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UN Warns Israeli Ground Invasion Rafah Will Lead to ‘Slaughter of Civilians’

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

Palestinians wounded in Israeli attacks on Rafah attempt to collect belongings from bombed-out homes on May 1, 2024 in the southern Gaza city. 
(Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words,” said a top U.N. aid official. “No humanitarian plan can counter that.”

The United Nations’ humanitarian aid agency warned Friday that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would put hundreds of thousands of Palestinians “at imminent risk of death.”

“Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death” for the approximately 1.5 million Palestinians—including around 1.2 million people forcibly displaced from other areas of the embattled enclave—sheltering in Gaza’s southernmost city, U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

“The hundreds of thousands of people who are there would be at imminent risk of death if there is an assault,” he added, warning of not only “a slaughter of civilians, but also at the same time an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip, because it is run primarily out of Rafah.”

According to Politico, Israel has shared with the U.S. government its plan to move the civilian population out of Rafah ahead of a looming ground assault the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday could begin next week.

Conditions in Rafah are already dire. The city—which was home to fewer than 300,000 people before the war—is now one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are crowded together in tents and other makeshift shelters. Water and other necessities are in desperately short supply. According to James Elder, the global spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people in Rafah and one shower for every 3,500 people.

“Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower,” Elder wrote for The Guardian this week.

There are nearly 600,000 children in Rafah, nearly all of whom are “injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said Wednesday.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, who represents the U.N. World Health Organization in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, on Friday called contingency response plans for a Rafah invasion a “Band-Aid” solution.

“It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation,” he stressed.

Israel’s 210-day assault on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 attacks has already killed at least 34,622 Palestinians—a large majority of them civilian men, women, and children—while wounding more than 77,800 others, according to Palestinian and international officials. At least 11,000 other Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the more than 370,000 homes and other buildings destroyed or damaged during the war.

That means around 5% of Gazans have been killed or wounded during Israel’s onslaught, the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia said in a report published Wednesday. The agencies called this an “unprecedented” level of casualties in modern warfare and said it would take until at least 2040 to restore all the homes destroyed or damaged during the war.

As many as 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced by Israeli forces, who despite a January International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to prevent genocidal acts continue to block adequate humanitarian aid from reaching the starving people of Gaza.

Despite pleas and protestations from world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah to “eliminate Hamas’ battalions there.”

Earlier this week, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the “total annihilation” of Gaza, specifically mentioning Rafah. The South Africa-led case against Israel at the ICJ has centered similar statements of intent to destroy Palestinians—which are key to proving the crime of genocide—made by Israeli officials since October.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have ramped up aerial attacks on Rafah in what is likely preparation for a ground invasion. Palestinian and international media reported Friday that an overnight Israeli airstrike on a home killed at least eight people, mostly children.

“After almost seven months of brutal hostilities that have killed tens of thousands of people and maimed tens of thousands more, Gaza is bracing for even more suffering and misery,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said earlier this week.

“The world has been appealing to the Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation there is on the immediate horizon,” he continued. “For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza’s southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves, and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death.”

“The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words,” Griffiths added. “No humanitarian plan can counter that. The rest is detail.”

U.S. officials have also privately sounded the alarm over the likely consequences of an Israeli invasion of Rafah.

In March, according to a leaked cable obtained by The Intercept, members of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development warned the State Department that a Rafah invasion “could result in catastrophic humanitarian consequences, including mass civilian casualties, extensive population displacement, and the collapse of the existing humanitarian response.”

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

Continue ReadingUN Warns Israeli Ground Invasion Rafah Will Lead to ‘Slaughter of Civilians’

Nearly All 600,000 Kids in Rafah ‘Injured, Sick, Malnourished,’ Says UNICEF

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

Palestinians, including children, collect remaining belongings from the rubble of destroyed houses after Israeli attacks on May 1, 2024 in Rafah, Gaza.
 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A full-scale Israeli assault on the crowded southern Gaza city “would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children.”

“The children in Gaza need a cease-fire.”

That’s how Catherine Russell, executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), concluded a brief video Wednesday about the harrowing conditions across the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, where about 1.5 million of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million residents have sought refuge from Israel’s devastating assault.

