THE United Nations has appealed for $2.8 billion (£2.2bn) to provide desperately needed aid to three million Palestinians, stressing that tackling looming famine in the devastated Gaza Strip requires not only food but sanitation, water and health facilities.
Andrea De Domenico, the head of the UN humanitarian office for Gaza and the West Bank, told reporters on Tuesday night that massive operations are required to restore those services and meet minimum standards — and this can’t be done during military operations.
He pointed to the destruction of hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, homes, roads and schools by Israeli forces, adding that “there is not a single university that is standing in Gaza.”
Mr De Domenico said Israel’s recently ended so-called military operation at Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, was so destructive the facility has been forced to shut down.
TARGETING AID: World Central Kitchen vehicle hit in an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, April 2 2024
RAMZY BAROUD explains that Israel isn’t making mistakes, even due to callous carelessness — killing aid workers is part of a wider plan to make life in northern Gaza impossible, to facilitate ethnic cleansing
ISRAEL described its clearly deliberate killing of seven humanitarian aid workers on April 1 as a “grave mistake,” a “tragic event” that “happens in war.”
Israel is, obviously, lying. This entire so-called war — actually genocide — in Gaza has been based on a series of lies, some of which Israel continues to peddle.
For some, in the mainstream media, it took months to accept the obvious fact that Israel has been lying about the events that led to the war and the military objectives of its constant targeting of hospitals, schools, shelters and other civilian facilities.
So, it was only logical for Israel to lie about killing the six internationals, and their Palestinian driver, of the World Central Kitchen (WCK). Notwithstanding an event as atrocious as this, it is implausible for Israel to start telling the truth now.
Luckily, few seem to believe Israel’s version regarding WCK, or its continued massacres elsewhere in Gaza. Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” the US-based NGO said in a statement on April 5.
The issue of targeting these internationals, however, has to be placed within a larger context.
Israel was hardly secretive about its intention to deny Palestinians even the most basic necessities of survival in Gaza, epitomised in the words of Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant on October 9: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Initially, this statement, and many others, were understood at the time to be an outcome of Israel’s desire to punish Palestinians for the October 7 al-Aqsa Flood operation, by resorting to its typical tactic of collective punishment.
With time, however, and based on statements made by other Israeli officials, it became clear that Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians altogether.
Labour is counting on the unpopularity of the Conservative Party to catapult it into power but in the absence of specific policies and failure to improve quality of life, electoral goodwill will quickly evaporate.
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Labour and Conservatives have become slaves to arbitrary fiscal rules even though they have failed to deliver almost every target relating to economic growth, inflation, public debt, investment and more. Labour emphasises that it wants to reduce the government debt to GDP ratio in five years’ time. However, no rationale is presented for such a straitjacket. No assessment is made of the consequences of removing billions of pounds from the economy. No rationale as to why low debt to GDP ratio is an indicator of the prosperity of a nation and why this should take priority over investment or redistribution. Analogies with household budgets or maxed out credit cards are misleading as governments, especially those with global currencies such as the Pound Sterling, can create money to achieve desired social objectives and levy selective taxation to eliminate inflationary effects. But Labour is no student of the modern monetary theory.
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Debt can be used to rebuild the economy even if Labour and Conservatives are hostile to it. The Post-Second World War boom was built upon direct public investment in new industries and social infrastructure. In 1946, public debt stood at over 270% of its GDP. This provided jobs and fuelled demand. It fuelled corporate investment as the state bought goods and services from the private sector. It laid foundations of emerging industries, such as biotechnology, information technology, aerospace and more specially as the private sector showed little appetite for long-term investment and risks. Within a generation, the public debt came down to 49% of GDP and I can’t recall our parents and grandparents fretting about the public debt.
