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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-blocking-aid-fuel-gaza-hospitals">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel blocking aid, fuel to Gaza hospitals</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Naaman Omar</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">January 12, 2024<br></div>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-01/110124_dair_el-balah_naa_1_00_13.jpg?itok=PI781AqY×tamp=1705090362" width="391" height="257" alt="Mourners, some of them in red paramedic uniforms, pray over three bodies, wrapped in white shrouds." title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
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<p>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.</p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Israel killed more than 150 Palestinians and continued to block aid to hospitals in the Gaza Strip while theatrically <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-counter-genocide-accusations-world-court-2024-01-12/">rejecting</a> South Africa’s charges of genocide at the Hague on Friday.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israel committed 13
massacres against Palestinians between Thursday and Friday alone.</p>
<p>The Palestinian death toll has risen to 23,706 since 7 October, with more than 60,000 injured, the ministry reported on Friday.</p>
<p>Thousands more are still missing or buried under the rubble.</p>
<p>All internet and telephone systems have been destroyed by Israeli
attacks, plunging Gaza into a communications blackout once again, <a href="https://twitter.com/Paltelco/status/1745813735627727091">according</a> to the service provider Paltel.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the head of Human Rights Watch stated Israel must abide by the International Court of Justice’s <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/genocide-case-against-israel-opens-world-court">ruling</a>, which will likely be announced at the end of this month.</p>
<p>“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 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/human-rights-watch-says-world-must-ensure-israel-abides-by-any-un-court-ruling-2024-01-11/">told Reuters</a>.
</p>
The group released its “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024">World Report</a>” on Thursday, which documents global human rights violations over the past year.
<p>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.</p>
<p>“In the throes of this war, what we have seen is consistent, flagrant
violations of international humanitarian law,” Hassan told Reuters.</p>
<h2>Israel “systematically” blocking aid</h2>
<p>Israel is methodically blocking aid convoys headed for hospitals in
northern Gaza, or slowing them down using lengthy inspections, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/un-decries-systematic-blocking-of-aid-to-north-gaza-hospitals/">according</a> to United Nations aid agencies.
</p>
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.
<p>He explained that Israel had only partially approved three out of 21 aid missions requested by his agency.</p>
<p>“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 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/un-deplores-israels-systematic-refusal-grant-access-north-gaza-2024-01-12/">said</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“We will simply be unable to unload [the trucks],” De Domenico <a href="https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k10/k10ru22tbe">told reporters</a> on Friday.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<h2>Paramedics killed</h2>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/awni-khattab">Awni Khattab</a>,
the director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s ambulance center,
was released on Friday after more than 50 days in Israeli detention.</p>
<p>The medical association posted video of Khattab’s emotional reunion with his family members and colleagues:
</p>
Khattab had been <a href="https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/112023/PRCS%20Statement%2027112023.pdf">abducted</a> by Israeli soldiers on 22 November with several other colleagues <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-attacks-gaza-hospital-five-times-one-week">while he was transferring injured patients</a> from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip.
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-salmiya">Muhammad Abu Salmiya</a>, the head of al-Shifa hospital, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-war-takes-medical-apartheid-new-extreme/43466">has still not been released</a> from Israeli detention, along with approximately 100 other health care workers.</p>
<p>This week, PRCS held funerals for four of its paramedic team members <a href="https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1745503706806657222">killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike</a> on their ambulance in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>Two patients inside the ambulance were also killed.
</p>
The paramedics “were martyred while wearing the Red Crescent emblem,
which is supposed to be protected according to international law,” PRCS <a href="https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1745129136555733331">stated</a>.
<p>“Our colleagues were intentionally targeted while inside an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem.”
</p>
<h2>Inside al-Aqsa hospital</h2>
<p>The United Nations’ human rights office <a href="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">stated</a>
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.”</p>
<p>The UN added that four separate strikes on Deir al-Balah since the beginning of January have killed more than 40 Palestinians.</p>
<p>“It is clear – as the UN has repeatedly stressed – that there is no safe place in Gaza,” the agency said.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>On Friday, the hospital lost power as a result of a lack of fuel –
putting patients, including infants in incubators, at extreme risk.
</p>
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, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67929397">told the BBC</a>
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.
<p>Many of the patients are arriving with “horrific, traumatic injuries,” according to an emergency doctor.</p>
<p>One of the physicians, obstetrician Deborah Harrington, said there
was little to no pain relief medication available while treating injured
patients.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“I won’t be able to wipe that memory and the smell, being treated on the floor,” Harrington said.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Journalists killed</h2>
<p>Israel has killed more than 100 journalists and media workers in Gaza since 7 October.
</p>
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.
<p>Wael al-Dahdouh’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/1/to-kill-a-family-the-loss-of-wael-dahdouhs-family-to-israeli-bombs">wife and two children</a> were killed in an Israeli airstrike in late October; and his cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/al-jazeera-condemns-israeli-forces-killing-of-cameraman-samer-abu-daqqa">killed in a drone strike</a> last month.
</p>
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.
<p>The Israeli military <a href="https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1745158780852048186">claimed</a> that al-Dahdouh was an operative with Islamic Jihad and that Thuraya was active with Hamas.</p>
<p>Israel’s army <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-al-jazeera-journalists-were-killed-in-car-with-drone-operating-terror-operative/">claimed</a> that the two journalists “were traveling in a vehicle with a terror operative who was operating a drone.”</p>
<p>The Israeli army told <em>The Times of Israel</em> that its military
aircraft “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft in a
way that put [Israeli army] forces at risk.”</p>
<p>Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/wael-dahdouh-palestinian-journalist-son-killed-israeli-strike-gaza-rcna132791">told</a> NBC News that the strike was “unfortunate” and that an investigation was ongoing.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>The editor said that the journalists were not flying a drone at the time of Israel’s strike.</p>
<p>Al Jazeera <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/7/hamza-son-of-al-jazeeras-wael-dahdouh-killed-in-israeli-attack-in-gaza">condemned</a>
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.”
</p>
The Committee to Protect Journalists <a href="https://cpj.org/2024/01/cpj-calls-for-probe-into-whether-hamza-al-dahdouh-and-mustafa-thuraya-were-targeted-in-drone-strike/">called for an independent investigation</a> into their killing.
<p>Six press freedom and human rights groups <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/10/letter-president-joe-biden-re-protecting-journalists-and-press-freedom-israel-gaza">sent a letter</a>
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.</p>
<p>“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, <a href="https://cpj.org/2023/12/israel-gaza-war-takes-record-toll-on-journalists/">citing</a> statistics by the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the letter’s co-authors.
</p>
Meanwhile, Israel’s high court has <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-top-court-rejects-foreign-media-appeal-for-journalists-access-to-gaza/">rejected an appeal</a> by international media outlets to allow them independent access to the Gaza Strip. <h3>
<span></span></h3><br>
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