[News] Israeli attacks newly displaced one-fifth of Gaza's population

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-attacks-newly-displace-one-fifth-gazas-population>
Israeli attacks newly displaced one-fifth of Gaza's population

Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 14 May 2024
------------------------------

Al-Maghazi refugee camp in centrarl Gaza after an Israeli airstrike on 11
May.
APA images

Israel subjected Palestinians in closed-off Gaza to some of the most severe
attacks yet in recent days. The violence caused a new wave of mass
displacement among an already exhausted and traumatized population.

Around one-fifth of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been
displaced – yet again – over the past week, according to
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-165>
the UN.

Meanwhile, fuel shortages threaten health services and “drive a rise in
infectious diseases” due to limited access to sanitation facilities, the UN
said.

The charity Oxfam said
<https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/epidemic-risk-rising-rafah-invasion-compounds-lethal-cocktail-over-crowding-sewage>
on Monday that “Israeli attacks since October caused at least $210 million
worth of damage to Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure.”
The risk of epidemics is on the rise as the invasion of Rafah compounds the
“lethal cocktail of overcrowding, sewage and hunger,” Oxfam added.

“Oxfam staff in Gaza have described piles of human waste and rivers of
sewage in the streets, which people are having to jump between,” according
to the charity. “They also reported people having to drink dirty water and
children being bitten by insects swarming around the sewage.”
Crossings remain closed

Rafah crossing remained closed on Monday and there is no “safe and
logistically viable access to Kerem Shalom crossing,” the UN said. Those
two crossings were the hub of critically needed humanitarian operations in
Gaza and were closed by Israel last week
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinians-flee-rafah-crossings-remain-closed>
.

The Israeli military claimed
<https://twitter.com/cogatonline/status/1788495911103906261> that aid
supplies entered northern Gaza via Erez checkpoint on Thursday and Zikim
checkpoint on Sunday, and that 266,000 liters of fuel entered Gaza through
Kerem Shalom, also on Sunday.

“Although some fuel and food supplies have entered Gaza over the past two
days, aid supplies remain largely insufficient,” the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday.

“Prevailing conditions could aggravate the already catastrophic levels of
hunger faced by the population,” the UN office added, noting that efforts
to scale-up nutrition stabilization have been “reversed in Rafah” due to
Israel’s evacuation orders and military escalation.

Nearly 200 Palestinians were reported killed in Gaza between 9 and 13 May,
bringing to more than 35,000 the number of Palestinians killed in the
territory since 7 October. Another 78,800 have been injured and some 10,000
people are missing, including under the rubble, according to local
authorities in Gaza.

Five Israeli soldiers were reported killed in Gaza between 10 and 13 May,
bringing to 272 the number of soldiers killed in Gaza or along the boundary
since Israel’s ground offensive began in late October.

Intense fighting was reported around Gaza City in recent days.

On Friday, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6317> that Israel’s “random
killings” in the city’s southeastern Zaytoun neighborhood, one of the most
densely populated areas in Gaza, was aimed at forcing out its residents and
destroying Gaza City.

Israeli quadcopter drones fired on and killed civilians in Zaytoun and the
military attacked displaced people taking refuge in a school in the area,
“resulting in numerous casualties,” according to Euro-Med Monitor.

The group said that Israel was expanding its so-called buffer zones “to
strengthen its military position in the Netzarim axis” by which it controls
Palestinians’ movement between northern and southern Gaza.
Israel pounds Jabaliya

On Sunday <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TvfFeE0SiY>, Israeli tanks
rolled back into northern Gaza, which its military has already reduced to
ruins and where it claimed in January to have dismantled Hamas’ fighting
forces in the area.

Israel ordered people to evacuate in the northern Gaza areas of Jabaliya
and its refugee camp and Beit Lahiya on Saturday.
A Palestinian survivor said
<https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1789606358020407344> that the bodies
of more than 40 women and children were recovered from a residential
building leveled in an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahiya. The children’s
hands were still clasped to one another as their bodies were pulled from
the rubble, the man told Al Jazeera.

Palestinians in the area reported more than 100 airstrikes in Jabaliya over
the weekend.

“We thought the first days [of the war] were the worst, then we thought the
starvation was the worst, but this bombing is like nothing we’ve seen,”
Hossam Shabat, a journalist in northern Gaza, said
<https://twitter.com/HossamShabat/status/1789767128796594390> on Sunday.
On Monday, Israeli forces besieged UNRWA schools east of Jabaliya refugee
camp, according to <https://twitter.com/pchrgaza/status/1789962230777119176>
the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Thousands of people had sought
shelter at the schools, administered by the UN agency for Palestine
refugees, after being displaced from other areas of northern Gaza.

Israeli tanks at the schools’ gates fired artillery shells and “Israeli
quadcopter drones were firing at anyone moving,” according to the rights
group.

“Displaced people were forced to leave the schools amid heavy gunfire and a
number of them were arrested.”

