Jabalia refugee camp

‘Devastating Blow to Humanity’: Barred From Gaza by Israel, Health Workers Cry Out for Help

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

Health workers, holding banners and placards, gather at the Nasser Hospital to protest Israeli army’s attacks on northern Gaza and the prevention of the entry of necessary equipment and supplies to the besieged hospitals in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 19, 2024.  (Photo by Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As the situation inside Gaza is increasingly described as “indescribable,” medical NGOs blocked from providing care to Palestinians trapped inside besieged territory demand world leaders to stop turning ‘blind eye’ to Israeli war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.

As more Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed dozens of people Saturday, health workers from both inside and out of the besieged territory are again pleading with world leaders to bring an end to the indiscriminate attacks and imposed humanitarian crisis that witnesses on the ground increasingly say there are no words to describe.

At al Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and elsewhere in Gaza, doctors and other medical staff on Saturday staged protests and held press conferences to call attention to the ongoing attacks in northern areas, including the latest targeting of Jabalia in which reporting indicated anywhere from 33 to over 50 people—including civilian men, women, and children—were killed.

“The world is watching, and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity.” —Dr. Khaled Saleh, FAJR Scientific

Al-Jazeera reports that hospitals, which have repeatedly been bombed by Israel over the last year, were not immune from this latest round:

Three partially functioning hospitals treating severely wounded patients and sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza are now out of service after coming under intense Israeli fire, a Gaza health official told Al Jazeera, as the siege on Jabalia enters its third week, with at least 33 more people killed in the northern area.

Israeli forces bombed al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia early on Saturday, and have also shelled Kamal Adwan and the Indonesian hospitals in Beit Lahiya over the past few hours, Al Jazeera correspondents have reported.

Saturday’s attacks come days after Israel barred at least six medical service NGOs from continuing their life-saving work in Gaza. According to the Washington Post:

Two of those medical NGOs, Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), confirmed to The Washington Post that they were notified by the WHO this week about the bans. Both groups have worked in Gaza for years preceding the war.

“WHO is concerned about the impact of these denials on Gaza’s strained healthcare system,” the organization said Thursday in a statement. It added that international emergency medical teams (EMTs) deployed to Gaza are essential to keeping the system operational, as only 17 of the enclave’s 36 hospitals remain functionaland “healthcare needs far exceed the system’s capacity.”

Dr. Khaled Saleh, chair of FAJR Scientific, which provides surgical expertise and trauma specialists to war-torn regions and was another of the groups notified by the WHO that it had been barred from entering Gaza, said in a statement that the move by the Israeli government filled him with “deep sadness and concern for the current state of our global family, questioning our shared humanity and ethics.”

Blocked from providing aid to people in dire need, Saleh called on people worldwide to push for an end to Israel’s blocking of vital medical aid and those seeking to provide it.

“This is a devastating blow to humanity, representing a level of destruction that we have not witnessed since World War II, yet our world leaders turn a blind eye,” he said.

“As a member of the global community,” Saleh continued, “I implore all of you who value compassion, ethics, and the sanctity of human life to stand with us and raise your voices against this unconscionable decision. Together, we must advocate for the voiceless and demand restoration of the fundamental right to access to medical care.”

Israel’s ban on the medical NGOs comes after a string of healthcare professionals who spent time in the Gaza strip have gone public with what they witnessed on the ground, telling tales of unspeakable horror and trying to shake the world out of its complacency on what experts say is a genocide in motion being carried out by Israeli forces.

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Earlier this week, the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said that Israel’s continued blocking of food and medical supplies to Jabalia and other ares in the northern was “having life-threatening impacts” for the people there.

OCHA spokesperson Farhan Haq said the OCHA was calling on Israeli authorities “to allowed safe, sustained and unimpeded access to Jabalia and all areas of the north where people are in desperate need of assistance.”

In a post on Friday, Oxfam International mourned the killing of Dr. Ahmad Al-Najar and midwife Laila Jneid, both of whom worked with Juzoor, “killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia,” the group said. “They were providing lifesaving health care in Gaza. Attacking aid workers is a war crime.” Oxfam repeated its demand for a “cease-fire now” and said healthcare workers should never be a target.

In a dispatch on Friday, Dr. Taghreed Al-Imawi, Juzoor staff and an OBGYN doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described the untenable situation on the ground.

“The situation is beyond horrific and is very difficult and indescribable,” said Al-Imawi. “Dead people, severed body parts and injured people everywhere. We are receiving emergency calls from all the areas of the north. Ambulances are not able to reach the injured. We have seen more than 23 pregnant women among the injured coming to the hospital since last week, wounded either by shrapnel or gunfire, suffering from fractures. Some were in a critical condition. Kamal Adwan Hospital and other semi-operational hospitals have received displacement orders but there is no way to evacuate in any case.”

