Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli air strike destroys a building, November 17, 2023
PEACE campaigners slammed Israeli authorities and world leaders today after the United Nations warned Gaza faced the “immediate possibility of starvation.”
Even before the fast approaching winter Palestinians are already struggling to survive in desperate conditions created by a lack of fuel, which means aid agencies are unable to transport urgently needed food and medical supplies to the besieged people of the territory.
UN World Food Programme (WFP) Mideast regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said that, since the beginning of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas’s October 7 uprising, Gaza has received only around 10 per cent of its required food supplies each day. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing as a result, with nearly all residents in need of food.
Speaking from Cairo, Egypt, Ms Etefa said: “Food production has come to an almost complete halt, markets have collapsed, fishermen cannot access the sea, farmers cannot reach their farms.
WFP executive director Cindy McCain said: “With winter rapidly approaching, shelters unsafe and overcrowded and a lack of clean water, civilians face the immediate possibility of starvation.”
Left Foot Forward has an exclusive with Caroline Lucas. She is set to resign as an MP at the next general election.
Caroline Lucas Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Official image by David Woolfall Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
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While she is unsurprisingly damning about the prime ministers who have been in office over her 13 years in the House of Commons, Lucas has had to work closely with MPs from other parties. By virtue of being the only MP for her party, working cross-party has been central to much of her work. As a result, she offers strong praise for MPs on the opposition benches who she has worked with over the years.
She tells Left Foot Forward: “I work really closely with people like Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis on the Green New Deal, and we have an all party group on the Green New Deal and we work very closely together on that. I enjoy working with Barry Gardiner actually on the Environmental Audit Committee just because he’s such a terrier when it comes to cross-questioning ministers. From the Liberal Democrats I work very closely with Wera Hobhouse on environmental issues, green issues. Plaid [Cymru] are very good on social issues and I’m probably closest to them of all the parties in Westminster.”
However, such praise is definitely absent from her assessment of the likely next prime minister – the Labour leader Keir Starmer. She starts by acknowledging that she and the Green Party would “prefer to see a Labour government than a Tory government”, but goes on to ask “what kind of Labour government” we are likely to get.
“I think there are real concerns over the U-turns that Keir Starmer has been performing – whether that is on what was originally a £28 billion commitment for green investment, he was going to scrap tuition fees, things like the two child benefit cap which is a really, really obscene policy and his own frontbench have said its obscene yet he has now said that he is not going to reverse that.
“He’s better on oil and gas to the extent that he’s said he won’t give licenses to new oil and gas. But then there’s a totally incoherent position of saying that he will allow Rosebank to go ahead. Whereas if he had said were he to get into government he would have tried to roll back that decision it would never have been taken in the first place, because the signal that would have given to Equinor, the Norwegian investor who is going to go ahead with Rosebank would have thought twice. So on oil and gas, there’s a problem there.”
Lucas says that on the economy and other issues, Starmer is operating with a “lack of ambition” which is “so desperately disappointing because he seems to think that if he just plays it incredibly safe, then he can tip-toe into Downing Street”, before going on to say “I think he needs to worry as well about the number of people he simply won’t be inspiring to get off their chairs and down to the polling station at all – and right now it is incredibly hard to say what Keir Starmer stands for”.
Given that Lucas spoke to Left Foot Forward the day after the major vote in parliament on whether the government should call for a ceasefire in Gaza, she also criticises Labour for failing to vote to support a ceasefire. “I think it was incredibly disappointing that Labour is on the wrong side of history on this”, she says.
The bodies of victims of the October 31, 2023 Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip are lined up outside the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. (Photo: Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Airwars noted that this is “the most named victims we have ever monitored in a single event.”
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including over 100 civilian victims of a single Israeli bombing in the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp on October 31 who were publicly identified on Thursday by the U.K.-based watchdog Airwars.
The group identified 116 names of civilians killed in the strike—including 10 cases with the death of multiple family members, three of which reportedly involved entire families being wiped out. The estimated civilian death toll is 126-136, including 69 children.
