Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, April 29, 2024
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed today to follow through on his pledge to attack Rafah, the southern Gaza city where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s military campaign.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel would enter Rafah to destroy Hamas forces there “with or without a deal” emerging from internationally mediated talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in the seven-month-long conflict.
The deal is meant to free the remaining hostages taken during the Hamas assault on October 7, when about 1,200 people were killed.
Since then, Israel’s retaliation has killed at least 34,454 Palestinians in Gaza.
“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas’s battalions there — with a deal or without a deal — to achieve total victory,” Mr Netanyahu said at a meeting with families of the hostages, according to a statement from his office.
People in Yemen express their support for US students protesting genocide (Photo via @Aldanmarki/X)
Fighting people across the world show support with the student movement in the US facing repression
“We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising up in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist-US genocide against our people in Gaza,” wrote the Student Frameworks Secretariat, composed of a variety of student organizations part of larger resistance groups and left parties—including but not limited to the Islamic Resistance Movement, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestinian People’s Party. The Gazan students are expressing their support for the dozens of student encampments that have emerged in the United States, in which students occupy public spaces in their universities to demand that their institutions divest from Israel.
“We welcome the examples of solidarity offered by students facing arrest, police violence, suspension, eviction, and expulsion in order to demand that their universities end their complicity in the Zionist-US genocide and renounce their support for the occupation and the war profiteers that arm it,” the students stated, referring to the central demand of divestment that has been leveraged by students in the encampments.
Palestinians sheltering in the without tears humanitarian camp in Rafah have created banners in support of US students, which they have hung on their tents. The banners read “From Rafah we send you strength,” “the children [of] Gaza are proud of you,” and “thank you students for Columbia uni.”
On behalf of one of our members, a message from the without tears humanitarian camp in Rafah, to the students in the US and the world pic.twitter.com/4LgOWVGuGR
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) April 26, 2024
On April 26, millions gathered on Sana’a Square in Yemen, some holding banners with images from the US student encampments. Their banners showed images from Columbia and other encampments across the country, and featured slogans such as: “To the brave American students, stand your ground! Yemen stands with you! For a free Palestine!” “Dear American Student: They can arrest you, but they can never break your spirit!” and “The Columbia encampment was just the spark! Long live the great student revolution!”
Bisan Owda, a Gazan journalist whose on-the-ground broadcasts of the Israeli genocide have reached millions if not billions across the world, released a video applauding the student protesters. “I’ve lived my whole life in Gaza Strip and I’ve never felt hope like now,” she said. “For the first time in our lives a Palestinians, we hear a voice louder than their voices and the sound of their bombs…It’s children and youth who are leading the movement now for a free Palestine, putting everything they have on the line to demand justice, an end to the genocide, and a new era of the world.”
From Bisan on IG:
“I’ve spent my whole life in Gaza and I’ve never felt hope like now. Magical feelings running in my veins.”
Students – the whole world is watching. And you’re inspiring us all Don’t stop. Never back down.
— People's City Council – Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) April 26, 2024
Students staging peaceful encampments have been met with brutal force by their administrations, who have launched police attacks.
Police deployed snipers near the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Ohio State University, and beat, tased, and arrested protesters.
BREAKING: Police at Ohio State University began arresting students. Organizers tell BT that students have been beaten and tased by police. pic.twitter.com/cr3Fh7K3Gx
Students were also brutalized while staging an encampment at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Students at the Emory Gaza Solidarity Encampment had drawn powerful links between the struggle for Palestine and the struggle against Cop City, a multi-million dollar urban warfare training ground for US police. Students demanded not only divestment of the university from Israel, but also to divest from the construction of Cop City.
Palestinian Atlantan organizer Layla Amar recapping the violent police raid on Emory University’s campus and making clear that the encampment opposes both the genocide and Cop City pic.twitter.com/7eiVQUYtOg
Emory students were brutalized by Atlanta police within hours of setting up their encampment. Police fired rubber bullets and teargas at protesters, tased a student, and detained both students and faculty.
