Leaders Demand Probe of IDF Rape Video—To Find Out Who Leaked It

Israeli Bombings, Evacuation Order in Gaza City Forces Hospitals to Shut Down

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Injured Palestinians lay on the floor at Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza on July 8, 2024, following Israeli attacks on Gaza City.  (Photo: Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Patients were forced to move to other facilities in northern Gaza, where one hospital was at “triple capacity” and providers were struggling to provide care amid fuel and medical supply shortages.

Healthcare officials were joined by human rights experts on Tuesday in condemning Israel’s latest evacuation orders for Gaza City, which the World Health Organization director said would “further impede delivery of very limited lifesaving care” as hospitals in the area struggled to treat sick and wounded Palestinians.

The Israel Defense Forces claimed on Tuesday morning that there was “no need to evacuate the hospitals and medical facilities in the area,” after it had issued an evacuation order for 70% of Gaza City on Monday. The IDF has ordered civilians to evacuate parts of the city three times since June 27 as it has intensified its military operations, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.

Despite the IDF’s claims, the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which partially operates al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, said it had closed and evacuated all patients and workers after a series of drone strikes in the facility’s “immediate vicinity.”

“To our great dismay, our hospital is now out of operation at a time when its services are in very significant demand and where injured and sick people have few other options for places to receive urgent medical care,” said the diocese in a statement.

“Key hospitals and medical facilities could quickly become nonfunctional due to hostilities in their vicinity or obstruction to access.”

Healthcare authorities have been forced to transport patients to other hospitals that are also struggling to provide care, as Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid since October has caused dire shortages of fuel and medical supplies.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization, said Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in Gaza City was also out of service due to the evacuation order, putting more strain on other facilities in the northern city of Beit Lahia, including Kamal Adwan and Indonesian hospitals.

Those medical centers are “suffering shortage of fuel, beds, and trauma medical supplies,” said Tedros on social media. “Indonesian Hospital is triple over its capacity. Al-Helou Hospital is within the blocks of the evacuation order but continues to be partially functional. As-Sahaba and al-Shifa hospitals are in close proximity to the areas under evacuation order but remain functional so far. Six medical points and two primary healthcare centers are also within the evacuation zones.”

“These key hospitals and medical facilities could quickly become nonfunctional due to hostilities in their vicinity or obstruction to access,” he added before repeating a demand: “Cease-fire!”

Israel’s claim that the hospitals in Gaza City remain safe despite the evacuation orders comes after several Israeli bombings of medical facilities and other so-called “humanitarian areas” since October.

Hospitals including al-Shifa in Gaza City have become major targets of Israel’s assault on the enclave, prompting outcry from human rights advocates who have demanded that the IDF follow international humanitarian law.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday said it was “appalled” by the IDF’s latest evacuation order, noting that Palestinians have been killed after fleeing to supposedly “safe” zones since Israel’s bombardment began.

Many of the people fleeing Gaza City this week “have been forcibly displaced multiple times, to evacuate to areas where IDF military operations are ongoing and where civilians continue to be killed and injured,” said the OHCHR.

Deir al-Balah, where Gaza City residents have been told to move in the latest order, “is already seriously overcrowded with Palestinians displaced from other areas of the Gaza Strip,” the office added.

The Gaza Health Ministry reports that 38,243 people have been killed in the enclave since Israel began its attacks in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7.

As Israel forced hospitals in Gaza City out of operation and occupied the southern part of the city, including around the headquarters of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, another Israeli attack on the Bureij refugee camp killed nine people on Tuesday, including five children.

The IDF also said its warplanes had attacked “a school complex” in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

“There’s really no safe corner in Gaza,” said Tedros.

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsraeli Bombings, Evacuation Order in Gaza City Forces Hospitals to Shut Down

‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Footage shows a Palestinian man being used by the Israel Defense Forces as a human shield. (Photo: Al Jazeera)

“These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system,” said one human rights group.

The latest video evidence of Israel’s use of Palestinians as “human shields” during combat was condemned by one human rights advocate on Monday as “horrifying but not surprising,” as campaigners emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces has long used civilians in Palestine to shield their own soldiers from harm while bombarding Gaza and the West Bank.

Footage released by Al Jazeera on Sunday night showed Israeli forces attaching body cameras to handcuffed Palestinians who they had detained, dressing them in IDF uniforms, and sending them into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren’t rigged with explosives.

The footage presented “evidence of a systematic tactic of the army,” said the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

“The leaked horrific scenes that were obtained and published by Al Jazeera reveal how the Israeli army uses civilians, including injured detainees, as human shields and forces them into hazardous combat zones after installing cameras on their bodies and binding them with rope,” said Euro-Med. “Each of the aforementioned acts of criminal, brutal, and inhumane behavior constitutes a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, and is a full-fledged war crime. These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system to ensure the protection of civilians, prevent their use as human shields, and hold the Israeli political and military perpetrators.”

The Israeli government has long blamed Hamas’ use of “human shields” for deaths in Gaza, which now number at least 37,900, saying the group operates out of civilian infrastructure and places Palestinians in harm’s way.

Journalist Dan Cohen pointed out that the IDF has used what it calls “the neighbor procedure” for decades, forcing Palestinian “messengers” to approach the homes of suspected fugitives alone and unarmed while Israeli soldiers announce over a loudspeaker that they are surrounding the building.

