Rights and Accountability 5 December 2025
Relatives of journalist Mahmoud Wadi, who was targeted and killed in an Israeli drone strike, mourned over his body at Nasser Medical Complex, Khan Younis, 2 December.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 4 December livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
The Israeli army continues to kill and injure Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, in spite of the 10 October so-called ceasefire.
Sniper fire, tank shelling, drone strikes and aerial attacks are routine and incessant, especially in areas east of the vague and invisible yellow line demarcated by Israel.
The United Nations’ humanitarian office stated on 27 November that in the area beyond the so-called yellow line, which comprises more than 50 percent of the Gaza Strip, “daily detonations of residential buildings continue to be reported and access to humanitarian assets, public infrastructure and agricultural land remains restricted or altogether barred.”
“Access to the sea remains prohibited,” the UN added.
The UN’s children’s fund UNICEF stated on 21 November that at least 67 children have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect, an average of nearly two children killed per day, and dozens more injured.On Wednesday, 3 December, at least five Palestinians, including two children, were killed by an Israeli drone strike on tents housing displaced people in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis.
This footage by Mahmoud Bassam shows tent shelters on fire as people rush to rescue those trapped in the flames.
Also on Wednesday, the Wafa news agency reported that a Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli fire in al-Zaytoun, a neighborhood of Gaza City.
Israeli army vehicles were reported opening fire in the eastern part of al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least one person.On 29 November, an Israeli quadcopter drone targeted and killed two young boys, 9-year-old Fadi Abu Asi and his 10-year-old brother Jumaa Abu Asi, in the Bani Suheila neighborhood of Khan Younis.
The boys were reportedly gathering firewood to sell in order to buy food as well as medical supplies for their disabled father.
In a video report by journalists Doaa Mohammad and Samer Alboji, the boys’ father says they had eaten breakfast and gone into town to earn a few shekels before his checkup the next day, when the drone targeted them.
CNN said that he was “waiting for them to return so he could set the table, when nearby residents rushed to his shelter saying two kids had been targeted and killed by Israeli troops.”
“’Are they my children?’ he recalled asking. An agonizing wait ensued, as he went to identify the bodies. ‘I removed the shroud and hugged them. My little Juju’s head was blown off; God rest his soul … His arms were severed and parts of his torso were gone,’ he said. ‘Fadi’s right hand and left leg were cut off,’” he added, according to CNN.
The Israeli army admitted it had carried out the strike, calling the small children “two suspects who crossed the yellow line, conducted suspicious activities on the ground, and approached IDF [Israeli military] troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them.”
“Following the identification, the Israeli Air Force eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat,” the army continued.
In the week before, on 22 November, Israel carried out a series of attacks across Gaza, killing more than 20 Palestinians. Footage from Drop Site’s Abd Sabbah shows the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a busy Gaza City intersection that killed five people.
The Israeli army also attacked homes and shelters in Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat, in central Gaza.Reporter Musab Al-Shareef filmed a residential building that erupted on fire after an Israeli airstrike on the Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City. The attack killed at least four Palestinians.
On 30 November, the Gaza government media office stated that over the 50 days since the ceasefire had come into effect, Israel had committed more than 590 separate violations, killing more than 350 Palestinians, and injuring at least 900.The media office stated that these violations include 164 direct shooting incidents targeting civilians, homes, residential neighborhoods, and displaced persons’ tents; 25 incursions by occupation vehicles into residential and agricultural areas, crossing the temporary yellow line; 280 shelling and bombardment operations by land, air, and artillery; and 118 demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure.
Malnutrition as medical facilities remain stretched
Israel’s blockade of essential humanitarian aid, food, fuel, medicine, medical supplies and infrastructure and construction materials remains firmly in place as Palestinians struggle to get their basic needs met during the harsh winter months.
The UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, stated this week that Israel is still blocking trucks full of food and relief supplies, including shelter materials and blankets, enough to meet Gaza’s needs for three full months.
