Rights and Accountability 7 March 2025
Among the rubble in Jabaliya, Palestinians in Gaza stock up following Israel’s closure of all crossings, halting deliveries of food, supplies and humanitarian aid, 6 March.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 6 March livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
In Gaza, the holy month of Ramadan has begun, but Palestinians are bracing for yet more scarcity of food and supplies after Israel ordered the crossings to be closed on 2 March, in violation of the ceasefire terms and international law.
Israel’s order to close the crossings was seen by Palestinian civil society as an act of sabotage against the ceasefire agreement as it is supposed to move onto stage two of the three stages that began in January.
Israeli prime minister and war crimes suspect Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Hamas with even more “consequences” if it does not agree to extend phase one of the ceasefire agreement and release the remaining Israeli captives held in Gaza.
The Hamas political party responded that the Israeli government’s move to close the crossings and cut off international aid was “cheap extortion, a war crime and a blatant attack” on the ceasefire.
The Palestinian foreign affairs ministry stated that it rejected Israel’s use of “politicizing aid and using it as a means of blackmail, deepening the suffering of more than two million Palestinians, adding to their current state of suffering due to the genocidal war and displacement.”
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor noted that senior Israeli officials have made openly genocidal statements in public over the past week.
Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should open “the gates of hell” and declared that halting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza is an “important step in the right direction,” further stating that Israel must “open those gates as quickly and lethally as possible on the cruel enemy, until absolute victory.”
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar dismissed warnings from the United Nations and international organisations regarding the risk of renewed famine in the Gaza Strip amid the tightened blockade and halting of humanitarian aid. Saar said he considered these warnings to be “just a lie” and affirmed that the Israeli government holds no commitment to delivering humanitarian aid, Euro-Med stated.
Almog Cohen, a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, urged Israeli forces to kill Palestinians in Gaza “with no mercy” during Ramadan, saying it “is the best time to kill them because they are weak and tired.”
Food stores low
Reporting from a market in Khan Younis, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said on 5 March, “Prices have skyrocketed due to the potential scarcity of products and in light of the large consumption of people who have started to store food in preparation for the renewed starvation of the territory as long as the Israeli decision will remain in place.”
The United Nations’ World Food Program stated that it only has enough food stores to keep public kitchens and bakeries open for fewer than two weeks as long as the crossings remain sealed.
The Gaza government media office stated on 4 March that the continuation of the ban on food, medicine and basic supplies “means the return of the specter of famine again.”
The health situation will also continue to worsen, the office added, “by preventing the entry of medicines and medical supplies which means a death sentence for thousands of chronic patients and the injured due to the lack of health care, and a death sentence for the health system that has already collapsed due to the deliberate sabotage and destruction of the occupation army for 15 months.”
In addition to the banning of aid and medicine, Israel has continued to refuse to allow in heavy machinery, tents and housing caravans as it agreed to under the ceasefire terms.
Speaking to the Turkish Anadolu Agency, Salama Maarouf of the government media office said that Gaza requires 200,000 tents, but only about half of that number had been delivered before the closures.
Only 15 mobile homes have entered Gaza, he added, while 60,000 are needed to accommodate displaced families.
Officials in the Palestinian health sector as well as international aid organizations in Gaza warn that if the closures remain in effect, and if the ceasefire does not hold, there will be devastating consequences for Palestinians struggling to survive.
The International Rescue Committee says it has gathered nearly seven tons of much-needed pharmaceutical and medical supplies for hospitals in Gaza, which was due to arrive this week but is now blocked by Israel.
The aid organization Islamic Relief warned that “a return to the relentless horror and atrocities that we saw for more than 15 months would be a global failure of staggering proportion.”
The UK group Medical Aid for Palestinians stated that “a year ago, the International Court of Justice ordered measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, but by again blocking aid Israel continues to violate them. Its return to ‘total siege’ should be resolutely condemned by the international community, including the UK government, which must now take immediate action to ensure aid access is fully restored and international law is enforced.”
Mohammed Alkhatib, the group’s deputy director of programs in Gaza, said: “It is a continuation of the mockery of humanity, and double standards towards the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and the world is still standing by watching.”
Clean water scarce
Clean water remains in critical shortage across Gaza.
This week, the municipality of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza announced that its two desalinization plants have stopped working due to the lack of electricity.
Journalist and researcher Maha Husseini of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported from the dialysis clinic at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday, where she said “all machines have suddenly stopped working due to a lack of water. The machines have been shut down for the day, and patients were sent home until the water tanks are refilled.” “Israel has destroyed around 90 percent of Gaza’s water wells and 80 percent of its water infrastructure, making access to water a daily struggle for both individuals and hospitals,” she added.Palestinian child detained
Turning to the occupied West Bank, our contributor Zena Al Tahhan reported on Israel’s military assault on the al-Faraa refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, part of a wider and ongoing string of attacks that began in mid-January in the Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm areas.
Zena writes that at least 60 Palestinians have been killed and dozens more wounded across the northern West Bank since the start of the operation. Some 40,000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes, with the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps almost completely emptied.
Israel’s current assault is the longest in the occupied West Bank in more than two decades, and it is the largest operation of forcible displacement there since 1967.
The Palestinian rights group Al-Haq said that the entire city of Jenin was “completely sealed off, with all entrances and exits blocked on day 43 of the large-scale Israeli military assault” on 4 March.Meanwhile, Defense for Children International-Palestine reports that two weeks after Israeli forces arrested and detained a 14-year-old child from his home in Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, during a pre-dawn raid, a four-month administrative detention order was issued against him this week.
Muin Ghassan Fahed Salahat, a ninth-grade student, is the youngest Palestinian child placed under an administrative detention order since DCIP began monitoring child administrative detainees in 2008.“Administrative detention violates fundamental due process rights, yet Israeli forces are now expanding this draconian policy to detain Palestinian children indefinitely without charge or trial,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Muin’s case sets a dangerous precedent, showing that no Palestinian child, regardless of age, is safe from arbitrary imprisonment under Israel’s military rule.”
Israeli forces were holding 112 Palestinian children in administrative detention as of 31 December 2024, the highest number of child detainees since DCIP began monitoring this practice in 2008.
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to share images of people expressing determination and resilience across Palestine.
In the occupied West Bank, Mohammed al-Malh, who was in Israeli prison for 29 years and was recently released during a prisoner exchange, was able to finally be with his family and break their fast together on the first day of Ramadan.
He says, “Despite all the tragedies and circumstances that we live through on a daily basis, we always have the ability to find moments of joy, and this gathering is one of those moments.” An older relative says that this Ramadan is special because their hero is back.
And in Gaza, among the rubble in Rafah, dining tables were lined up as far as the eye can see, preparing for an iftar meal.
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