UPDATE: Atlanta police violently attacked the Gaza protest encampment at Emory University within hours after it was set up.
Cops teargassed, shot rubber bullets, arrested several students and faculty, and brutally tased a detained student. pic.twitter.com/jzrqPVF7k6
On the night of April 24, Emerson College students in Boston, staging an encampment in solidarity with Gaza, were brutally evicted by Boston police. So brutally, in fact, that video from the next day showed city workers hosing off what appeared to be blood from the streets of the former encampment.
Students across the country staging encampments in solidarity with Palestine, in opposition to the genocide and in favor of liberation, have been subject to all manner of state repression. Faculty have watched in horror as their administrations call the police to brutally arrest students, many of whom are undergraduates.
In response to the University of Texas – Austin calling in state troopers to arrest students staging a Gaza Solidarity Encampment, faculty at the university expressed deep concern “for our students’ well-being and safety.”
“We have witnessed police punching a female student, knocking over a legal observer, dragging a student over a chain link fence, and violently arresting students simply for standing at the front of the crowd,” the faculty stated. “There can be no business as usual when our campus is occupied by city police and state troopers who are preventing our students from engaging in a peaceful demonstration of their first amendment rights.” The faculty are calling for what is effectively a strike, declaring, “No business as usual tomorrow. No classes. No grading. No work. No assignments.”
Ansar Allah in Yemen, which has been boldly resisting Israeli genocide through its blockage of ships with ties to Isreal in the Red Sea, released a statement condemning the police crackdown on student protesters. “This unjustified repression exposes the falsity of the US government’s claims to defend freedom, protect human rights, and spread democracy,” the organization declared. “We affirm the right of American citizens to demonstrate peacefully, and we value the moral stance of the demonstrators, which expresses an increased state of societal awareness in the face of the official US policy supporting Israeli crimes in Gaza.”
Relatives of Palestinians killed by an Israeli airstrike are pictured at El-Najar Hospital in Rafah, Gaza on April 21, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Hours after the U.S. House approved legislation that would send billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, the country’s forces killed nearly two dozen people in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than half of the enclave’s population is sheltering.
Gaza health officials said Sunday that the weekend strikes on Rafah—a former “safe zone” that Israel has been threatening to invade for weeks—killed 22 people, including 18 children. The Associated Press reported that the first of the Israeli strikes “killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies.”
“The woman was pregnant and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said,” AP added. “The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.”
Israeli forces have killed more than 14,000 children in Gaza since October, but the Biden administration and American lawmakers have refused to back growing international calls to cut off the supply of weaponry and other military equipment even as U.S. voters express support for an arms embargo.
The measure the House approved on Saturday includes $26 billion in funding for Israel, much of which is military assistance.
“Just a day after the House voted to send $14 billion in unconditional military funding to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s campaign of death and destruction, he bombed the safe zone of Rafah AGAIN, killing 22 Palestinians, of which 18 were CHILDREN!” U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), one of the 58 House lawmakers who voted against the legislation, wrote on social media late Sunday.
“History books will write about today and the past seven months, and how our nation’s leaders lacked the courage and moral clarity to stand up to a tyrant,” she added. “Shameful.”
The military aid package for Israel now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is set to consider the bill early this week. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has continued to greenlight arms sales to Israel amid clear evidence of war crimes, is expected to sign the measure if it reaches his desk.
“Rather than sending more weapons to Israel, Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel.”
U.S. law prohibits “arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law,” according to a White House memo issued in February. The U.S. State Department has said repeatedly that it has not found Israel to be in violation of international law, a position that runs directly counter to the findings of leading humanitarian organizations and United Nations experts.
The investigative outlet ProPublicareported last week that a “special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses” prior to the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
“But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials,” ProPublica noted.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in a statement Sunday that senators “should reject sending additional weapons to Israel not only because our laws prohibit military aid to abusive regimes, but because it’s extremely damaging to our national interests.”
