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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Palestinians flee Rafah as crossings remain closed</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability">Rights and Accountability</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">11 May 2024</span></span> </p>
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<p>The site of a building bombarded by Israeli forces in Rafah, southern Gaza, 9 May.</p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Palestinians streamed out of Rafah as Israel pounded the area, issued <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-orders-people-more-areas-gazas-rafah-evacuate-2024-05-11/">additional evacuation orders</a> east of Gaza’s most southern city and truce negotiations ground to a halt.</p>
<p>On Saturday, Israel ordered displaced Palestinians in Jabaliya, in
northern Gaza where Hamas forces have reportedly regrouped, and nearly a
dozen other neighborhoods in the territory to immediately move.
</p>
Heavy fighting between Palestinian resistance fighters and Israeli ground forces were <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-164">reported</a> south of Gaza City and in eastern Rafah, including in the area of Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, in recent days.
<p>Israel <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/warning-srebrenica-gaza-israel-seizes-rafah-crossing">seized control of Rafah Crossing</a>
earlier in the week and closed Kerem Shalom on Monday after a deadly
rocket attack against troops positioned nearby the previous day.</p>
<p>“The closure of the crossings means no fuel. It means no trucks, no
generators, no water, no electricity and no movement of people or
goods,” Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian chief, said on Thursday.</p>
<p>“Civilians in Gaza are being starved and killed, and we are prevented from helping them,” he added.</p>
<p>“Nothing and no one had been allowed in or out of Gaza” over the past three days, Griffiths <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-exodus-rafah-continues-ceasefire-calls-grow">said</a> on Thursday.</p>
<p>United Nations aid agencies <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-aid-could-grind-halt-within-days-un-agencies-warn-2024-05-10/">warned</a>
that humanitarian operations will be forced to end in the coming days
if the crossings remain closed and that “this will result in children
dying,” according to Hamish Young, a coordinator with the UN children’s
fund UNICEF.</p>
<p>Only a trickle of supplies have come in through Erez checkpoint in northern Gaza while the southern crossings remain closed.</p>
<p>Israel allowed some 157,000 liters of fuel to enter Kerem Shalom on
Friday but no humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, had
been brought in through Gaza’s main crossing for goods since Sunday, a
senior official with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/11/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah#gaza-aid-border-crossing">told <em>The New York Times</em></a>.</p>
<p>That delivery of fuel to Gaza, which has been supply of electricity
since early October, “holds off that collapse temporarily, but leaders
of the aid effort say reserves remain dangerously low, and there is
still a deepening hunger crisis,” the paper <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/world/middleeast/un-officials-warn-that-aid-efforts-face-imminent-threat-from-lack-of-fuel.html">said</a>.</p>
<p>The closure of Rafah Crossing has prevented nearly 160 critical
patients, including people with cancer, from leaving Gaza to receive
medical treatment abroad, according to the government media office in
the territory.</p>
<p>Access to treatment outside of Gaza was severely restricted even
before the closing of Rafah this week. Just over half of all patients
with requests for medical evacuations from Gaza had been approved by
Israel, with four out of five of those who received approval making it
out of the territory, according to the UN.</p>
<p>Four Israeli soldiers were killed by an explosive device in the
Zaytoun neighborhood near Gaza City on Friday and two soldiers were
severely injured by missile fire in southern Gaza, the Tel Aviv daily <em>Haaretz</em> <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-10/ty-article-live/netanyahu-we-hope-to-overcome-disagreements-with-biden-but-we-will-protect-our-country/0000018f-6043-d8a0-a3df-7a635af70000">reported</a>.</p>
<p>Hamas said on Friday that it fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza
towards Bir al-Saba, known in Hebrew as Beersheva. Rockets fired from
Lebanon hit Kiryat Shmona along Israel’s northern front.</p>
<p>Negotiations between Israel and Hamas were back to square one after Israel rejected a Qatari-Egyptian proposal <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/05/07/us-israel-hamas-hostage-ceasefire-talks">apparently endorsed by the United States</a> and accepted by Hamas earlier this week, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tanks-encircle-eastern-half-rafah-2024-05-10/">according to</a> a statement from the faction.</p>
