Israel bombs and starves Gaza with no end in sight

A man in a black t-shirt carries the body of a child, wrapped in a bloodied white shroud, as other people in the background look on.

Mourners carried the bodies of Palestinian children who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beach refugee camp, Gaza City, 12 July. 

Hadi Daoud APA images

The following is from the news roundup during the 17 July livestream. Watch the entire episode here.

Israel killed nearly 650 Palestinians and injured approximately 2,200 between 9 July and 16 July, according to records from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, in airstrikes, quadcopter attacks, and by live fire at the US-Israeli so-called aid distribution sites.

On Tuesday, 15 July, Israel attacked Beach refugee camp west of Gaza City, killing 23 people, and al-Tuffah, a Gaza City neighborhood, killing 14 people, including children – all members of the same family.

One woman, Hala Arafat, was recorded live on video pleading for rescue workers to save her, her children and the rest of her family.

The civil defense corps attempted to rescue those trapped under the rubble but were prevented from doing so by the Israeli army.

Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for the civil defense, said that rescuers “tried as hard as we could to coordinate entry so that we could reach the place before she passed away. But all coordination efforts failed. The next day we were allowed to enter the area. Our crews entered to find the woman deceased.”

Basal added that they had still been receiving phone calls from people still stuck under the rubble of their homes, who had managed to stay alive. But they are presumed dead.

“Is it reasonable to assume that the human conscience, until this moment, does not move in the face of such events taking place in the Gaza Strip?” Basal asked.

He said in another video report that Israel has been brutally attacking areas specifically across the northern Gaza Strip in the last two weeks, including in Gaza City and Jabaliya.

He noted that hundreds of buildings have been destroyed in this current series of attacks, while heavily populated homes are being leveled to the ground in airstrikes. He said approximately 300 Palestinians are still stuck under the rubble, with no reprieve in the intensity of the attacks.

These strikes coincide with Israel’s new forced displacement orders directed at areas of northern Gaza. The United Nations’ humanitarian office said on 15 July that Israel is ordering people to relocate to al-Mawasi, “an already overcrowded area lacking the basics for survival.”

The newest order “covers approximately 9 square kilometers, encompassing 11 neighborhoods across Gaza and North Gaza governorates, where at least 120,000 people are estimated to be residing,” the UN added.

Killed trying to retrieve water

Israel targeted and killed seven children and four adults in a drone strike while crowds of people attempted to retrieve clean water from a water truck on Sunday, 13 July.

Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centers where they can fill up their plastic containers, Reuters reported.

That massacre was just one of several across Gaza in a 24-hour period between 12 and 13 July.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that 139 bodies had been brought to hospitals in that period.

On Monday, 14 July, Israel bombed another water vehicle in central Gaza, killing the driver.

Asem Alnabih, the spokesperson for the Gaza Municipality who joined us on the 17 July livestream, wrote for The Electronic Intifada this week, “During the past 21 months of Israeli aggression, 75 percent of Gaza City’s wells were destroyed by Israel while the remaining wells have stopped or are partially operating for limited hours that are insufficient to meet the needs of the population.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ Global Protection Cluster stated that since the beginning of this genocide, more than 134,000 Palestinians, including more than 40,000 children, have new war-related injuries.

One quarter of those are estimated to have new disabilities requiring acute and ongoing rehabilitation, and more than 35,000 Palestinians “are believed to have significant hearing damage due to explosions,” according to the groups.

An average of 10 children per day lose one or both of their legs, the report adds – a grim statistic that has held steady since January 2024, as Save the Children stated just three months into the genocide.

The United Nations has said that Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita, more than anywhere else in the world.

900 killed at “aid” sites

Palestinians continue to be killed and injured trying to obtain meager amounts of food aid at so-called distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a joint US-Israeli private mercenary company.

Approximately 900 people have now been killed and more than 5,700 injured since the GHF began its operations under the guise of distributing aid, just seven weeks ago in late May.

At least 21 Palestinians were killed by direct gunfire, suffocation and a stampede at a GHF site in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Wednesday, 16 July.

The Gaza government media office said that the mercenary organization told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to go to an aid center it called “SDS3.”

“It then proceeded to close the iron gates after gathering thousands of starving people in narrow passageways deliberately designed to suffocate them,” the media office stated.

“Employees of the criminal organization and Israeli occupation soldiers sprayed pepper gas and opened direct fire on the starving people who responded to their call for ‘aid,’ leading to mass suffocation and the immediate death of a large number of people” at the scene.

“Dozens were injured as a result of a stampede in a closed space that had no exit, designed to kill,” the media office added.

Reporter Samer al-Boji recorded family members who mourned over the bodies of their loved ones who were killed at the so-called aid site on Wednesday.

On Saturday, 12 July, at a distribution site in Rafah, video footage captured Israeli forces firing rapidly into an enormous crowd of Palestinians. Some were forced to crawl across the dirt on their bellies to avoid being shot.

Footage captured by eyewitnesses also showed an American soldier firing what Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says was a stun grenade on the crowd.

