Rights and Accountability 31 May 2024
Israeli occupation forces carried out systematic massacres across the Gaza Strip this past week, from Jabaliya in the north to Nuseirat in the center to Rafah in the south.
On Sunday night, Israeli airstrikes targeted the Tal al-Sultan area in the northwest part of Rafah. Israel attacked the tents of internally displaced families who were told by the Israelis that it was a supposedly safe humanitarian zone.
Because of the high density of the tents in a relatively small area – which are built with cloth and found materials – and the lack of roads, firefighting equipment and water, a raging fire quickly spread through more than a dozen tents, burning people alive. At least 45 people were killed, and nearly 250 were injured in the attacks.
Our colleague Maureen Clare Murphy reported that Sunday’s deadly attack came less than three days after the International Court of Justice demanded an immediate halt to Israel’s military offensive in Rafah which, the court stated, “may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Murphy added that video and photographs that emerged from the Rafah massacre are “some of the worst we have seen in the past seven and [a] half months,” according to Al Mezan, a human rights group based in Gaza.
Those images were widely circulated around the world. They include Palestinians desperately attempting to recover charred bodies from the still-raging fire and a man holding up the limp body of a headless baby as sirens and survivors wail around him.
Javed Ali, director of emergency response in Gaza for International Medical Corps, gave this testimony of what he saw:
Here is a clip from a report on Al Jazeera following Sunday’s attacks: On Monday morning, Palestinians surveying the wreckage reported that those who survived the attacks are now again without shelter. They do not have access to water, sanitation or health services. The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza stated that “never before in history has such a large number of mass killing tools been amassed and employed together in front of the world as is happening now in Gaza, where the population is deprived of water, food, medicine, electricity, and fuel, crushing the infrastructure, destroying all institutions, disrupting sanitation, spreading epidemics, crushing the health system, implementing the siege, closing crossings, and preventing the entry of medical supplies and delegations.”I asked Dorotea Gucciardo of the Glia Project, who is in Rafah right now, to send us a report via voice message about Sunday’s massacre and how Israel has wrecked the ability of healthcare workers to respond appropriately to these catastrophic attacks. She sent this message to us on Monday:
Israel did not stop its airstrikes against Palestinians in Rafah over the next several days.On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that Israel attacked a residential building and artillery shelling hit homes in western Rafah. Another attack was reported in northern Rafah on Monday.
At dawn on Tuesday, seven Palestinians were killed in another bombing of displaced families tents in the Tal al-Sultan area, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
According to the group’s team in Gaza, “All victims were members of the Abu Jarad and Tanboura families. They had been forcibly displaced to the south after the Israeli army forced them to leave their homes in Gaza City and the Strip’s northern parts. However, they were targeted by Israeli aerial bombardment in their displacement tents.”
Euro-Med stated, “The new targeting shows Israel’s insistence on ignoring all international positions that denounced Sunday’s massacre. Israel continues to commit the most heinous crimes against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip with the intention of eradicating them, in flagrant and egregious violation of international law and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings.”
Yet another Israeli attack on Tuesday targeted the al-Mawasi area west of Rafah, where thousands of families have been internally displaced and are living in tents on the sand dunes. At least 21 people were killed.
The Associated Press released this video report on Tuesday:
Hind Khoudary, reporting for Al Jazeera, had more on the attack after the massacre on Tuesday: The Gaza government media office stated on Tuesday that the Israeli army’s attacks over a 48-hour period “confirms the occupation’s insistence on committing the crime of genocide with premeditation and deliberation.”The media office urged the International Criminal Court to pursue “war criminals” involved in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud stated on Tuesday that “Israeli tanks were pushing deeper into Rafah from two major axes – first, along the Philadelphi Corridor into the city center, and second, from the eastern part of Rafah city all the way down to an area known as the al-Awda traffic circle.”
He added, “Artillery shelling there has reached as far as the vicinity of the Kuwaiti Hospital, which has been pushed out of service all day. The field hospitals in western Rafah city, including the Indonesian Field Hospital, the Kuwaiti Field Hospital, and the Emirati Field Hospital, are also all out of service. They are pushed to relocate to the evacuation zone in western Khan Younis (al-Mawasi).”
Meanwhile, people are trying to find shelter anywhere they can. The United Nations reported this week that since 6 May, more than 945,000 people have been displaced from Rafah and 100,000 in northern Gaza.
Families who were in Rafah are now sheltering in the central areas.
Our contributor Abubaker Abed filed this report for us just before airtime on Wednesday:
Airstrikes pound northern Gaza
In northern Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 15 Palestinians in Jabaliya refugee camp on Sunday.
People used their bare hands to dig through the rubble of a residential building hit by Israeli airstrikes.
For more than two weeks, Israeli forces had been systematically targeting areas of Jabaliya, leaving mass destruction and devastation.Reporter Anas al-Sharif stated on Monday that occupation forces continued “to bulldoze the lands of the Faluja cemetery and destroy hundreds of homes and residential squares. The occupation forces target anyone who tries to move in the streets of the camp, and fire extensively at the Abu Sharkh roundabout and the Faluja neighborhood.”
On Tuesday, Israeli forces struck the Faluja area of Jabaliya refugee camp, injuring Palestinians who just started to try and return to the area after Israeli forces withdrew.One medic told Al Jazeera Arabic on Tuesday: “We, the paramedics and ambulance crews, are also targeted by armed drones. Minutes ago, artillery shells fell in the area, killing more people.”