<p>Hamas said that it would consult with other Palestinian factions “to review our negotiation strategy.”</p>
<h2>Israel presses on in Rafah</h2>
<p>Israel’s security and war cabinets voted to press on with the
offensive in Rafah on Friday, despite the stated opposition of
Washington.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, two days after Israeli ground forces began to move into Rafah, US President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-says-bombs-us-has-paused-sending-israel-have-killed-civilians-2024-05-08/">said</a>
in an interview with CNN that “I made it clear that if they go into
Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically
to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that
problem.”</p>
<p>Washington has already paused a shipment of thousands of 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs destined for Israel.</p>
<p>“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs
and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said of
the heavy-duty, US-supplied munitions.</p>
<p>But US weapons worth billions of dollars are still in the pipeline for Israel, as Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-due-get-billions-dollars-more-us-weapons-despite-biden-pause-2024-05-09/">reports</a>.</p>
<p>These weapons include “joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS), which
convert dumb bombs into precision weapons; and tank rounds, mortars and
armored tactical vehicles,” according to Reuters, which cited Senator
Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.</p>
<p>The delay on the shipment of heavy bombs appears to be a warning to
the Israeli government and a move towards placating domestic disapproval
over the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s
military campaign in Gaza.</p>
<p>Likewise, the Biden administration’s supposed red line against a
major military offensive in Rafah seems calculated to make it seem like
it is opposed to Israel’s actions.</p>
<p>In reality, Israel appears to be following the incremental approach
recommended by the Pentagon for its Rafah offensive, which is resulting
in civilian deaths, mass displacement and the collapse of humanitarian
operations in the territory – the very outcomes the Biden administration
warned Israel to avoid.</p>
<h2>Palestinian children killed</h2>
<p>Two Palestinian boys were reported killed and 17 others injured in a
strike on a home in southern Rafah on 7 May, according to the UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Five Palestinians were
killed and 16 injured in a strike on a home in the Tel al-Sultan area in
western Rafah the following day.</p>
<p>Israeli strikes killed Palestinians elsewhere in Gaza during the week.</p>
<p>Seven Palestinians were reported killed and 14 others injured in a
strike on a home sheltering displaced persons in the Zaytoun
neighborhood in the Gaza City area on 7 May.</p>
<p>Thirteen Palestinians were killed and others injured when a dental
clinic was struck in Shawa Square east of Gaza City the following day.
Also on 8 May, 11 Palestinians, four of them children, were reported
killed in a strike in the vicinity of a mosque in the al-Tuffah
neighborhood east of Gaza City.</p>
<p>On Saturday, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that 37
Palestinians, the majority of them in the central area, were killed in
Israeli airstrikes overnight.</p>
<p>The health ministry said on Friday that 39 Palestsinians had been
killed and another 58 injured in six “massacres against families” in the
past 24 hours.</p>
<p>The ministry added that some 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in
Gaza since 7 October. The actual number of fatalities is likely much
higher, with many people still missing under the rubble of destroyed
buildings or their bodies laying in the streets in areas inaccessible to
civil defense crews.</p>
<p>The government media office in Gaza announced the discovery of a
third mass grave at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. The
latest discovery brings to seven the number of mass graves found at
Gaza’s hospitals, with three at al-Shifa, three at Nasser Medical
Complex in Khan Younis and one at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya,
northern Gaza.</p>
<p>More than 500 bodies have been recovered from those mass graves, according to the office.</p>
<h2>Palestinians flee Rafah</h2>
<p>The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) <a href="https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1789205573814141386">said</a>
on Saturday that an estimated 150,000 Palestsinians had fled Rafah
since Monday, many of them having already been forcibly displaced
multiple times.</p>
<p>People are “looking for safety where there’s none,” according to UNRWA.
</p>
The Israeli military <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-orders-people-more-areas-gazas-rafah-evacuate-2024-05-11/">estimated</a>
on Saturday that 300,000 Palestinians had moved to al-Mawasi, an
already overcrowded area lacking basic services that Israel has
unilaterally declared a “humanitarian zone.”
