Qatar calls for international probe into Israeli raids on Gaza hospitals
Qatar calls for international probe into Israeli raids on Gaza hospitals/node/2409586/middle-east
Qatar calls for international probe into Israeli raids on Gaza hospitals
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on November 15, 2023, reportedly shows Israeli soldiers carrying out operations inside Al-Shifa hospital, amid continuing battles betweeen Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (File/AFP)
Qatar calls for international probe into Israeli raids on Gaza hospitals
Israeli forces raided and then combed through Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, before withdrawing and redeploying around its outskirts, a journalist trapped inside the facility said
Updated 15 November 2023
AFP
DOHA: Qatar on Wednesday urged an international investigation into Israeli raids on medical facilities in the Gaza Strip, denouncing as a “war crime” Israel’s latest operation inside Al-Shifa hospital targeting Hamas.
The Qatari foreign ministry in a statement called for “an urgent international investigation” including by the United Nations to look into “the targeting of hospitals by the Israeli occupation army.”
Israeli forces raided and then combed through Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, before withdrawing and redeploying around its outskirts, a journalist trapped inside the facility told AFP.
Israel accuses Palestinian militants of using the compound for military purposes, which Hamas has denied.
Doha deemed the Israeli raid “a war crime and a blatant violation of international laws.”
The Gulf nation, which been leading mediation efforts toward a ceasefire and release of hostages, called on the “international community to take swift and decisive measures to hold Israel accountable, acting as a deterrent against further crimes targeting civilians.”
Qatari mediation efforts have so far led to the release of four out of around 240 hostages Israeli officials estimate were seized by Hamas militants in their attacks on October 7.
Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attacks, Israeli officials say.
In response Israel launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, killing 11,500 people, also mostly civilians, according to officials in the Hamas-run government.
Thirteen Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, WAFA says
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,800 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis
Updated 07 September 2024
Reuters
RAMALLAH: At least 13 Palestinians were killed and 15 wounded in Israeli strikes on a school sheltering refugees and a residential building in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA reported early on Saturday.
At least eight of the dead were in refugee tents at Halima Al-Sa’diyya School in Jabalia in northern Gaza, WAFA said.
The Israeli army said in a statement it had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control center... embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Halima Al-Sa’diyya’ School in the northern Gaza Strip.”
In a separate incident, five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered Oct. 7 last year when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,800 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people across the Gaza Strip are internally displaced, including some uprooted more than 10 times.
UN investigator accuses Israel of a ‘starvation campaign’ in Gaza that Netanyahu denies
UN investigator Michael Fakhri: “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza”
Updated 07 September 2024
AP
UNITED NATIONS: The UN independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, an allegation that Israel vehemently denies.
In a report this week, investigator Michael Fakhri claimed it began two days after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, when Israel’s military offensive in response blocked all food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were “outrageously false.”
“A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything — it doesn’t make it true,” he said in a press conference Wednesday.
Palestinians are storming trucks loaded with humanitarian aid brought in through a new U.S.-built pier, in the central Gaza Strip, May 18, 2024. (AP)
Following intense international pressure — especially from close ally the United States — Netanyahu’s government gradually has opened several border crossings for tightly controlled deliveries. Fakhri said limited aid initially went mostly to southern and central Gaza, not to the north where Israel had ordered Palestinians to go.
A professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Fakhri was appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as the investigator, or special rapporteur, on the right to food and assumed the role in 2020.
“By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 percent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger,” Fakhri said. “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”
Fakhri, who teaches law courses on human rights, food law and development, made the allegations in a report to the UN General Assembly circulated Thursday.
This image grab from an AFPTV video shows Palestinians running toward parachutes attached to food parcels, air-dropped from US aircrafts on a beach in the Gaza Strip on March 2, 2024. (AFP)
He claims it goes back 76 years to Israeli’s independence and its continuous dislocation of Palestinians. Since then, he accused Israel of deploying “the full range of techniques of hunger and starvation against the Palestinians, perfecting the degree of control, suffering and death that it can cause through food systems.”
Since the war in Gaza began, Fakhri said he has received direct reports of the destruction of the territory’s food system, including farmland and fishing, which also has been documented and recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others.
“Israel then used humanitarian aid as a political and military weapon to harm and kill the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he claimed.
Israel insists it no longer places restrictions on the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, including food.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Netanyahu cited figures from COGAT, Israel’s military body overseeing aid entry into Gaza, that 700,000 tons of food items had been allowed into Gaza since the war began 11 months ago.
Nearly half of that food aid in recent months has been brought in by the private sector for sale in Gaza’s markets, according to COGAT figures. However, many Palestinians in Gaza say they struggle to afford enough food for their families.
Israel allows trucks of aid through two small crossings in the north and one main crossing in the south, Kerem Shalom. However, since Israel’s invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May, the UN and other aid agencies say they struggle to reach the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom to retrieve the aid for free distribution because Israel’s military operations make it too dangerous.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “beyond catastrophic,” with more than 1 million Palestinians not receiving any food rations in August and a 35 percent drop in people getting daily cooked meals.
The UN humanitarian office attributed the sharp reduction in cooked meals partly to multiple evacuation orders from Israeli security forces that forced at least 70 of 130 kitchens to either suspend or relocate their operations, he said Thursday. The UN’s humanitarian partners also lacked sufficient food supplies to meet requirements for the second straight month in central and southern Gaza, Dujarric added.
