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Tag: Rafah

  • As Gaza Starves, Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir Calls to Reduce Humanitarian Aid

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

    Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks during an event on June 3, 2024 in Jerusalem. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)

    The national security minister’s comments came as the number of Palestinian children who have died of malnutrition reached at least 30.

    Humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza remained almost entirely halted by Israeli forces on Friday, but Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggested he was dissatisfied with the mounting death toll from starvation and called for a complete blockade to be resumed.

    “In our opinion Israel should withhold fuel from Gaza and reduce the humanitarian [aid] that enters,” Ben-Gvir said on social media, adding that he would not support a cease-fire deal put forward by Israel because it “would endanger the future of the state of Israel.”

    Ben-Gvir’s comments came as just two crossings into Gaza were open—the Western Erez crossing from Israel into the northern part of the enclave and the Karem Abu Salem crossing, which has had “limited functionality” since May 8.

    In recent days the number of aid trucks that have entered through the Karem Abu Salem crossing has plummeted from nearly 200 per day in early May to fewer than 50 per day, with as few as just one truck per day entering since mid-May.

    With the Rafah crossing closed to all aid shipments since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale invasion of the southern city on May 6, deliveries through the Karem Abu Salem entry point is the best chance that people in Rafah and southern Gaza have for obtaining desperately needed relief.

    More than 1 million Palestinians have been displaced to Rafah since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in October, and the United Nations has said that roughly that number have again fled the city in the past month, trying to escape Israel’s incursion.

    More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s attacks since October, including at least 30 children who have died of starvation. Nearly all of them died in northern Gaza, where World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain said “full-blown famine” had taken hold last month.

    Along with Israel’s closure of border crossings, Doctors Without Borders said this week that the “systematic obstruction at Israeli-controlled crossing points” has kept trucks from reaching people who need relief. Israeli officials have turned away deliveries that include certain items, like medical kits, that they say could have a “dual use.”

    Louise Wateridge a communications officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), toldCNN on Friday that intense military action has kept the Karem Abu Salem crossing from operating fully, leaving trucks full of relief deliveries stuck on the Israeli side.

    “It’s just a complete waste of vital humanitarian aid, and it’s such a manmade situation,” Wateridge told the outlet.

    Amid the ongoing starvation crisis, Ben-Gvir’s call to even further reduce humanitarian aid came a day after he said in a video posted to social media that Israel intends to “occupy all the land” in Gaza, establish settlements like those in the West Bank, and encourage the so-called “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza—echoing a call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which rights advocates denounced as an open endorsement of ethnic cleansing.

    https://twitter.com/Kahlissee/status/1798816541401878646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1798816541401878646%7Ctwgr%5E9e1344846a87d2fff83ca6667bd8401280daf73a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fben-gvir-2668477326

    Ben-Gvir has opposed a cease-fire deal supported by U.S. President Joe Biden, which calls for Israel’s withdrawal from population centers in Gaza, a release of hostages by Hamas in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, and Israel’s eventual withdrawal from the enclave entirely.

    One researcher on Wednesday objected to Ben-Gvir’s portrayal in corporate media reports as a far-right extremist figure who is pushing Israel’s government toward a fringe movement.

    “It’s time for people to stop calling [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Netanyahu ‘fringe,’” they said. “They’re not fringe. They’re quite literally the figureheads of the Israeli establishment.”

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

  • 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). 

  • Children die of malnutrition as Rafah operation shifts threat of famine in Gaza

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    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/02/children-die-malnutrition-rafah-famine-gaza-israeli-troops-aid-strip

    Palestinians gather to receive the humanitarian aid supplies airdropped into Khan Younis, Gaza, on 28 May. Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images

    Arrival of Israeli troops in the southern border town has choked aid supplies, as hunger deepens in southern Gaza

    Fayiz Abu Ataya was born into war and knew nothing else. Over his first and only spring, in a town stalked by hunger, he wasted away to a shadow of a child, skin stretched painfully over jutting bones.