Hospitals, clinics attacked
This week, more hospitals, clinics and field medical facilities have been targeted or have been forced out of service due to Israeli attacks.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza announced on Tuesday that both the Indonesian field hospital and the Tal al-Sultan clinic in Rafah have been put out of service, leaving only al-Helal al-Emirati maternity hospital struggling to survive and continue providing service to patients in the Rafah area.
The Indonesian field hospital was bombed by Israeli forces on Tuesday, causing damage to the hospital’s upper floors and trapping medical staff and patients inside the besieged facility.
This followed the attack on the Kuwaiti specialty hospital in Rafah, which was forced to shut down after an Israeli attack outside the gates of the facility, which killed two medical staff persons and wounded others.
Dr. Suhaib al-Hams of the Kuwaiti hospital announced on Monday, “Due to the enemy’s expansion of the military operation in Rafah governorate and the repeated and deliberate attacks on the hospital’s surroundings, the most recent of which was targeting the hospital gate, which led to the death of two staff working in the hospital, as well as the injury of five medical staff in a previous targeting, we announce that the Kuwaiti specialized hospital will be out of service.
“The working medical teams were transferred to the field hospital, which is being prepared in the al-Mawasi area,” he added.
Dr. Yipeng Ge, the Canadian physician who recently joined us on the livestream, tweeted on Tuesday that “the primary care clinic in Rafah that I worked at in February 2024, the Tal al-Sultan primary health care center, is no longer operational. The former clinic is currently being used as a morgue because there is nowhere else to place the increasing number of dead bodies.”
In the north, healthcare officials say there are no fully functioning hospitals left.Dr. Muhammad Salha, the acting director of al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, said that the medical facility continues to be under siege by Israeli forces. It was forced to stop operation last Friday, according to Doctors Without Borders, but as of Tuesday, 14 health workers remained trapped at the complex with immobile patients and dwindling food, water and medical supplies as the siege entered its tenth day.
UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, reported on Friday last week that due to the closure of the Rafah crossing and disruption of aid flow via Kerem Shalom crossing, its health centers had not received any medical supplies for the previous two weeks, “affecting medicine stocks especially antibiotics for children and anti-epileptic drugs, and rendering certain laboratory and dental items and vaccines completely out of stock.”Starvation accelerates
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated on Sunday that food security levels “have significantly declined as a result of the Israeli army’s ground operation in Rafah City, in the south of the Gaza Strip, which began on 7 May and was preceded by Israel’s blocking the entry of humanitarian aid trucks through the Rafah border crossing on 6 May.”
The group added that thousands of trucks “on the other side of the Rafah crossing have been at a standstill for weeks and are inaccessible to residents whose lives depend on them, due to Israel’s decision to starve the people of the Strip, close the crossings, and prevent the entry of aid.”
Photos and videos this week showed Egyptian truck drivers being forced to dump thousands of crates of spoiled eggs that were destined for Gaza as part of food aid packages.
One truck driver told Reuters that his goods had been loaded on his vehicle for a month, gradually spoiling in the sun. Some of the foodstuffs are being discarded, others sold off for cheap.“Apples, bananas, chicken and cheese, a lot of things have gone rotten, some stuff has been returned and is being sold for a quarter of its price. I’m sorry to say that the onions we’re carrying will at best be eaten by animals because of the worms in them,” he said.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor added in its statement that “only a small amount of very low-quality aid has been delivered via the United States-designed pier; the majority of this aid has not been distributed throughout the Strip. The dock is seemingly just an official tool used by the US to defuse criticism leveled at Israel for continuing its crime of starvation and preventing relief supplies from reaching the besieged enclave by land.”
According to numerous UN agencies, international humanitarian organizations, and the International Court of Justice — particularly in its second ruling on 28 March — land border crossings continue to be the most efficient means of delivering aid.”
The $320 million US-built pier, which delivered only 26 partially-filled trucks to the shore more than a week ago, has been slowly breaking apart into the sea, rendering it completely non-functional.
Euro-Med Monitor added, “As the source of the famine, the international community has a legal obligation to put an end to the crime of genocide that Israel has been committing against the people of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023.”
The group said that “without doing so, it is impossible to discuss the creation of a suitable environment in which to provide humanitarian aid or to begin the process of restoring basic services to stop the famine from spreading and reverse its effects.”
In order to protect Palestinian civilians from genocide in the Gaza Strip, Euro-Med explained, “real pressure tools should be activated to force Israel to immediately cease all of its crimes and to comply with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice. This includes halting all forms of political, financial, and military support for Israel’s military attack on the Gaza Strip and holding it accountable for all of its crimes.”
In related news, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention stated on Tuesday that it has “had it with the cynical lies and propaganda from Israel and the USA. One can have different views about the definition of genocide, but one may not use definitional disputes to deny genocide. If a genocide may be occurring, every nation is compelled by customary law to try to stop it.”
Highlighting resilience
Finally, we wanted to bring you some images and videos from journalists in Gaza who are not just relentlessly documenting the unspeakable atrocities but also making sure to highlight the resilience, joy and determination of the Palestinian people.
Twelve-year old Maher Miqdad showed reporters how he and his friends play with scraps of fabric sourced from the US-led airdropped humanitarian aid parcels in Gaza City. And a dabke – traditional dance – group in Deir al-Balah lifted people’s spirits this week, as reported by Al Jazeera.Photo: Omar Ashtawy / APA images
Tags
- Rafah
- Jabaliya
- targeting hospitals
- Emirati maternity hospital
- Kuwaiti hospital
- Indonesian Hospital
- Al-Awda Hospital
- Rafah crossing
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