Rights and Accountability 17 October 2024
Children stand atop the charred remains of a tent shelter two days after an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah engulfed the area in flames, burning people alive, 16 October 2024.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 16 October livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
In Gaza, Israeli forces are continuing to massacre, bomb and starve the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the north while carrying out horrific slaughters in the central areas.
In the northern Gaza Strip, Israel has been leveling neighborhoods in Jabaliya and continuing to surround and attack homes, shelters and hospitals.
According to reporters and human rights organizations, the Israeli army has been sending automated vehicles and robots laden with explosives to destroy entire buildings.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor states that “Israel’s army has completely cut off the northern Gaza governorate from Gaza City by deploying military vehicles, placing sand barriers and the rubble of destroyed homes, in addition to fire cover from drones.”“Using three different methods – aerial bombardment, booby-trapped robots and planting explosives in homes before blowing them up – the Israeli army has increased its operations to destroy homes and residential buildings in the areas of its incursion in northern Gaza.”
Muhannad Hadi, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, stated that since 1 October, “Israeli authorities have increasingly cut off northern Gaza from essential supplies. Erez and Erez West crossings have been kept closed, and no essentials have been allowed from the south. Three renewed orders have been issued – on 7, 9 and 12 October – directing people’s displacement.”
According to Israeli media, the Israeli army is implementing a plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza and turn it into a closed military zone.
The plan, conceived by retired Major General Giora Eiland and carried out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aims to push northern Gaza’s residents south of the Netzarim corridor, threatening starvation and execution for those who remain.
Euro-Med Monitor stated this week that nearly 400,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip are at risk of starvation, including approximately 200,000 who have been without food or water for nearly two weeks.
“After their limited food supplies ran out, dozens of Palestinians trapped in the Jabaliya refugee camp were forced to head to the main food supply center of the [UN agency for Palestine refugees] on Monday morning in order to secure food for their families,” the rights group reported.
“However, the Israeli army targeted them with shells and quadcopter drones, killing 10 people and injuring at least 40 more. Many of the victims are still lying in the streets and cannot be taken to the hospital due to the threat of further Israeli violence.”
Israel said that it allowed the entry of 30 flour trucks into the North Gaza governorate on Monday, through the Erez crossing.
But the Gaza government media office admonished this token flour delivery as a public relations move as Israel systematically starves Gaza and tightens the siege.
“What is happening in the northern Gaza Strip is actual genocide and ethnic cleansing,” the media office said on Monday, “and the total destruction of homes, residential neighborhoods, streets, roads, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques and all vital sectors, which comes within the framework of the American-Israeli occupation plan for displacement, which is the largest and most dangerous American-Israeli occupation plan in the 21st century.”
Meanwhile, the UN’s health cluster says that all three hospitals in north Gaza – Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and the Indonesian Hospital – “are operating at minimum capacity amid dire shortages of fuel, blood units, trauma disposables, medications for patients with non-communicable diseases and the ongoing military activities nearby.”The Palestinian ministry of health in Gaza stated over the weekend that dead and injured people remained in the streets and under the rubble where ambulance crews could not reach them.
The ministry added that the Israeli army has prevented the entry of blood units from the southern Gaza Strip to hospitals in the north.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital courtyard massacre
In Gaza City, journalist Motassem Dalloul reported on a massacre in the Zaytoun neighborhood on Tuesday.
In central Gaza, Israel carried out several massacres on school shelters and tents of displaced people.On Sunday, the Israeli army bombed the Mufti school in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 22 and injuring 80.
Another strike on Nuseirat early Tuesday morning killed at least five Palestinians.
Israel bombed the tents of displaced Palestinians inside the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital courtyard early Monday morning, killing at least four and injuring dozens.In images and photos that were circulated worldwide, flames engulfed the tent shelters, burning people alive.
Shaaban al-Dalou, 19, was killed alongside his mother.He had survived an Israeli airstrike earlier this month and was recovering from his injuries. He was still hooked up to an intravenous drip.
Our contributor Abubaker Abed reported that al-Dalou was a freshman at the al-Azhar University of Gaza, studying software engineering.“Israel destroyed his home and his university and immolated him yesterday at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after forcibly displacing him earlier last year,” Abed stated.
The Gaza government media office stated on Monday that this was the seventh attack on the tents inside the hospital’s courtyard since January.
A surgeon, Dr. Muhammad Tahir, told Al Jazeera that he and his overwhelmed team were already dealing with another mass casualty incident – the Israeli shelling of a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat – when victims from the hospital attack came streaming in.
“We were inundated. We had women, men, children as young as one year of age dying in front of our eyes,” Tahir told Al Jazeera.
He added that patients came in with burns on up to 80 percent of their bodies, many of whom won’t survive.
“Patients with significant high percentage burns, unfortunately, their fate is sealed. They won’t even make it to the ICU. They will die,” the doctor said.
“It’s a horror show here. Honestly, sometimes I feel like this is not real life – that this can go on and this degree of suffering is allowed to happen in this world.”
And Israel killed yet another journalist in Gaza this week. Ayman Ruwaished, who was a photojournalist for Al-Aqsa TV, is the 177th media worker to be killed over the last 12 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, according to the government media office.
Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian teen twice
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces invaded Jenin city and the Jenin refugee camp yet again this week, in an 8-hour invasion on Monday in which the army killed a child and a young man and injured four people, according to the Wafa news agency.
Defense for Children International - Palestine reported that Rayan Ibrahim Hasan Al-Sayed, 14, was shot twice by an Israeli soldier positioned inside a heavily armored Israeli military vehicle from a distance of about 20 meters (66 feet) away on Monday morning near the entrance to the Old City of Jenin.
Rayan was allegedly throwing stones toward heavily armored Israeli military vehicles driving through the main street when one of the vehicles stopped and a soldier inside shot him once on the left side of his chest and then again in the neck, Defense for Children International - Palestine added.
“Several young Palestinians transported Rayan in a private car to al-Razi Hospital in Jenin. He was immediately taken into surgery to attempt to control the bleeding in his lungs, but doctors pronounced him dead around 1:45 pm.”
The Israeli army returned on Tuesday, Wafa reported, again invading the camp and Jenin city flanked by bulldozers, surveillance drones and undercover Israeli forces.
Finally, we wanted to share this video of our Gaza-based contributor Abubaker Abed, talking about his dream of being back inside a football stadium, watching and commenting on the players and the beautiful game.
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