Instead of a dynamic state, both Labour and Conservatives support further cuts in public spending even though that will reduce investment, slow economic growth, and inflict long-term damage. Too many public buildings and schools are crumbling away. The government response is that college spending per student aged 16–18 in 2024 will be 10% below 2010 levels, and about 23% below them for school sixth forms. Since 2010 local council funding has been cut by 23.3% in real terms, leading to degradation of public services and higher council tax on hard-pressed households. Hospitals in England have a waiting list of 7.6m appointments. None of this can be addressed by adherence to arbitrary fiscal rules.
There is a strong case for redistribution of income and wealth, but Hunt and Reeves ignore it even though higher disposable income for the less well-off has a greater multiplier effect. No amount of economic growth can be sustained unless people have good purchasing power to buy goods and services. Both parties reaffirm their faith in trickle-down economics which has seen wealth sucked upwards and prevent economic recovery. The UK has 171 billionaires with combined wealth of £684bn. The richest 1% of the population has more wealth than 70% of the population combined. The richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth, and the poorest 50% own just 9%.
Over 26,000 people have been injured and around 1.5 million displaced out of a total population of 2.3 million since Israel started its war on Gaza on October 7. Israeli forces have also killed over 150 people in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The debris following an Israeli airstrike in Jabalya. Photo: Quds News Network
Gaza faced yet another communications black out on Monday, November 6 even as reports emerged of Israeli planes bombing more residential areas and killing dozens of civilians on the 31st day of its war.
On Sunday night and on Monday morning, Israeli forces bombed over 450 Palestinian locations in the besieged Palestinian territory, killing dozens of Palestinians, including children and women.
The total number of Palestinians killed has crossed the 10,000 mark and over 26,000 have been injured in Israel’s indiscriminate bombings and ground offensive. Over 1,000 Palestinians are also reported missing and are likely to be buried in the debris created by Israel’s war planes targeting residential areas, hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health says the confirmed number of Palestinians murdered by Israel since the beginning of the Israeli genocide campaign in Gaza has climbed to 9,770, with thousands of people, including children, missing.#GazaGenocide#ceasefireInGazaNOWpic.twitter.com/hZXQHbv5YH
Israel has also launched a ground offensive inside Gaza. Its forces claimed on Monday that they have divided the besieged Palestinian territory into two. They also repeated their ultimatum asking all residents to leave northern Gaza.
66 Palestinians were reportedly killed when Israel bombed residential buildings in Deir al-Balah and al-Zawayida in central Gaza on Monday.
Internet services and telecommunications shut down in Gaza for the third time since October 7. Israel on Monday once again disrupted the power supply to Al-Shifa hospital. The largest hospital in Gaza has faced repeated attacks in its vicinity and is running out of fuel, medicine, and space, caused both by the Israeli blockade and due to the surge in the number of patients.
There are over 40,000 people seeking refuge in the hospital at the moment according to Al-Jazeera.
More killed in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
Israeli occupation forces have also killed 155 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, two of them on Monday.
One of the Palestinians killed was just 16 years old. Israel alleged that he attacked two of their soldiers, wounding them seriously with a knife before he was shot dead, Wafa reported.
Over 70 other Palestinians were arrested from different parts of the occupied West Bank by Israeli occupation forces in late night raids conducted on Sunday and early morning on Monday.
The arrested include activist Ahed Tamimi who was arrested from her house near Ramallah in a raid.
Israeli forces detain non-violent resistance icon Ahed Tamimi. In ‘18 Israeli forces detained her after she slapped an Israeli soldier harassing her in her home after her cousin was shot in the head. Her father was detained a week ago. Israel has detained 2000+ 🇵🇸s in past month https://t.co/4s2vphQ0Rt
On Sunday evening, an Israeli drone attacked a car in southern Lebanon, killing three children and injuring an elderly woman, Al-Mayadeen reported.
Hezbollah responded to the death of Lebanese children by firing rockets inside a northern Israeli town killing at least one person.
Blinken threatened countries and groups in the region against any attempts to intervene in the war in Gaza. The US also announced the deployment of a nuclear submarine in the region on Monday.
The US has already increased the presence of its armed forces in the region following Israeli aggression in Gaza and has supplied armaments to Israel for the war.