He said critical shortages of supplies in Gaza are stem from hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, and Israeli obstacles and access limitations.
German minister says ‘purely military approach’ not the solution in Gaza
Baerbock on Friday called for “a ceasefire now” and also spoke out against hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank, where the army on Aug. 28 launched a raid in multiple cities that has left at least 36 dead
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP
TEL AVIV: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday that a military approach alone was not the solution to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“The past weekend has dramatically demonstrated that a purely military approach is no solution to the situation in Gaza,” she said after meeting with her Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, in the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
Baerbock was referring to the recovery of six more dead hostages announced on Sunday.
Their deaths have ramped up domestic pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a deal with Hamas for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, though the two sides have traded blame over stalled talks this week.
FASTFACT
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for ‘a ceasefire now’ and also spoke out against hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank.
Baerbock on Friday called for “a ceasefire now” and also spoke out against hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank, where the army on Aug. 28 launched a raid in multiple cities that has left at least 36 dead.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, said in a post on X on Friday that he had asked Netanyahu to make the defeat of Hamas “and other terrorist organizations” in the West Bank one of the aims of the war in Gaza.
“When members of the Israeli government themselves call for the same approach in the West Bank as in Gaza, that is precisely what acutely endangers Israel’s security,” Baerbock said.
Her comments came one day after German police shot dead a man who opened fire on them in what they treated as a foiled “terrorist attack” on Munich’s Israeli Consulate on the anniversary of the 1972 Olympic Games killings.
Baerbock said she had “expressed my deepest and full solidarity” with Katz.
“This is a terrible situation. This is a terrible moment for us, especially on the very anniversary of Munich 1972,” she said.
Authorities in Vienna said investigators seized electronic devices at the home of the young Austrian who fired shots near the Munich consulate, but found no weapons or Daesh propaganda material.
Jordanian Foreign Ministry condemns killing of US-Turkish citizen during West Bank protests
26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi shot in the head on Friday in Nablus area while protesting against expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied West Bank
Updated 06 September 2024
Arab News
AMMAN: Jordan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the killing on Friday of a dual US-Turkish citizen while she was taking part in a protest against the expansion of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The ministry described the incident as a “horrible crime for which those involved must face consequences,” the Jordan News Agency reported.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was shot in the head in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank while protesting. Her death was confirmed by the US State Department and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The latter said she was killed by Israeli soldiers and described the incident as a “murder carried out by the Netanyahu government.”
Ambassador Sufian Qudah, a spokesperson for Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, said the killing was a “continuation of the crimes committed by the occupation and its ongoing violations against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.”
It “reflects the extreme policies of the Israeli government, which feed into extremism and hatred and encourage settlers to target the killing of Palestinians and anyone who supports the Palestinian people in their struggle for their rightful state,” he added.
Qudah urged the international community to live up to its moral and legal obligations by compelling Israel to halt its aggression in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and to hold accountable those who commit crimes against Palestinian civilians.
Israeli strikes kill 12 Palestinians in Gaza as polio vaccination resumes
In Nuseirat, one of territory’s eight historic refugee camps, an Israeli strike killed two women and two children
Nearly 90 percent of the Gaza ceasefire deal is agreed, but critical issues remain where there are gaps
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Friday, medics said, as health officials resumed vaccination of tens of thousands more children in the enclave against polio.
In Nuseirat, one of the territory’s eight historic refugee camps, an Israeli strike killed two women and two children, while eight other people were killed in two other strikes in Gaza City, the medics said.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces battled Hamas-led fighters in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, where residents said tanks have been operating for over a week, in eastern Khan Younis, and in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, where residents said Israeli forces blew up several houses.
Eleven months into the war, diplomacy has so far failed to conclude a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.
The two warring sides continued to blame one another for failing efforts by mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the United States. The US is preparing to present a new ceasefire proposal to hammer out differences, but prospects of a breakthrough remain dim as gaps between the sides remain large.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that it was incumbent on both Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to say yes on remaining issues to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal.
Nearly 90 percent of the Gaza ceasefire deal is agreed, but critical issues remain where there are gaps, including the issue of the so-called Philadelphi corridor on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, Blinken said at a press briefing. Israel said it wouldn’t leave the corridor and Hamas says an agreement isn’t possible unless they did.
Meanwhile, residents of Khan Younis and displaced families from Rafah, continued to crowd medical facilities, bringing their children to get the polio vaccines. The campaign was launched after the discovery of a case of a one-year-old baby who was partially paralyzed.
POLIO CAMPAIGN TO MOVE TO NORTHERN GAZA
This was the first known case of the disease in Gaza — one of the world’s most densely populated places — in 25 years. It re-emerged as Gaza’s health system has virtually collapsed and many hospitals have been knocked out of action due to the war.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said at least 160,000 children received the drops in southern Gaza areas on Thursday where medical staffers began the second stage of the campaign, benefiting from an Israeli and Hamas agreement on limited pauses in the fighting.
“Since 1 September @UNRWA & partners have vaccinated nearly 355,000 children against #polio in #Gaza middle & southern areas,” UNRWA said in a post on X.
“In the next few days, we’ll continue rolling out the polio vaccination campaign aiming to reach around 640,000 children under 10 with this critical vaccine,” it added.
The campaign will move on Sunday to the northern Gaza Strip, which has been the focus of the major Israeli military offensive in the past 11 months. According to the World Health Organization, a second round of vaccination would be required four weeks after the first round.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,800 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.