Airwars noted on social media that this is “the most named victims we have ever monitored in a single event,” and “almost every named victim we found died along with at least one other family member.” The analysis is just for the Israeli attack on October 31, but the group is separately reviewing a strike from the following day. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed both bombings and claimed to be targeting “a very senior Hamas commander.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli military said the attack had been authorized to assassinate a senior Hamas commander and destroy his base. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari named the target as Ibrahim Biari, commander of Central Jabaliya Battalion, who he said had been leading fighting in northern Gaza from a network of tunnels under the camp.
Hagari declined to comment on how many munitions, or which types, were used to target the camp, or identify which craters were caused by tunnel collapses. He said Israel would provide some of these details at a later date.
But a visual analysis by The Guardian has identified at least five craters in the densely populated refugee camp, which weapons experts said were left by the use of multiple JDAMs—joint direct attack munitions—in the airstrike.
“Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem denied any senior commander there and called the claim an Israeli pretext for killing civilians,” according toReuters.
Ahmad al-Kahlout, a spokesperson for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Interior Ministry in Gaza, told reporters at the time that “these buildings house hundreds of citizens. The occupation’s air force destroyed this district with six U.S.-made bombs. It is the latest massacre caused by Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.”
Hagari claimed the IDF killed “scores” of militants alongside Biari.
“With ambiguity around the exact number of militants killed, Airwars has applied a 12-24 combatant casualty range to account for comments such as ‘dozens’ of targets killed,” the watchdog said.
Those in the camp remain at risk. Middle East Eye reported Wednesday that “renewed heavy Israeli shelling has targeted residential homes in the Jabalia refugee camp. Footage showed blocks falling to the ground and survivors digging in the rubble with their hands to retrieve dead bodies.”
After the airstrikes on a block of houses in the Jabalia refugee camp a couple of hours ago, another airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp (south of Gaza). Around 40 ppl thought to have been sheltering in that house. https://t.co/2HpjvMIbAl
The IDF strikes on Jabalia have been globally condemned as war crimes—as have various other Israeli actions since October 7, when the nation launched what experts are calling a “genocidal” war in response to a Hamas-led attack.
Throughout Israel’s bombing campaign and ground operations in Gaza—which along with killing and wounding thousands of civilians have destroyed civilian infrastructure and displaced around three-quarters of the population—global calls for a cease-fire have mounted.
There have also been growing demands for International Criminal Court action. Rutgers Law School professor and Just Security executive editor Adil Haque tagged the ICC prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, in a social media post about the Airwars analysis.
Khan last month asked civil society groups “to send us any and all evidence that underpins their reports or their communiques or their notices that they issue” on Gaza, explaining that “reports by themselves are, of course, not evidence and I cannot and will not act pursuant to my oath of office without reliable evidence that we can validate that can stand up in a court of law.”
Police officers work to separate protesters who locked themselves together during a November 16, 2023 demonstration for a cease-fire in Gaza, on the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. (Photo: Arab Resource and Organizing Center)
“We refuse to stand by as our elected officials pay for and cheer on the genocide of Palestinians,” said one protester. “Biden must call for a cease-fire now.”
Dozens of demonstrators demanding a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Gaza were arrested Thursday after protesters blocked San Francisco-bound traffic on the Bay Bridge during morning rush hour and the ongoing Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.
Members of activist groups including Palestinian Youth Movement, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Bay Area, and others blocked westbound lanes of the bridge with their vehicles before getting out of their cars and unfurling banners reading “Stop the Genocide” and “No U.S. Military Aid to Israel.”
“We are beyond grief watching thousands of our loved ones murdered by the Israeli military. There is a genocide happening in Gaza, and President [Joe] Biden is hosting cocktail parties in San Francisco right now,” Palestinian Youth Movement’s Aisha Nizar said in a statement.
“We refuse to stand by as our elected officials pay for and cheer on the genocide of Palestinians. Biden must call for a cease-fire now,” Nizar added.