    In seven months of life, he had little time to make a mark beyond the family who loved him. But when his death from malnutrition was reported last week, it sounded a warning around the world about a rapidly deepening crisis in central and southern Gaza, triggered by the Israeli military operation in the southern town of Rafah.

    At least 30 child victims of malnutrition have been recorded in Gaza, but almost all died in the north, until recently the area with the most extreme shortages of food and medical care, where a top US aid official said famine had taken hold in some areas.

    The arrival of Israeli troops in Rafah in May shifted the grim calculus of threat in the strip.

    “The ongoing situation in Rafah is a disaster for children,” said Jonathan Crickx, chief of communication for Unicef in Palestine. “If nutrition supplies, especially ready-to-use therapeutic food, used to address malnutrition among children, cannot be distributed, the treatment of more than 3,000 children with acute malnutrition will be interrupted.”

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/02/children-die-malnutrition-rafah-famine-gaza-israeli-troops-aid-strip

  • Tens of thousands to surround White House on June 8 in protest of Rafah invasion

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    Original article by peoples dispatch republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Photo: Craig Birchfield

    The people of the United States challenge Biden’s complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, demand Biden end aid to Israel

    Tens of thousands of people will are mobilizing to surround the White House on June 8 in protest of Biden’s complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, principally the brutal invasion of Rafah, which takes more and more Palestinian lives each day. 

    Biden had claimed in the past that the invasion of Rafah by Israel would be a red line, and even threatened to withhold weapons shipments (while actually halting some shipments of bombs) over the threat of invasion. 

    “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone in Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem,” Biden said during a CNN interview on May 8.

    Nevertheless, Biden did nothing after Israel’s threats of invasion escalated into reality. The recent tent massacre horrified billions across the globe after Israel bombed forcibly displaced Palestinian families—using US-made munitions. To this day, Biden continues his unconditional support for Israel.

    Despite Biden’s earlier statements, he recently claimed that the recent massacre did not cross any of his “red lines.” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that “as a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to.”

    “The Israelis are going to investigate it. We’re going to be taking great interest in what they find in that investigation. And we’ll see where it goes from there,” Kirby said.

    Ahead of the mass mobilization, Layan Fuleihan of the People’s Forum said, “Biden has blood on his hands!” She added, “Genocide is a red line! Over 13,000 children murdered by Israel, is a red line! We will march in Washington D.C. to remind him that the people of this country refuse to be complicit in these war crimes!”

    The mass demonstration on June 8 has been called by a diverse range of Palestinian diaspora formations as well as anti-imperialist groups. These include the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, the People’s Forum, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Palestinian Feminist Collective, the ANSWER Coalition, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, International Jewish Anti Zionist Network, Writers Against the War on Gaza, Healthcare Workers for Palestine, and Palestine Popular University.

    “How many more homes have to be destroyed, how many children need to be killed, until this government takes definitive action to stop Israel’s war crimes. We are tired of hearing that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are ‘concerned about the civilian death toll’. If they were really concerned about what Israel was doing, they would suspend all aid and tell Israel to accept one of the many ceasefire deals that is on the table. This genocide needs to end, and Biden has the power to do it,” said Celine Qussiny of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

    “On June 8th, tens of thousands will show Biden that the people are his red line — we refuse to allow him to continue the genocide against the people of Gaza! Instead of a red line, Biden gave a green light to Netanyahu’s invasion of Rafah by agreeing to send more U.S. bombs and missiles. While the government that speaks in our name arms the genocidal Israeli regime to the teeth, the people want freedom for Palestine,” said Brian Becker, National Director of the ANSWER Coalition. 

    Original article by peoples dispatch republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Israel subverts all international laws and rulings in its attack against Rafah

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    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Palestinians perform funeral of victims of massacre in Rafah (Photo via Quds News Network/X)

    Israel has intensified its attacks on Rafah in complete violation of the interim order of International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday, asking it to stop all attacks inside Rafah and open the border for greater humanitarian aid

    At least 40 people, mostly women and children, were killed and scores of others were injured when Israel bombed a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah late in the evening on Sunday, May 26. 

