[News] Israel blocking aid, fuel to Gaza hospitals

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-blocking-aid-fuel-gaza-hospitals>
Israel blocking aid, fuel to Gaza hospitals
Naaman Omar
January 12, 2024
------------------------------
[image: Mourners, some of them in red paramedic uniforms, pray over three
bodies, wrapped in white shrouds.]

Palestine Red Crescent Society staff held funerals for four of its
paramedic team members who were killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on
an ambulance, Deir al-Balah, 11 January.
APA images

Israel killed more than 150 Palestinians and continued to block aid to
hospitals in the Gaza Strip while theatrically rejecting
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-counter-genocide-accusations-world-court-2024-01-12/>
South Africa’s charges of genocide at the Hague on Friday.

A UN official warned that if Israel does not allow fuel into Gaza
immediately, aid trucks will be stuck at the southern Rafah crossing,
unable to distribute anything at all.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israel committed 13 massacres
against Palestinians between Thursday and Friday alone.

The Palestinian death toll has risen to 23,706 since 7 October, with more
than 60,000 injured, the ministry reported on Friday.

Thousands more are still missing or buried under the rubble.

All internet and telephone systems have been destroyed by Israeli attacks,
plunging Gaza into a communications blackout once again, according
<https://twitter.com/Paltelco/status/1745813735627727091> to the service
provider Paltel.

Meanwhile, the head of Human Rights Watch stated Israel must abide by the
International Court of Justice’s ruling
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/genocide-case-against-israel-opens-world-court>,
which will likely be announced at the end of this month.

“If Israel does not comply with the measures or orders of the court, then
it is up to the international community to ensure that they are leveraging
whatever pressure that they can to encourage Israel to actually implement
the measures,” Tirana Hassan told Reuters
<https://www.reuters.com/world/human-rights-watch-says-world-must-ensure-israel-abides-by-any-un-court-ruling-2024-01-11/>.

The group released its “World Report <https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024>”
on Thursday, which documents global human rights violations over the past
year.

Hassan said that Human Rights Watch was able to document Israel’s “crime of
starvation” as a means of warfare on the people of Gaza.

“In the throes of this war, what we have seen is consistent, flagrant
violations of international humanitarian law,” Hassan told Reuters.
Israel “systematically” blocking aid

Israel is methodically blocking aid convoys headed for hospitals in
northern Gaza, or slowing them down using lengthy inspections, according
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/un-decries-systematic-blocking-of-aid-to-north-gaza-hospitals/>
to United Nations aid agencies.
Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN’s local Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs, asserted on Friday that “the Israelis have
systematically, or quasi-systematically, refused” to allow the aid trucks
through.

He explained that Israel had only partially approved three out of 21 aid
missions requested by his agency.

“In particular, they have been very systematic in not allowing us to
support hospitals, which is something that is reaching a level of
inhumanity that, for me, is beyond comprehension,” he said
<https://www.reuters.com/world/un-deplores-israels-systematic-refusal-grant-access-north-gaza-2024-01-12/>
.

But beginning Saturday, all aid trucks will be stuck at the southern Rafah
crossing and no humanitarian aid will be distributed across Gaza, De
Domenico warned.

“We will simply be unable to unload [the trucks],” De Domenico told
reporters <https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k10/k10ru22tbe> on Friday.

“We don’t have the fuel for the forklift and we do not have the fuel for
the trucks that are distributing that assistance out to where the people in
need are,” he said.
Paramedics killed

Awni Khattab <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/awni-khattab>, the
director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s ambulance center, was
released on Friday after more than 50 days in Israeli detention.

The medical association posted video of Khattab’s emotional reunion with
his family members and colleagues:
Khattab had been abducted
<https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/112023/PRCS%20Statement%2027112023.pdf>
by Israeli soldiers on 22 November with several other colleagues while he
was transferring injured patients
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-attacks-gaza-hospital-five-times-one-week>
from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-salmiya>, the head of
al-Shifa hospital, has still not been released
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-war-takes-medical-apartheid-new-extreme/43466>
from Israeli detention, along with approximately 100 other health care
workers.

This week, PRCS held funerals for four of its paramedic team members killed
in a targeted Israeli airstrike
<https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1745503706806657222> on their ambulance
in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

Two patients inside the ambulance were also killed.
The paramedics “were martyred while wearing the Red Crescent emblem, which
is supposed to be protected according to international law,” PRCS stated
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1745129136555733331>.

“Our colleagues were intentionally targeted while inside an ambulance
clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem.”
Inside al-Aqsa hospital

The United Nations’ human rights office stated
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/un-human-rights-office-opt-un-human-rights-office-occupied-palestinian-territory-warns-israeli-strikes-are-placing-civilians-serious-risk-deir-al-balah-middle-gaza-enar>
on Wednesday that it is “deeply concerned” that Israeli forces “have placed
civilian lives at serious risk by ordering residents from various parts of
Middle Gaza to relocate to Deir al-Balah – while continuing to conduct
airstrikes on the city.”