<p>More than a million Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in Gaza had been concentrated in Rafah before Israel <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/hamas-agrees-gaza-truce-israel-vows-move-rafah">issued evacuation orders</a> in the eastern part of the area on Monday.</p>
<p>People fleeing Rafah are paying hundreds of dollars in transportation
fees and some are setting up tents on the rubble of destroyed buildings
or in empty UNRWA schools in Khan Younis, according to the UN.
</p>
“Multiple informal displacement sites have emerged” in central Gaza, the
UN added. “These areas lack infrastructure and basic services needed to
support people’s access to food, water and health care.”
<p>“Fuel shortages continue to hinder the ability of aid actors to
address priority needs of [internally displaced persons], including
shelter, food, water, non-food and hygiene items, and sanitation
facilities,” the UN said.</p>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-05/100524_rafah_osh_0082.jpg?itok=1VgicMK7×tamp=1715412357" width="504" height="336" alt="" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
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<p>A camp for internally displaced people in Rafah, southern Gaza, along the border with Egypt, 9 May.</p><small>
<span>Omar Ashtawy</span>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>The lack of fuel will soon shut down the remaining hospitals and
other health facilities in Gaza, with a critical risk to the lives of
patients in intensive care units, “including newborns in neonatal ICUs,
trauma patients requiring emergency surgeries and pregnant women in need
of cesarean sections (C-sections),” the UN added.</p>
<p>The depletion of fuel stocks also puts the lives of kidney patients in immediate danger.</p>
<p>Around 1,500 patients who were receiving treatment for kidney failure
at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah are now “left with limited options that
are also subject to fuel availability,” the UN said, with limited
dialysis machines now installed at Nasser Medical Complex, recently
devastated by the Israeli military, and at al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir
al-Balah.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, eight bakeries in southern Gaza were forced to shut down
and four more will soon follow due to a lack of fuel and supplies. Four
bakeries currently operating in northern Gaza, where famine is
widespread after being cut off from aid for months, “have one week of
supplies available for bread production,” the UN said.</p>
<h2>Israel contravening World Court orders</h2>
<p>On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/07/gaza-israel-flouts-world-court-orders">said</a>
that “Israel is contravening the International Court of Justice’s
legally binding orders by obstructing the entry of lifesaving aid and
services into Gaza.”</p>
<p>“Despite children dying from starvation and famine in Gaza, the
Israeli authorities are still blocking aid critical for the survival of
Gaza’s population in defiance of the World Court,” said Omar Shakir, a
program director with Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>“With each day that Israeli authorities block lifesaving aid, more Palestinians are at risk of dying.”</p>
<p>The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, said there was a <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/world-court-orders-israel-halt-gaza-genocide">plausible risk of genocide</a>
in Gaza in late January and issued provisional measures that include
ordering Israel to allow the provision of humanitarian aid and basic
services.</p>
<p>The court issued <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240328-pre-01-00-en.pdf">additional provisional measures</a> to that effect again in April.</p>
<p>On Friday, South Africa <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240510-pre-02-00-en.pdf">filed an urgent request</a>
with the International Court of Justice asking it to issue new
provisional measures including that Israel “immediately withdraw and
cease its military offensive” against Rafah.</p>
<p>South Africa argued that the measures previously ordered by the court
were insufficient because of the extreme risk to humanitarian
operations and “the very survival of Palestinians in Gaza as a group”
posed by Israel’s assault on Rafah.</p>
<p>The Rafah offensive “is not only an escalation of the prevailing
situation, but gives rise to new facts that are causing irreparable harm
to the rights of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” according to South
Africa.</p>
<p>The International Criminal Court – a separate body that deals with
individuals rather than state responsibility – is also examining
Israel’s conduct in Gaza.</p>
<p>Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the court, has previously <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/iccs-karim-khan-centers-israelis-palestine-investigation">warned</a> Israel regarding the blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza.</p>
<p>Khan <a href="https://twitter.com/KarimKhanQC/status/1757081372680700206">said</a>
in February that “those who do not comply with the law should not
complain later when my office takes action pursuant to its mandate.”</p><br>
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