    The tent camp in Tal al-Sultan was recently built by UNRWA to shelter the Palestinians forced to move by Israeli forces from other parts of Rafah, and was a designated “safe zone,” Wafa News Agency reported.

    At least eight Israeli missiles struck the camp in the late evening, when most were sleeping in the tents, causing a massive fire. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) hospitals in the region were already overcrowded and were in no position to handle all the injured in the attack.  

    Videos and visuals of tents burning and people desperately trying to locate their loved ones in the chaos circulated on social media, along with a ghastly video of a headless body of a child, which volunteers pulled from the rubble.

    The attack sparked worldwide condemnation, with even close allies such as France asking Israel to stop the attacks on Rafah. 

    Several Arab countries demanded immediate UN Security Council intervention to stop the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. 

    Chris Gunness, spokesperson of UNRWA told Al Jazeera that, “we are now seeing blatant disregard for the genocide convention. There is no exception to the Genocide convention. There are no excuses. This is a crime of crimes.”

    Jeremy Cornyn wrote on X, “Palestinian children should wake up feeling excited to go to school and play with their friends. Instead, for those murdered in Rafah, their last moments on this earth were filled with unimaginable fear as bombs rained down on their tents. What a monstrous failure of humanity.

    Ever since the beginning of the month, Israel has increased its attacks on Rafah, ignoring all the warnings and appeals made by the world community. It had ordered the evacuation of several eastern parts of Rafah, forcing nearly 800,000 Palestinians to relocate to new areas near the coast which do not even have basic facilities. 

    Four days ago @IDF told Palestinians in Rafah to move to an area it calls “Block 2371,” designating it a “safe area.” This is the area “Israel” just bombed REFUGEE TENTS, carrying out a massacre. pic.twitter.com/SvxJWEpchE

    — Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) May 26, 2024

    After claiming that the attack on Rafah was a response to Hamas’ attack, Israel termed it “very grave” and announced it has constituted an investigation in the attack on Tal al-Sultan in Rafah. 

    More than 36,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israel in the 233 days of the war. The Israeli war has also injured over 81,000 other Palestinians so far. At least 160 Palestinians were killed in Israeli bombings in different other parts of Gaza on Sunday alone.

    ICJ asks Israel to cease attacks, open Rafah borders 

    Sunday’s attack was part of its increased assault on Rafah, particularly since the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as a provisional measure, asked Israel to stop such an attack on Friday. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has struck Rafah at least 60 times since the ICJ order. 

    The ICJ, in its interim order, had asked Israel to stop its attacks and open the border crossing with Egypt, which has been shut by it since May 7, hampering the flow of humanitarian aid in the war ravaged region. 

    The ICJ issued a provisional measure asking Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention and “immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah governorate which may inflict upon the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole and in part.”

    The decision was backed by 13 out of the 15 judges in the ICJ. 

    The court also asked Israel to submit a report on the measures taken to implement the order within a month. 

    The court was not convinced that Israel has taken enough measures to “enhance the security of civilians in the Gaza strip, and in particular those recently displaced from Rafah” as claimed by Israeli counsel during the hearing on the request made by South Africa in the court. 

    Though ICJ orders are binding, Israel has refused to abide by them so far. Reacting to the judgment on Friday, Israel called it “outrageous, morally repugnant and disgusting.”

    The provisional measures were granted in response to South Africa’s request made on May 10 under its original petition seeking action against Israel for its violations of Genocide Convention during the ongoing war in Gaza.

    This was the third interim measure ordered by the ICJ since South Africa filed the petition in December. The Court issued an interim order in January asking Israel to take measures to prevent genocide in Gaza and increase aid delivery. A similar order was passed in March as well. 

    Rafah is a narrow region in the southernmost tip of Gaza. Its population density has drastically increased, as it now shelters nearly 1.4 million people, over half of the total population of Gaza. Most of these people have been forcibly displaced by Israeli airstrikes and ground offensives in other parts of Gaza since the beginning of the genocidal war in October of last year. 

    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.