The UN added that four separate strikes on Deir al-Balah since the
beginning of January have killed more than 40 Palestinians.

“It is clear – as the UN has repeatedly stressed – that there is no safe
place in Gaza,” the agency said.

The UN noted that recent Israeli airstrikes and sniper attacks on al-Aqsa
Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah – the only partially-functioning hospital
in central Gaza – “has led many medical staff to take the difficult
decision to evacuate the hospital, despite the high need for medical care
resulting from the continuing strikes.”

On Friday, the hospital lost power as a result of a lack of fuel – putting
patients, including infants in incubators, at extreme risk.
Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian chief, stated on Wednesday that “the
health sector in Gaza is being slowly choked off as hospitals continue to
come under fire.” Doctors from the UK charity group Medical Aid for
Palestinians, who have been working at al-Aqsa hospital, told the BBC
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67929397> this week that
hundreds of patients are still being treated inside the hospital daily, but
with decreasing numbers of staff available to treat the wounded and infirm.

Many of the patients are arriving with “horrific, traumatic injuries,”
according to an emergency doctor.

One of the physicians, obstetrician Deborah Harrington, said there was
little to no pain relief medication available while treating injured
patients.

“I can’t get out of my mind – a child came in alive, literally burnt to the
bone, their hands were contracting. Their face was just charcoal, and they
were alive and talking. And we had no morphine,” she told the BBC.

“I won’t be able to wipe that memory and the smell, being treated on the
floor,” Harrington said.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza announced on Friday that the bed
occupancy rate “in all hospitals is more than 340 percent” across
departments and intensive care units.
Journalists killed

Israel has killed more than 100 journalists and media workers in Gaza since
7 October.
Last week, an Israeli drone strike assassinated journalist Hamza
al-Dahdouh, the son of Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language bureau
chief in Gaza.

Wael al-Dahdouh’s wife and two children
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/1/to-kill-a-family-the-loss-of-wael-dahdouhs-family-to-israeli-bombs>
were killed in an Israeli airstrike in late October; and his cameraman
Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in a drone strike
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/al-jazeera-condemns-israeli-forces-killing-of-cameraman-samer-abu-daqqa>
last month.
Another reporter Mustafa Thuraya was killed in the same attack that killed
Hamza. They were traveling together in a car, to cover a story in southern
Gaza.

The Israeli military claimed
<https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1745158780852048186> that al-Dahdouh
was an operative with Islamic Jihad and that Thuraya was active with Hamas.

Israel’s army claimed
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-al-jazeera-journalists-were-killed-in-car-with-drone-operating-terror-operative/>
that the two journalists “were traveling in a vehicle with a terror
operative who was operating a drone.”

The Israeli army told *The Times of Israel* that its military aircraft
“identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft in a way that
put [Israeli army] forces at risk.”

Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari told
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/wael-dahdouh-palestinian-journalist-son-killed-israeli-strike-gaza-rcna132791>
NBC News that the strike was “unfortunate” and that an investigation was
ongoing.

NBC said that Thuraya, according to Al Jazeera’s managing editor, “was a
freelance drone operator, who was part of a convoy of journalists including
Hamza.”

The editor said that the journalists were not flying a drone at the time of
Israel’s strike.

Al Jazeera condemned
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/7/hamza-son-of-al-jazeeras-wael-dahdouh-killed-in-israeli-attack-in-gaza>
the attack on the journalists, stating that their assassinations reaffirm
“the need to take immediate necessary legal measures against the occupation
forces to ensure that there is no impunity.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists called for an independent investigation
<https://cpj.org/2024/01/cpj-calls-for-probe-into-whether-hamza-al-dahdouh-and-mustafa-thuraya-were-targeted-in-drone-strike/>
into their killing.

Six press freedom and human rights groups sent a letter
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/10/letter-president-joe-biden-re-protecting-journalists-and-press-freedom-israel-gaza>
to US President Joe Biden this week, demanding that his administration “act
immediately and decisively to promote the conditions for safe and
unrestricted reporting on the hostilities” in Gaza.

“More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the hostilities
than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” the
letter states, citing
<https://cpj.org/2023/12/israel-gaza-war-takes-record-toll-on-journalists/>
statistics by the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the letter’s
co-authors.
Meanwhile, Israel’s high court has rejected an appeal
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-top-court-rejects-foreign-media-appeal-for-journalists-access-to-gaza/>
by international media outlets to allow them independent access to the Gaza
Strip.
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