UNICEF stated over the past week that high levels of malnutrition continue to endanger the lives and wellbeing of children in the Gaza Strip, compounded by the onset of winter weather accelerating the spread of disease and increasing the risk of death among the most vulnerable children.The agency’s director Catherine Russell said on 28 November that despite some progress, “thousands of children under the age of five remain acutely malnourished in Gaza, while many more lack proper shelter, sanitation and protection against winter.”
More food supplies have entered Gaza in recent weeks, “driving down market prices and improving families’ access to food. However, many essential items, particularly animal-source foods, remain unavailable or unaffordable for most,” UNICEF added.
Meanwhile, healthcare workers in Gaza are reporting that the ongoing shortages of medicine and medical equipment are entrenching the collapse of what’s left of the healthcare system.
“Israel’s restrictions on aid entry mean hospitals remain overstretched with critically injured and malnourished patients, and medical supplies have still not meaningfully increased since the start of the ceasefire agreement,” stated the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
“Less than 5 percent of the aid offloaded from trucks in Gaza has been medical supplies, despite the immense needs faced by hospitals following two years of Israel’s genocide,” the group stated on 27 November.
Staff at three hospitals supported by MAP report facing severe shortages in essential drugs and supplies, including intravenous fluids, anesthesia medications, gauze, and vital drugs for chronic conditions. This includes fundamental items required to keep emergency and surgical services functioning, the group added.
Alaa Al Shurafa, MAP’s medical supervisor at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, said, “There has been no real increase in medical aid since the ceasefire, and the situation has not improved at all.”
Nasser Medical Complex, “the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza, has 42 essential medical items at zero stock and 43 more nearly depleted,” MAP warned.
After more than two years of genocide and repeated, deliberate attacks on every single medical facility, there are still no fully functioning hospitals in Gaza.
Reporter Samer Alboji filmed the conditions inside a field clinic belonging to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis this past week, following torrential rains and flooding.
For pregnant and breastfeeding women and their babies, the health crisis remains critical.
Writing for The Electronic Intifada, Farah Samer Zaina spoke to Dr. Sarah Zayn El-Dein, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Al-Sahaba Medical Complex in Gaza City, who described physical weakness and malnutrition in pregnant women.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, the head of pediatrics and maternity at Nasser Medical Complex, reported this week that more than 85 percent of essential medicines are gone. Baby formula is still very hard to obtain, leaving premature and newborn babies at critical risk.Reporters Abdallah Al-Attar and Samer Alboji recorded Al-Farra on 27 November.
257 journalists killed
A journalist was killed in an Israeli drone strike on 2 December.
Videographer and drone camera operator Mahmoud Wadi was targeted by an Israeli quadcopter in central Khan Younis while he was on assignment. Reporter Abdallah Al-Attar filmed Mahmoud Wadi’s family and friends grieving over his body and talking about his dedication to journalism.
Wafa news agency reported that Wadi’s colleague, Muhammad Abdel Fattah Aslih, was injured in the same attack.The Gaza government media office said that with Mahmoud Wadi’s assassination, 257 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023.
UN report finds torture “de facto” Israeli policy
On 28 November, the United Nations Committee Against Torture issued its periodic report, finding credible evidence that Israel is operating a “de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment,” and that such practices have “gravely intensified” since 7 October 2023.
Adalah, a group campaigning for Palestinian citizens of Israel, along with other human rights organizations, stated, “The committee’s findings reaffirm what we and many others have documented throughout the past two years: Israel now operates a detention regime that systematically brutalizes Palestinians, strips them of basic legal protections, cuts them off from the outside world, and shields perpetrators from accountability.”The UN committee’s observation “that Israel maintains a policy marked by organized and widespread torture, collective punishment, incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance demands immediate international action,” Adalah added.