“The pediatrics section is closed as it is full of injured people,” Al-Imawi added, “the surgery section is full of injured people, even the reception, the hospital has been shelled several times and targeted by snipers, people are terrified to come to the hospital now.”

Having recently returned from a field mission in Gaza, pediatric nurse Becky Platt, working through Save the Children—who posted her testimony Saturday—described a situation on the ground that was “like nothing I’ve seen before.”

Platt said the horrific situation is “both in terms of healthcare need and just in terms of the whole humanitarian context—seeing homes and landscapes completely devastated and seeing just the absolute level of human suffering and need as absolutely mind blowing.”

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“No child should have to be in pain,” she said. “And it just feels like your hands are tied when you can’t do what you know that you could do easily at home or in another context. I think that when it really hits. It’s just—it’s just not fair. It’s not okay that we’ve got children with devastating injuries who don’t have access to pain relief.”

For his part, Dr. Saleh of FAJR Scientific, said it was up to everyone in the world to make their voices heard.

“The world is watching,” he said, “and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity.”

Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under reative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Devastating Blow to Humanity’: Barred From Gaza by Israel, Health Workers Cry Out for Help

Labour’s approach to Middle East conflict “failing” as civilian death toll mounts

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Image of the Green Party's Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.

Green Party Co-Leader, Carla Denyer said, “The reports over the weekend that no food has entered Northern Gaza since the 1st of October, of Israel’s attack on al-Aqsa Hospital, of chemical weapons being used to attack UNIFIL peacekeepers, of mass civilian casualties in Gaza’s Jabalia Refugee Camp and of increased rocket fire into Israel from Hezbollah are extremely disturbing. The huge numbers of civilian deaths and the prospect of widespread starvation in Northern Gaza are intolerable.

The Labour government must recognise that violence in the Middle East is escalating rapidly and that their current approach is failing. The Government needs to consider far more direct measures to incentivise a ceasefire including an end to arms sales, the introduction of divestments, boycotts and sanctions, prosecutions for all those who have committed war crimes and a plan for a viable Palestinian state.”

Continue ReadingLabour’s approach to Middle East conflict “failing” as civilian death toll mounts

‘No End to Hell’: Disaster Spirals as Israeli Assault Traps 400,000 in Northern Gaza

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

A Palestinian child who was wounded in an Israeli attack on Jabalia, Gaza receives treatment on October 9, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The latest move to forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south is turning the north into a lifeless desert,” warned one aid worker.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that at least 400,000 people are trapped in northern Gaza as Israeli forces ramp up their bombardment of the area, killing dozens and intensifying an already nightmarish humanitarian emergency.

“Northern Gaza: no end to hell,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote on social media. “Recent evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities are forcing people to flee again and again, especially from Jabalia Camp. Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe.”

Lazzarini said some UNRWA shelters and services in northern Gaza have been forced to shut down amid the Israeli assault “for the first time since the war began” over a year ago.

“With almost no basic supplies available, hunger is spreading and deepening again,” said Lazzarini. “This recent military operation also threatens the implementation of the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign for children. Children are as ever, the first and most to suffer. They deserve so much better, they deserve a cease-fire now, they deserve a future.”

Zero humanitarian aid has entered besieged northern Gaza in over a week, according to aid groups and the U.N., and incessant Israeli attacks have rendered the area’s hospitals largely inaccessible. Israeli forces have ordered the area’s hospitals to evacuate, endangering patients and healthcare workers.

The director of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital told Drop Site on Wednesday that he is refusing to comply with Israel’s evacuation order.

“As long as there are patients, I won’t leave,” said Dr. Hossam Abu Safia. “I’ve been here since the genocide started, and I am determined to continue helping my people.”

At least dozens of people have reportedly been killed in the Israeli military’s latest assault on northern Gaza, but emergency workers on the ground have said it’s impossible to determine the true toll given Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign, which has targeted the Jabalia refugee camp and other areas in the region.

Citing Gaza’s Civil Defense, The Associated Press reported Wednesday that an Israeli airstrike “hit a family home” in the Jabalia camp, “killing at least nine people”—including two women and two children.

“Footage shared by the Civil Defense showed first responders recovering dead bodies and body parts from under the rubble,” the outlet noted.

On Monday—the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led October 7 attack and the beginning of Israel’s devastating response—Israeli forces ordered swaths of famine-stricken northern Gaza to evacuate, instructing residents to move south to Deir Al-Balah and Al-Mawasi, badly overcrowded so-called “humanitarian zones” that the Israeli military has repeatedly bombed.

