[News] Ceasefire elusive as Gaza genocide enters fifth month

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/ceasefire-elusive-gaza-genocide-enters-fifth-month>
Ceasefire elusive as Gaza genocide enters fifth month

Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 7 February
2024
------------------------------

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a school following an Israeli attack on
Nuseirat refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 31 January.
APA images

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has resulted in at least 100,000
Palestinians killed, injured or missing and presumed dead – more than 4
percent of the population of 2.3 million, or nearly every one in 20 people
– as the genocide enters its fifth month.

Sixty percent <https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146157> of the 27,585
Palestinian fatalities recorded
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-mediators-search-final-formula-israel-hamas-ceasefire-2024-02-07/>
by the health ministry in Gaza since 7 October were women and children.
Thousands more are buried under the rubble.

At least 17,000 boys and girls in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from
their family, according to
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/stories-loss-and-grief-least-17000-children-are-estimated-be-unaccompanied-or-separated-their-parents-gaza-strip>
the UN children’s fund UNICEF.

Khan Younis in southern Gaza was bearing the brunt of the bombardment while
Palestinian resistance groups fought Israeli ground forces across much of
Gaza in recent days, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs reported
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-112>
.

Israeli forces bombed residential blocks and high rises in multiple areas
of Khan Younis on Monday, causing significant destruction.

Heavy fighting continues near Nasser Medical Complex and Al Amal Hospital
in Khan Younis, “jeopardizing the safety of medical staff, the wounded and
the sick, as well as thousands of internally displaced persons,” according
to UN OCHA.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that Israeli forces
had intensified the siege on Nasser Medical Complex, where there is a
“severe shortage of surgical supplies and sutures and there is an estimated
four days left of the amount of fuel needed to power hospital generators,”
OCHA said.

Meanwhile, initial screenings of thousands of young children indicate that
acute malnutrition has sharply increased in Gaza, according to OCHA. “This
sharp rise in acute malnutrition suggests that, without adequate preventive
and curative services, the situation will worsen,” the UN office said.
“We will reach Rafah”

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, met with
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-presses-onslaught-gazas-khan-younis-us-pursues-ceasefire-quest-2024-02-06/>
Qatari officials in Doha on Tuesday.

Blinken said that he would discuss Hamas’ response to a proposed ceasefire
with Israeli officials during his visit to the country on Wednesday,
Reuters reported
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us-reviewing-hamas-response-hostage-deal-framework-will-discuss-with-israel-2024-02-06/>
.

The secretary of state said that “there’s still a lot of work to be done,
but we continue to believe that an agreement is possible, and indeed
essential.”

However, an Israeli government source told the country’s state broadcaster
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-will-not-accept-hamas-conditions-for-permanent-ceasefire-says-source/>
that it would reject Hamas’ demand for a permanent ceasefire and an end to
the siege on Gaza as part of any prisoner exchange.

While diplomats worked secure a deal, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense
minister, told troops
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/02/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news/israels-defense-minister-signals-the-army-could-push-toward-gazas-southernmost-point>
that “we are completing the mission in Khan Younis, and we will reach Rafah
as well, and eliminate every terrorist there who threatens to harm us.”

Three prominent Palestinian human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the
Palestinian Center for Human Rights – warned
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22607.html> that an expansion of Israel’s
ground operations in Rafah, the southernmost area of Gaza, appears to be
imminent.

Such an escalation “would significantly exacerbate the ongoing genocidal
acts perpetrated by the Israeli military and authorities against the
Palestinian population in Gaza,” the rights groups warned.

Some 1.3 million Palestinians – more than half of Gaza’s population – are
currently concentrated in Rafah after being displaced from other areas of
the territory.

Given the current population density of the area, an attack on Rafah “could
result in an unprecedented loss of Palestinian lives,” the rights groups
stated.

It may also force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza to flee to
Egypt, “which would constitute the crime of forcible deportation,” the
rights groups added.

“The potential scenario could surpass the number of Palestinians forcibly
expelled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military during the 1948
Nakba,” they said.

A spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs issued a similar warning on Tuesday, stating that
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146242> “intensified hostilities in
Rafah in this situation could lead to large-scale loss of civilian lives
and we must do everything possible within our power to avoid that.”

Sinai for Human Rights, an organization based in Egypt, said on Tuesday
that Israel had been bombing the border area in recent days.
UNRWA, the embattled
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/funding-freeze-could-halt-unrwa-operations-end-month>
UN agency for Palestine refugees, said that a convoy carrying food aid was
hit by Israeli naval gunfire while waiting to move into northern Gaza on
Monday. Officials with the agency said that no one was injured.

One day earlier, a group of people waiting for aid trucks in southern Gaza
City, located in the northern area of the territory, came under fire. The
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it was the
fifth instance of reported shooting towards people gathered to obtain
humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian agencies say they are unable to reach northern Gaza, where
levels of hunger are reaching a situation of famine.

Last week
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-kills-hundreds-palestinians-gaza-after-icj-ruling>,
Sigrid Kaag, the UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for
Gaza, told diplomats that humanitarian access remains severely restricted.

She called for the opening of more crossings and the resumption of
commercial activities in Gaza, where some 300,000 civilians remain in the
north in increasingly dire conditions.
Forced evacuation

Thousands of people moved to Rafah from Khan Younis after Israel issued
evacuation orders and escalated its military offensive in the area.

Israel erected a checkpoint on the evacuation route after closing side
streets, forcing people to move along al-Bahr street west of Khan Younis
refugee camp.

At the checkpoint, Palestinians were forced to pass through one by one,
leaving their belongings behind, according to
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6125> the Euro-Med Human Rights
Monitor.

Women, girls and young boys were allowed to pass but men and boys over the
age of 15 were required to show their IDs and have their irises scanned,
the rights group said.