Another recent report from the United Nations’ Trade and Development agency found that Israel’s 26 months of genocide in Gaza and continual restrictions “have driven the economy of the occupied Palestinian territory into its most severe contraction on record, wiping out decades of development gains and deepening fiscal and social fragility.”
The unprecedented collapse, the report states, has “unfolded against a backdrop of long-standing economic and institutional fragility, with severe social and environmental consequences. Extensive damage to infrastructure, productive assets and public services has reversed decades of socioeconomic progress in the occupied Palestinian territory.”The resulting economic crisis, the UN agency says, “is among the 10 worst globally since 1960; while the situation in Gaza stands apart; being the most severe economic crisis on record.”
Some of the statistics that the agency released include a surge in inflation of 238 percent following restrictions on the entry of humanitarian and commercial goods in Gaza; unemployment at 80 percent, pushing the entire population of Gaza below the poverty line; and the loss of more than 69 years of human development.
Executions, raids in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers killed at least five Palestinians during raids and invasions this week.
Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian men on 27 November in the northern city of Jenin, in executions that were captured on video.
The footage showed Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmoud Qassem Abdullah and Yousef Ali Yousef Asasa emerging from a building with their arms raised and their shirts lifted, clearly indicating they were unarmed and posed no threat to the soldiers, according to Middle East Eye.
The soldiers then shot them at point-blank range.
Israeli forces withheld their bodies after the killings, and Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated the executions on social media.
Al Jazeera reported on 2 December that Israeli soldiers killed a 17-year-old child, Muhannad Tariq Muhammad al-Zughair, in the southern city of Hebron after the army claimed he was responsible for a car ramming attack.
An 18-year-old Palestinian, Raslan Asmar, was shot and killed near Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, after the army alleged he had stabbed two Israeli soldiers.
Israeli forces raided and vandalized the offices of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Ramallah and Hebron on Monday, 1 December, amidst “escalating Israeli targeting of Palestinian civil society and human rights defenders, most recently in the context of the olive harvest season,” according to the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights’ office.
UAWC is one of six leading Palestinian civil society organizations Israel designated as “terrorist” in 2021. The groups have cooperated closely with the International Criminal Court in its war crimes probe in the West Bank and Gaza.To date, no evidence has been provided to substantiate the accusations, the UN noted.
“Licensed under Palestinian law, UAWC has long provided support to Palestinian rural communities and Palestinian farmers facing settler violence and the risk of forced displacement. The attack on UAWC followed weeks of harassment and public incitement by Israeli settlers and leaders of settler groups, particularly citing UAWC’s work during the olive harvest season,” the UN added.
This year’s olive harvest season is the most violent on record, with 167 settler attacks affecting 87 Palestinian communities recorded as of mid-November.
In occupied Jerusalem on 23 November, Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir apparently ordered Israeli police to raid and disrupt a children’s performance at El-Hakawati theater, claiming that it lacked a permit.
The performance was entitled “Dreams Under the Olive Tree.”The Palestinian Authority’s culture ministry said, “This assault constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and conventions that guarantee the protection of cultural institutions, including the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage.”
Culture Minister Imad Hamdan stated that the theater “is a historic and national space embodying the collective memory of Jerusalem and reflecting the resilience of Palestinian artists in the face of Judaization attempts and land expropriation.”
He added that the raid was part of a “systematic policy aimed at silencing the Palestinian narrative and erasing the city’s Arab identity,” the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported.
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Gaza and around the world.
In Gaza, a small team of animators are working with displaced children to make art through stop-motion film as one way to process trauma and tell their own stories.
Haneen Koraz, Shorouq Darwish and Nour al-Jawad of the Animation Workshop project say that “animation here is not just a skill; it is a new language of self-expression, a free space for profound artistic exploration.”
This short film, called When she left, life bloomed, was made by displaced children between 9 and 12 years old from Nuseirat refugee camp and Deir al-Balah.
You can find out more about the Animation Workshop project on Instagram and Patreon.
Add new comment