Many protesters held signs or wore banners reading “The People Demand a Cease-Fire.” Some staged a “die-in” on the roadway, while others locked themselves together and through open vehicle windows in what’s known as a “sleeping dragon” maneuver as traffic on Interstate 80 and other area freeways stayed snarled for hours.
JVP said “at least” 50 people were arrested, a number corroborated by the California Highway Patrol.
“The Bay Area will not stop shutting things down until there is an immediate END to the bombing in Gaza,” JVP Bay Area said on social media.
Ariel Koren, a leader of the #NoTechForApartheid movement, posted that “Biden will not get away with genocide, Biden will not get away with staying in San Francisco without EVERYONE knowing he is supporting the slaughter in Gaza.”
There are OVER A HUNDRED riot police here clearing us out, arresting dozens demanding an immediate ceasefire
How many tens of thousands have to come out to the streets, shut down roads & bridges, get arrested, until @JoeBiden starts taking us seriously.
Several protests against Israel’s war on Gaza have taken place in the Bay Area in recent weeks, including marches and a Jewish-led takeover of a federal building in Oakland on Monday.
Multiple people detained by police said they had nothing to do with the demonstration. Among those claiming wrongful arrests were Stanford University physics professor Lauren Tompkins and Masoud Barukzai, a worker at San Francisco International Airport.
“As a citizen, this is absolutely disgusting, to be stripped of my rights,” Barukzai—who says he believes he was arrested due to his appearance—told The San Francisco Chronicle.
Arrests currently happening on the bay bridge. It’s important to remember that every time police show up to arrest anti-war/pro-Palestinian protestors, American police are acting in solidarity with their training partners in the IDF. #FreePalestinepic.twitter.com/KQ0esYvcUxhttps://t.co/wbbyUFDb67
Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza has killed, maimed, or displaced nearly 40,000 Palestinians, with over 2,700 others missing—many of them presumed dead under the rubble. Half the homes in the besieged strip have been damaged or destroyed, while as many as 1.7 million people—around 70% of Gaza’s population—have been forcibly displaced.
Biden—who spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leader’s Meeting in San Francisco Thursday morning—has rejected calls for a cease-fire while requesting $14.3 billion in additional military aid for Israel, atop the nearly $4 billion it already gets each year.
Biden—who has proclaimed his “unwavering” support for Israel—has also been accused of genocide denial for casting aspersions on Palestinian officials’ Gaza casualty reports, even though his own administration has cited figures from the same agencies in recent reports.
A similar protest took place Thursday morning in Massachusetts, where the Jewish-led group IfNotNow Boston spearheaded a rush-hour blockage of Boston University Bridge.
“Every day brings more death, more starvation, more children losing limbs, more babies becoming orphans,” the group said in an open letter demanding a Gaza cease-fire. “It is unbearable, our souls cry out against it.”
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in a 41st consecutive day of unrelenting attacks by Israel’s military on the Gaza Strip. Overnight, Israel’s Air Force dropped leaflets over parts of the southern city of Khan Younis ordering people to leave their homes and shelters “for their own safety.” Many are being expelled for a second time, after Israel last month ordered more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes in northern Gaza.
On Wednesday, Israeli authorities allowed the first shipment of fuel into the Gaza Strip since early October. The U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says just over 6,000 gallons of fuel — half a tanker truck’s worth — was allowed to cross from Egypt. That’s just 9% of what UNRWA says is needed daily to sustain life-saving activities. Israel is not allowing the fuel to be used in hospitals or to power water and sewage pumps.
The U.N.’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said outbreaks of disease and hunger in Gaza now appear “inevitable.” His remarks came amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe at Gaza’s largest hospital, the Al-Shifa medical complex, which is being occupied by Israel’s army. Thousands of patients, medical workers and displaced Palestinians remain trapped inside the hospital and unable to leave. Medical workers report Israeli attacks have severely damaged Al-Shifa’s main surgery building, and about 200 people were reportedly blindfolded by Israeli troops and led away to interrogations. The World Health Organization’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says 26 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now closed due to damage from Israeli strikes or because they have run out of fuel.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “Israel’s military incursion into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is totally unacceptable. Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”