At least 20 Palestinians were killed in the area and several people were
reported to be trapped under the rubble of a home targeted in airstrikes in
Jabaliya.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society published a video showing Ali Khalil,
one of its volunteer paramedics, breaking down from grief after the bodies
of his grandchildren were brought to one of the humanitarian group’s
medical points in Jabaliya:
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said on Sunday that its
fighters had confronted enemy forces in Zaytoun near Gaza City, hit Merkava
tanks east of Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza and fired rockets
towards Israel from the Jabaliya area. Rafah

The Qassam Brigades also said that it had targeted Israeli ground forces
near Rafah crossing in southern Gaza. After seizing control of it last
week, Israel has turned Rafah crossing – which before the current war was
the main point of exit and entry for people in and out of Gaza – into a
military base:
The Egyptian group Sinai for Human Rights said that truck drivers
transporting aid reported that large quantities of food had spoiled while
waiting to offload in southern Gaza.

Israeli authorities said
<https://twitter.com/cogatonline/status/1789463391574151667> that rockets
fired from Rafah on Friday night landed in Bir al-Saba
<https://www.zochrot.org/publication_articles/view/49869/en?Remembering_Bir_alSaba>,
the cosmopolitan desert city purged of its Palestinian residents in 1948
and now known as Beersheva in Hebrew.

Israel ordered neighborhoods around eastern Rafah evacuated last week and
some 360,000 Palestinians had fled the area as of Monday, according to
UNRWA.

But many Palestinians in Rafah displaced from other areas of Gaza have no
means of leaving
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-desperate-flee-rafah-israelis-bear-down-2024-05-13/>
and now lack access to health care and humanitarian aid.

Philippe Lazzarini, the director of UNRWA, said
<https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1789409555761246698> that most
people in Gaza “have moved multiple times: on average once a month,”
desperately seeking “safety that they never found.”

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate
housing, said
<https://twitter.com/adequatehousing/status/1789431448065262024> that “in
over 30 years of studying and engaging with communities affected by
displacement, I have never seen a shocking atrocity like this.”

Both Israeli and US officials have characterized the offensive in Rafah as
a more limited operation. But the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said
<https://twitter.com/pchrgaza/status/1789689443554599262> on Sunday that
what is happening there “is a large-scale military attack.”

The group said that at least 116 Palestinians, including 22 women and 38
children, had been killed since the beginning of Israel’s ground offensive
in Rafah seven days earlier. Others had gone missing, PCHR said.

The group added that Israel had increased its indiscriminate attacks in
areas that had not been ordered to evacuate, with more than 50 Palestinians
killed in the middle area of Gaza, including a doctor and his son.
“Israel is continuing its genocidal military campaign against the
Palestinian people in Gaza unabated,” PCHR said.

“We reiterate our call for an immediate ceasefire. ُThis genocide must end
now.”
UN workers killed

A 53-year-old employee of UNRWA was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir
al-Balah, central Gaza, on Monday after having fled Rafah.

His death brings to 189 the number of UNRWA staff killed in Gaza since 7
October.

A United Nations Safety and Security staff member was killed
<https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2024-05-13/statement-attributable-the-spokesperson-for-the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-security-incident-gaza>
and another severely injured when their UN vehicle came under fire while
traveling to the European Gaza Hospital near Khan Younis, north of Rafah,
on Monday morning.

Medical staff at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah received an Israeli
evacuation order, the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians reported
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/medical-aid-palestinians-map-update-hospital-situation-gaza-13-may-2024-1240>
on Monday.

“This was one of the last remaining hospitals in Rafah and only had around
16 beds available for the more than one million people sheltering” in the
area, MAP said.

“If the hospital is forced out of action, this could mean the complete
collapse of the limited healthcare system in Rafah.”

The charity added that the European Gaza Hospital had run out of fuel as a
result of Israel closing the crossings in southern Gaza, and after Israel
cut off the supply of electricity to the territory in early October.

The closure of Rafah crossing “continues to mean that patients cannot be
medically evacuated,” Medical Aid for Palestinians said. “We expect this to
result in more unnecessary patient deaths as they are not able to access
appropriate treatment in Gaza.”

Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/urgent-call-ceasefire-and-release-hostages-enar>
on Monday that the evacuation orders in Rafah cannot be reconciled with the
legally binding provisional measures ordered
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/world-court-rejects-ban-german-weapons-exports-israel>
by the International Court of Justice.

Those measures included demands that Israel ensure the unimpeded delivery
of humanitarian aid and basic services in Gaza.

On Friday, Turk said
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/comment-un-human-rights-chief-volker-turk-gaza-crossings>
he deplored “all hostile acts that jeopardize the entry and distribution of
critically needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

“The handful of land crossings into Gaza serve as lifelines for the supply
of food, medicine, fuel and other necessities that must be allowed to reach
the despairing and terrified population,” he added.

On Monday, video circulated on social media showing Israelis in the West
Bank vandalizing cargo on an aid truck that was heading to Gaza:
“This happened for hours, in the presence of Israeli forces who didn’t
intervene,” B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said
<https://twitter.com/btselem/status/1790041572446216270>.

B’Tselem added that “this flies in the face” of the International Court of
Justice orders.
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