The video was released nearly seven months into Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in Gaza, wounded another 77,816, and left thousands more missing—and as a full-scale Israeli assault of Rafah looms.

The war has already taken “an unimaginable toll,” and a major military operation against the crowded southern Gaza city “would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children,” Russell warned. “Nearly all of the some 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities.”

“Many have been displaced multiple times and lost homes, parents, and loved ones,” the UNICEF chief noted. “There is nowhere safe to go in Gaza. Homes throughout the Gaza Strip lie in ruin. Roads are destroyed and the ground littered with unexploded ordnances.”

“Rafah is also the main hub for the humanitarian response, which includes UNICEF, and the city has some of the last functioning healthcare facilities,” she explained.

Israeli forces launched at least 435 attacks on health facilities or personnel during the first six months of the war, and just 10 of the enclave’s 36 hospitals remain partially functional, according to the World Health Organization. As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, thousands of Palestinian child amputees are struggling to recover due to the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system.

“UNICEF continues to call for the protection of all women and children in Rafah and throughout the Gaza Strip—and the protection of the infrastructure, services, and humanitarian aid they rely on,” said Russell. “We repeat our calls for the unconditional release of all hostages in Gaza who need to be home with their children and families. The violence must end.”

The agency’s five core demands for Gaza are:

  1. An immediate and long-lasting humanitarian cease-fire;
  2. Safe and unrestricted humanitarian access;
  3. The immediate, safe, and unconditional release of all abducted children, and an end to any grave violations against all children;
  4. Respect and protection for civilian infrastructure; and
  5. Allow patients with urgent medical cases to safely access critical health services or leave.

As Russell called for peace in video form, James Elder, UNICEF’s global spokesperson, penned a Wednesday opinion piece for The Guardian following his recent trips to Gaza. He began with a startling anecdote:

The war against Gaza’s children is forcing many to close their eyes. Nine-year-old Mohamed’s eyes were forced shut, first by the bandages that covered a gaping hole in the back of his head, and second by the coma caused by the blast that hit his family home. He is nine. Sorry, he was nine. Mohamed is now dead.

“From looming famine to soaring death tolls, the latest fear is the much-threatened offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza,” he wrote. “Can it get any worse? It always seems to.”

“Rafah will implode if it is targeted militarily,” Elder stressed. “Water is in desperately short supply, not just for drinking but sanitation. In Rafah there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people. The situation is four times worse for showers. That is, around one shower for every 3,500 people. Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower.”

On October 31, just weeks after the start of what the International Court of Justice has since determined is Israel’s plausibly genocidal assault, UNICEF called Gaza a “graveyard” for children.

“Can it get any worse? It always seems to.”

“Last month I saw new graveyards in Rafah being constructed. And filled,” wrote Elder. “Every day the war brings more violent death and destruction. In my 20 years with the United Nations, I have never seen devastation like that I saw in the Gaza Strip cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City. And now we are told to expect the same via an incursion in Rafah.”

Elder recalled that “in the north of the territory, close to where a UNICEF vehicle came under fire last month, a woman clutched my hand and pleaded, over and over, that the world send food, water, and medicine. I will never forget how, as I felt her grasp, I tried to explain we were trying, and she continued to plead.”

“Why? Because she assumed the world did not know what was happening in Gaza. Because if the world knew, how could they possibly let this happen?” he continued. “How, indeed. The world has certainly been warned about Rafah. It remains to be seen how many eyes stay, or are forced, shut.”

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

Continue ReadingNearly All 600,000 Kids in Rafah ‘Injured, Sick, Malnourished,’ Says UNICEF

Netanyahu vows to attack Rafah regardless of ceasefire deal

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/netanyahu-vows-attack-rafah-regardless-ceasefire-deal

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.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/netanyahu-vows-attack-rafah-regardless-ceasefire-deal

Continue ReadingNetanyahu vows to attack Rafah regardless of ceasefire deal

Students stand with Palestine, Palestine stands with students

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

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 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.”

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. 

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. 

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.

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.”

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

Continue ReadingStudents stand with Palestine, Palestine stands with students

IDF Kills 18 Children in Rafah Hours After US House Approves Billions in Military Aid

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

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.”

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

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