The procedure “is so commonplace that the military tried to justify it as a lifesaving measure in use since the 1980s,” said Cohen. “The images… show the reality of this criminal practice.”

In its statement on the new footage, Euro-Med detailed numerous instances in which Israel has appeared to use human shields as defined by the Geneva Conventions: “cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks.”

As Euro-Med reported:

During the Shifa Medical Complex raid in March 2024, Israeli forces used civilians, including patients and displaced individuals sheltering inside the complex, as human shields. To protect their military operations within the hospital and its vicinity, Israeli forces exploited Palestinian civilians by making them form human barriers to surround Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, or sending them under threat to residential homes and buildings to either help arrest or forcibly evacuate other civilians before army raids and the subsequent destruction of many of these buildings.

[…]

Furthermore, several families residing near the Shifa Medical Complex reported that Israeli forces arrested young men from inside the medical facility, then used them to enter the families’ homes and demand that they immediately evacuate to the central and southern Strip.

The group also cited a recent example from June 22 in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where Israeli forces placed a wounded Palestinian man on the hood of a military vehicle and drove through the Jabariya neighborhood, and “a compound and comprehensive crime” against a civilian family in Gaza City on June 27.

“A family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, was attacked with gunfire and bombs by Israeli forces who stormed their house in the Gaza City neighborhood of Al-Shujaiya,” said the group. “They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, despite the injuries they sustained in the initial attack on their home, and were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.”

On Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the footage released Sunday from the incident in Gaza while noting that Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir was recorded over the weekend calling for Palestinian prisoners to be executed and fed reduced food rations as a “deterrence” tactic.

Almost 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces, including women and children, CAIR said, demanding that the U.S. end its military support for Israel.

“Israeli war crimes, and calls for more war crimes, are occurring daily in Gaza and the West Bank, while the Biden administration rushes more American bombs to Israel to complete the genocide,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “The U.S.-Israeli partnership in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation will shape the international community’s image of America for generations to come. The Biden administration must change course to uphold universal human rights and recognize Palestinian humanity.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue Reading‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

Conditions ‘Unspeakable’ as Israeli Onslaught Forces Over 1 Million to Flee Rafah

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Original article by EDWARD CARVER republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A truck is used to evacuate the International Medical Corps American field hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on June 2, 2024.
 (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” in the areas where Palestinians have been forced to shelter, and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” a U.N. official said.

More than 1 million Palestinians have fled Rafah as the city comes under a continued Israeli assault, forcing many to shelter in badly damaged buildings in the nearby city of Khan Younis, according to the United Nations.

The assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, has left the displaced in “unspeakable” conditions, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on social media. Approximately 1.7 million displaced people are now in Khan Younis and “Gaza Middle Areas,” according to UNRWA.

Khan Younis, which saw sustained fighting earlier in the war, still does not appear to be a safe zone: Israeli military vehicles entered the city in recent hours after advancing to two towns just east of Khan Younis with “heavy gunfire and artillery shelling,” Al Jazeerareported.

Since early May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued evacuation orders for parts of Rafah, telling people to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi, located roughly 12 miles from the city.

Israeli forces subsequently launched attacks on designated safe zones, including in Al-Mawasi. Two strikes killed 45 and 21 people last week, mostly women and children. The first of the attacks, known as the “tent massacre,” was carried out with U.S. weapons, later analysis showed.

Many of the people fleeing Rafah are having to move for at least the second time during the war. Roughly 1 million Palestinians who’d been displaced elsewhere had gone to Rafah for refuge earlier in the war. They began to leave Rafah nearly four weeks ago as Israeli started its assault on the city. Before the war, Rafah’s population was about 275,000, but the governorate reached a population of 1.4 million by February as Israel ordered Palestianians to move there from northern Gaza. This meant squeezing more than half of Gaza’s prewar population of 2.3 million into one governorate, NPR reported.

More than 18,500 pregnant women have been forced to leave Rafah, while about 10,000 pregnant women remain in the city in “desperate conditions,” the U.N. reported.

“They’re exhausted, traumatized, dehydrated, and malnourished,” the U.N. Population Fund wrote on social media of pregnant women dealing with “Israel’s terrifying military operation in Rafah.”

“Pregnant women in Gaza are living in an unrelenting nightmare,” the agency added.

After successive operations last month, Israel now controls the entire Gaza-Egypt border. Humanitarian corridors have shut down, with many agencies and aid groups pausing operations in Rafah due to lack of supplies and security concerns.

“We are living and working precariously in the south,” Matthew Hollingsworth said, World Food Program (WFP) country director in Palestine, said late last week, the U.N. reported. The areas where the displaced have been forced to shelter are nightmarish, he said.

“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” Hollingsworth added.

More than half of the structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged, destroyed, or possibly destroyed during the eight-month Israeli assault, the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) concluded, in findings released Monday.

The mass displacement from Rafah continued as the Biden administration sought to arrange a cease-fire after after being pressured for months to end its military support for Israel’s onslaught. President Joe Biden called for an end to the war on Friday and backed a roadmap to a deal, which drew praise from Palestine defenders—the Council on American-Islamic Relations called it “long overdue” and a “positive step”—as well as criticism that it did not address the root causes of the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the deal would not stop the war, which could not end until “total victory” had been achieved, according to Israeli National News.

Original article by EDWARD CARVER republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingConditions ‘Unspeakable’ as Israeli Onslaught Forces Over 1 Million to Flee Rafah