After ordering most of northern Gaza to evacuate, Israeli forces fired on Palestinians desperately trying to flee.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said Tuesday that Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians is “turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the strip of Palestinian life.”

“The latest move to forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south is turning the north into a lifeless desert, while aggravating the situation in the south, where more than one million people have already been squeezed into a small portion of the Gaza Strip and live in deplorable conditions,” said Sarah Vuylsteke, an MSF project coordinator in Gaza.

“Access to water, healthcare, and safety is already almost nonexistent, and the thought of more people fitting into this space is impossible to imagine,” Vuylsteke added. “People have been subjected to endless displacement and relentless bombing for the past 12 months. Enough is enough, this must stop now.”

In a joint statement on Wednesday, a coalition of 18 aid groups warned that the ongoing Israeli assault “will worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in the north” and has already “prevented international and national humanitarian organizations from carrying out already very limited lifesaving aid operations.”

“The new orders have obstructed humanitarian actors from providing necessities such as health services, clean water, food, and nutrition services, taking away the remaining lifelines for the civilian population,” reads the statement signed by Oxfam, ActionAid, Islamic Relief, and more than a dozen other groups.

“Nowhere in Gaza is safe for civilians,” the coalition said. “Given the severity of the needs, humanitarian actors must be able to distribute aid and continue their work, without threat of displacement or military operations. The undersigned aid organizations urge all parties to the conflict to uphold their obligations to protect civilians and facilitate unhindered humanitarian access at all times.”

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

Continue Reading‘No End to Hell’: Disaster Spirals as Israeli Assault Traps 400,000 in Northern Gaza

Israel subjects northern Gaza to one of its most violent genocide campaigns, says Euro-Med

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Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Relatives of Palestinians, who lost their life following the Israeli attack on Nuseirat Refugee Camp, mourn after the bodies are brought to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for burial process in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on October 1, 2024 [Ashraf Amra – Anadolu Agency]

An unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe is imminent as the Israeli occupation regime tightens its siege on the Jabalia refugee camp and Beit Lahia project in the northern Gaza Strip for the fourth consecutive day, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warned in a statement issued late on Tuesday. “Israel is accelerating the pace of its genocide against the Palestinians there by carrying out mass and planned killings, as well as widespread forced displacements,” said the rights group.

“The international community, led by the United Nations, must act swiftly and decisively to save tens of thousands of residents who are being subjected to one of the most violent campaigns of genocide that the Gaza Strip has ever witnessed,” Euro-Med insisted.

Israeli occupation forces have intensified their siege of the Jabalia camp and the surrounding neighbourhoods, including Tal Al-Zaatar, Al-Sikka, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. The Israeli forces have also taken up positions in the west of the Gaza Strip, advancing as far as the Jaffa Cemetery and the Tawam Junction.

With air strikes, fire belts and artillery shelling — bombing homes over the heads of their residents — the Israeli occupation forces have been in large parts of northern Gaza since Saturday evening.

Dozens of people have been killed and injured as a result of this ongoing invasion.

“Initial reports confirmed that five Palestinian citizens — including a woman, a man and his son — were killed by the occupation forces for trying to escape the Jabalia camp while waving white flags,” said Euro-Med. “They were executed.”

In an extremely dangerous development, Israeli troops ordered the complete evacuation of Kamal Adwan Hospital, located in the Beit Lahia project, north of Gaza. The director of the hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, reported that he received a call from the occupation forces telling him that if he did not get the patients and medical staff out of the hospital within a day, they would be in danger.

Along with two other hospitals in northern Gaza, Al-Awda Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia, Kamal Adwan Hospital is only partially operational after being raided and destroyed in the Israeli military’s first invasion of northern Gaza last December. On that occasion, the hospital’s medical staff, patients and displaced persons sheltering inside were mistreated severely by the occupation forces.

“Kamal Adwan Hospital is currently being besieged by Israeli quadcopter aircraft for the second day in a row, with smoke bombs being detonated at its gate and dozens of raids on nearby buildings,” the rights group pointed out.

The sole road that ambulances used to move dozens of seriously injured patients from Kamal Adwan Hospital to the Baptist Hospital has been cut off, following the Israeli bombing of a building in the vicinity. This was followed by the occupation forces’ tightening of the siege on the hospital, and the blocking of ambulances and any other methods of victim transport. Earlier on Tuesday, the occupation forces arrested a paramedic who was transporting patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital to the Baptist Hospital, despite prior coordination with the Israeli authorities.

The Euro-Med Monitor field team received testimonies from citizens who were able to reach Gaza City about witnessing dead bodies lying in the streets. “They told us that they saw victims trapped beneath the debris of bombed-out houses, and that ambulance and civil defence crews were unable to reach the area as at least 20 houses were targeted by Israeli forces in a four-day period,” reported the NGO’s field staff.