DAWN’s advocacy director, Raed Jarrar, added that “at a time when Israel is bracing for International Criminal Court arrest warrants against its leaders, members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
“Rather than sending more weapons to Israel,” said Jarrar, “Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel.”
London for a Free Palestine activists outside the Department of Business and TradePhoto: Guy Smallman
ACTIVISTS from London for a Free Palestine occupied the Department of Business and Trade today, [yesterday] demanding that the British government stop arming Israel.
The campaigners took over the lobby in the Old Admiralty Building, chanting: “British government you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
One protester, Maria, said: “We are going here today because the Department for Business and Trade is where the licences for British arms exports to Israel are signed and approved.
“The UK has been giving Israel diplomatic, military and economic support, which has enabled it to carry out and continue its genocide and long-term colonisation of Palestine.”
Another participant, Cynthia Allett, said: “This department arms genocide.
“As Israel prepares a ground invasion in Rafah, we won’t allow the weapons used to slaughter more Palestinian people to be supplied in our names and funded by our taxes.”
Israel has deliberately slowed the flow of aid to Gaza with hundreds of trucks stranded on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border at a time when over two dozen Palestinian children have died of malnutrition
UN agencies have repeatedly condemned Israel’s refusal to expedite the process of aid delivery to Gaza which has been under siege by Israel for nearly six months. This is despite repeated calls for urgency in the context of critical humanitarian conditions which are becoming worse with each passing day.
According to the latest alerts issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) on March 18, most of northern Gaza would move into the category five indicating the highest stage of food insecurity or catastrophic levels of hunger. The IPC explains that this would mean that Palestinian households would face “an extreme lack of food and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition.”
The IPC has assessed that the region which continues to face Israeli bombing and ground offensive already faces category four levels of malnutrition with huge gaps between need and actual availability of food.
— The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (@theIPCinfo) March 18, 2024
UNRWA has already confirmed that one in three children in northern Gaza are malnourished. In the last few weeks over 25 children have died due to the same. The situation in other parts of Gaza is approaching similar levels at an alarming speed.
The same day that the IPC released its findings, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, was denied entry to Gaza by Israeli authorities. In a post on X, Lazzarini wrote, “UNRWA has by far the largest presence among all humanitarian organizations in Gaza. My visit today was supposed to coordinate & improve the humanitarian response.”
He added, “This man-made starvation under our watch is a stain on our collective humanity. Too much time was wasted, all land crossings must open now. Famine can be averted with political will.”
The UNRWA head also noted that over 1.1 million people in Gaza facing phase five levels of starvation “is the highest number of people ever recorded as facing catastrophic hunger and is double the number of just three months ago.”
Beth Bechdol, deputy director general of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) told Al-Jazeera on Tuesday that, almost half of the total population of Gaza is at the acute level of malnutrition and at the risk of ultimately death.
The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) stated on Sunday that thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza are so malnourished that they do not have enough “energy to cry.”
Over 13,000 Palestinian children have been killed in the Israeli war on Gaza which began on October 7. According to different UN agencies, as many children have been injured and now hundreds of thousands are being forced into starvation by Israel.
UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell had earlier made similar assertions saying that there are “very great bureaucratic challenges” which prevent the humanitarian aid to reach two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has restricted the entry of the aid through land borders using different kinds of excuses, for example presence of scissors in the aid boxes or alleged overcrowding of Palestinians at aid distribution centers among others.
James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, called the blocking of aid supplies to Gaza “outrageous.” He posted on X showing hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid stranded at the Rafah border as Israel has not allowed them to enter Gaza.
Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa called for the opening of all crossings. “The world’s inaction is shocking as more children succumb to slow death. All border crossing must open now to allow unfettered access to humanitarian aid” Khodr said in the tweet on Tuesday.