Some men and boys were allowed to pass while others were “arrested, forced
to strip naked and held in an open area amid the rainy weather,” according
to Euro-Med.

Palestinians who fled from Khan Younis to Rafah via the Israeli-controlled
corridor “were forced to chant slogans against Hamas,” according to
<https://www.972mag.com/khan-younis-safe-corridor-abuse/> *+972 Magazine.*
“Many had their belongings confiscated, and men were separated from their
families, stripped and subjected to hours of physical abuse and
deprivation.”

Those who made it to Rafah “are forced to stay in an open area in appalling
humanitarian conditions, waiting for assistance,” Euro-Med said.

Most newly displaced people have only 1.5 to 2 liters of water per day for
drinking, cooking and bathing, and there is a spike in cases of diarrhea
among children, according to
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-111>
UNICEF.

Around two-thirds of Gaza’s territory, home to nearly 1.8 million
Palestinians, has been placed under evacuation orders by Israel.

Some two million people are internally displaced in Gaza, where there is no
safe area or assurance from Israel that they will be allowed to return to
their homes, Euro-Med added.

Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN Human Rights Office in Palestine, said
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-massive-human-rights-crisis-and-humanitarian-disaster>
after a week-long visit to Gaza that civilians “are constantly on the move
from places they have been told are safe, living in constant fear.”

“People make tents with plastic bags and wood they can find,” Sunghay
added. “People are living on one meal a day if they are lucky.”
Widespread destruction

The majority of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or
destroyed, according to
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/jan/30/how-war-destroyed-gazas-neighbourhoods-visual-investigation>
an analysis of satellite data.

The UN estimates
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-111>
that more than 650,000 displaced Palestinians in Gaza “will have no home to
return to, and that many more will be unable to return immediately, due to
the level of damage to surrounding infrastructure, as well as the risk
posed by explosive remnants of war.”
*The New York Times* reported
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/world/middleeast/israel-idf-soldiers-war-social-media-video.html>
on Tuesday that it had reviewed hundreds of videos recorded by Israeli
soldiers in Gaza and posted on personal social media accounts.

Some of that footage is mundane. But other videos show troops “vandalizing
local shops and school classrooms, making derogatory comments about
Palestinians, bulldozing what appear to be civilian areas and calling for
the building of Israeli settlements in Gaza.”

The publication added that it had “traced more than 50 videos back to
Israel’s military combat engineering units, showing the use of bulldozers,
excavators and explosives to destroy what appear to be houses, schools and
other civilian buildings.”

Last week, *The New York Times* published an analysis
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/Israel-gaza-war-demolish.html>
of controlled demolitions undertaken by Israeli forces that have “destroyed
hundreds of buildings – including mosques, schools and entire sections of
residential neighborhoods” in Gaza since November.

The paper said that most of the 33 demolition sites that had it identified
were well outside of the approximate area of the “buffer zone” proposed by
Israel along Gaza’s eastern and northern boundary. There may be more
controlled demolition locations than those it was able to confirm with the
available visual evidence, *The New York Times* said.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to housing has coined the term
“domicide” to describe
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-destroying-civilian-housing-and-infrastructure-international-crime>
widespread or systematic destruction of homes, such as the case of Gaza.

The Palestinian culture ministry says that Israeli bombardment had
destroyed more than 200 buildings of cultural or historical significance in
Gaza.

“The damage has also included an ancient Roman cemetery and the
Commonwealth war cemetery, where more than 3,000 British and commonwealth
soldiers are buried after dying in battles during the first and second
world wars,” according to
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/04/everything-beautiful-has-been-destroyed-palestinians-mourn-a-city-in-tatters>
*The
Guardian*.

The UN cultural organization UNESCO “warned that more sites are at risk of
damage, including one of the region’s oldest Christian monasteries, the
Saint Hilarion complex, which it said had not been damaged yet but was in
an area of intense fighting,” the publication added.
Red Crescent program director killed

Medical facilities are among the civilian infrastructure destroyed by
Israel in Gaza.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society published footage of its badly damaged
headquarters in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. The video shows crushed ambulances
in the road and blown-out and bullet-riddled walls in its building. The Red
Crescent said that Hedaya Hamad, one of its program directors, was shot and
killed by Israeli forces during the siege on its headquarters and the
adjacent Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis.

The Red Crescent added that Hamad was killed while attempting to rescue
displaced people sheltering at the facility after they were shot by
soldiers.

“Hedaya embodied the meanings of sacrifice, humanity and volunteerism”
until her last breath, the Red Crescent said of their slain colleague.
Israeli forces summoned and forcibly disappeared Dr. Haider al-Qaddura, a
member of the Red Crescent’s executive committee and the general manager of
Al-Amal Hospital, and the hospital’s administrative director Maher Atallah.

The Red Crescent said
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1754449790274850935> that the
disappearance of the two men came after Israel approved the safe passage of
displaced people sheltering at the hospital and its adjacent headquarters
“after a two-week siege.”

Hundreds of families left the hospital and Red Crescent facility, the
humanitarian group said
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1754474442875359275> on Monday.
Forty elderly displaced persons and around 80 patients and injured people
remain, along with some 100 administrative and medical staff.
Meanwhile, the Red Crescent said
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1754797526727700772> on Tuesday
that after more than a week, the fate of a 6-year-old girl and two
paramedics who attempted to come to her rescue after her family came under
Israeli fire was still unknown.

Last month, the International Court of Justice issued an interim ruling
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/world-court-orders-israel-halt-gaza-genocide>
stating that Israel was plausibly carrying out a genocide in Gaza and
ordered it to “take all measures within its power” to prevent violations of
articles of the Genocide Convention, to which it is a state party.
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