Thousands of people trapped in the Jabalia and Beit Lahia camps are suffering from a near-total absence of food supplies, which were already scarce due to Israel’s closure of the border crossings. The limited amount of goods and other aid that had previously been allowed to enter the area was blocked by Israel for more than a week prior to the new invasion.

“Numerous families remain stuck in their homes, enduring harsh living conditions under the intensified and brutal Israeli bombing. Citizens are not even able to leave their homes in order to obtain water, and municipal crews and local committees are unable to assist them. As a result, thousands of residents face the threat of starvation, dehydration or death, knowing full well that they are all victims of the catastrophic effects of malnutrition brought on by Israel’s year-long starvation policy.”

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called on the UN and international community to shoulder their legal and moral obligations to put an end to the horrific crime of genocide being committed by the Israeli occupation, which has just entered its second year.

READ: Israel bombs the only flour store in northern Gaza

Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Continue ReadingIsrael subjects northern Gaza to one of its most violent genocide campaigns, says Euro-Med

‘Jabalia Is Being Wiped Out’: Gaza Pleads for Help as Israel Intensifies Assault

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

People mourn over the body of a victim of an Israeli attack on northern Gaza on October 7, 2024. (Photo by Abdul Rahman Salama/Xinhua via Getty Images)

One Palestinian journalist said that “the situation in the north is horrific and very dangerous” and implored people to “please share what’s happening.”

Israel’s latest dayslong assault on besieged northern Gaza intensified Tuesday as the nation’s tanks advanced deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp, where terrified residents reported being fired on by the Israeli military as they tried to flee.

Citing eyewitness accounts, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other news outlets reported that Israeli forces opened fire indiscriminately at people in Jabalia, who are under Israeli evacuation orders. Residents are being told to move to Al-Mawasi, a badly overcrowded so-called “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza that Israel’s military has attacked repeatedly.

“Drones were firing at everyone passing by on the road,” 28-year-old Mohammad Sultan, whose family fled their home in Jabalia, toldCNN on Tuesday. Sultan said he and other civilians came under Israeli fire when he returned to grab food, water, and blankets.

“Three people were shot right in front of me,” he said. “My brother and I tried to help the injured get to the hospitals, but a little girl was shot in the neck, and her father was also injured.”

Reuters reported that the warning “Jabalia is being wiped out” was “repeated in many messages posted on social media by residents of Gaza” as Israeli forces assailed the refugee camp and nearby areas, killing dozens of people over the past several days.

“Jabalia is being bombed as if the war has just begun and the world is blind about it,” a 60-year-old father of five told Reuters.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that “the threat of yet another massacre in northern Gaza is very real.”

” Israel must be ordered to stop assaulting the Palestinians trapped there and withdraw immediately from the occupied Palestinian territory, as already decided by the [International Court of Justice],” she added.

Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist reporting from northern Gaza, wrote on social media Tuesday that “the situation in the north is horrific and very dangerous; there are currently hundreds of thousands trapped, and the shelling is nonstop.”

“Please share what’s happening in the north,” he added.

The northern part of Gaza has been utterly devastated by the Israeli military’s yearlong assault, carried out with the support of the United States and other world powers. The United Kingdom-based humanitarian group Christian Aid said Monday that mothers in northern Gaza have reported “losing up to 30kg of weight” as the region faces famine conditions fueled by Israel’s suffocating blockade and relentless airstrikes.

“We often survive on one meal a day if we can find one,” one mother told Christian Aid’s partners in Gaza. “My children cry and fall asleep hungry, and I spend nights crying because I am helpless and heartwrenched as their tears of hunger feel like a knife cutting through me, even though I always prioritized them over myself.”

Al Jazeera reported Tuesday that at least 56 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli airstrikes over the past 24 hours, while noting that “the number of deaths reported by sources vary” given the difficulties of counting casualties under Israeli bombardment.

Al Jazeera‘s Abu Azzoum said the Israeli army is “systematically working to empty northern Gaza.”

Such an effort would be consistent with reported Israeli proposals to “liquidate northern Gaza.” As +972 Magazinereported last month, prominent Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have “called on the military to carry out mass extermination in northern Gaza.”

“For some, it might be easy to write off Israeli proposals to ‘finish the job’ in northern Gaza as genocidal bombast, unlikely to be carried out,” the magazine added. “Regardless of what happens over the coming months, the very fact that open proposals to starve and exterminate hundreds of thousands of people are up for debate demonstrates precisely where Israeli society stands today.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Jabalia Is Being Wiped Out’: Gaza Pleads for Help as Israel Intensifies Assault