An eyewitness told Euro-Med Monitor, “There is a large pit just before the entrance to the aid point, where people usually hide before the gates open. Today, we were surprised to see three sand mounds facing the pit. Once the pit was packed with people, three tanks climbed onto the mounds, each carrying heavy machine guns and about 30 heavily armed soldiers and snipers. They fired sound bombs above the crowd. Anyone who tried to leave the pit was shot at directly.”

More than 30 Palestinians were killed.

Tareq Hajjaj reported on the 12 July massacre for Mondoweiss. He spoke to a survivor of the attack, Ahmad Haddad, who spoke from his hospital bed to recount the day’s events.

“The only food we can get is through the aid that they throw at us,” he said.

“But when we went today, the soldiers came out with their guns, and the tanks came out with their machine guns. We saw the soldiers from close range, aiming their weapons at our heads and sniping us like birds, as if we were worthless; as if they were amusing themselves with our blood and killing us by the dozens.”

Haddad says that Israeli tanks fired randomly at the crowds, while soldiers watched whoever stood up and sniped them in the head.

“We lay on the ground, fearing the bullets and trying to save our lives,” he said. “But the soldiers were waiting for us, lying in ambush. Whoever stood up fell back dead.”

Those who manage to obtain a box of aid from the deadly US-Israeli mercenary firm are saying that the items inside the boxes are still not enough to feed hungry families.

Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary said on Monday, 14 July, that the only items the GHF is distributing are “flour, rice, oil and a couple of other food items, which are not enough for Palestinian families. There are no shelter items, no medications and no clean water. Trucks are not entering Gaza, and Palestinians are waiting every day for any news about more trucks. Whatever is coming in is not enough.”

The United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, meanwhile, stated that one in 10 children it is seeing at its clinics is suffering from malnutrition.

The condition was “unheard of in the enclave” before October 2023, but it more than doubled in children under 5 between March and June, amid the near-total Israeli siege, the UN said.

The agency’s senior emergency officer Louise Wateridge said on 16 July, “It’s becoming more and more difficult for us to continue providing services.”

At least 188 UNRWA installations, which she said is more than half of all the agency’s facilities in the Gaza Strip, “are located within the Israeli-militarized zone, under displacement orders, or where these overlap.”

Nearly 60 percent of essential medical supplies are now out of stock, according to the UN agency. “Children are dying before our eyes, because we do not have the medical supplies or sustained food to treat them,” UNRWA stated.

And this week, Israel issued an order threatening starving Palestinians who try to fish in the sea to feed themselves.

The army declared on 12 July that it had imposed restrictions along the Gaza shore and was preventing all entry into the sea. The army said that it will “deal with any violation of these restrictions.”

Physician assassinated

Israel continues to target healthcare workers as hospitals and ambulance services remain at the brink of total collapse.

The director general of civil defense in the Gaza Strip announced on 10 July that all of its vehicles have had to stop providing rescue services to people in Gaza City and northern Gaza areas, as they all need repairs and are completely out of spare parts even for basic maintenance.

One fire engine is all that remains to serve the entire area of northern Gaza.

In southern Gaza, the civil defense says that three out of six of its fire engines and four out of six ambulances are also completely out of service.

This week, Israeli forces assassinated Dr. Ahmed Atallah Hamed Qandil, one of the most prominent physicians in Gaza, and an experienced general surgery consultant, in a drone strike that targeted him on his way home from working at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

And this week, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s lawyer, who just visited him in Israel’s notorious Ofer Prison, warned that the doctor’s health is deteriorating after more than six months in detention and brutal beatings by Israeli jailers.

Ghaid Qassem, Abu Safiya’s lawyer, stated that the pediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was abducted by Israeli forces in late December, has lost more than 80 pounds in detention.

“Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is not well,” she wrote in a post on Facebook. “My last visit to him was days ago, 9 July. He lost more than 40 kilograms of his weight – more than a third.”

Qassem added that he was beaten by Israeli prison guards on 24 June, the day after the war with Iran ended. His cell was raided by the guards, and he was brutally beaten in the ribs, she said.

He suffered severe bruises on his face, head, back and neck as well, and the beating lasted about 30 minutes.

Qassem said that Abu Safiya demanded medical treatment but his request was rejected. He suffers from an irregular heartbeat, which is not being treated, and his eyeglasses were recently broken.

She added that Abu Safiya is “still wearing winter clothes and is enduring starvation, torture, [and] isolation … remaining underground without any exposure to the sunlight. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and the rest of the Palestinian prisoners are not okay.”

Settler pogroms in West Bank

Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers continue to escalate their attacks on Palestinians.

On 11 July, 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet was beaten to death by a mob of Jewish settlers in Sinjil, near Ramallah. The settlers also shot and killed another young man, 23-year-old Muhammad al-Shalabi, in the attack.

Musallet’s family said that the settlers surrounded him for three hours during the assault, and attacked medics who were attempting to reach him.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said the US “must stop treating Palestinian American lives as expendable.”

“Israeli settlers lynched 20-year-old Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet, while US officials stayed silent,” the advocacy group said in a statement.

“Sayfollah was born and raised in Florida. He was visiting family for the summer in the West Bank when settlers beat him to death while he protested illegal land seizures.”

Musallet’s cousin stated, “We are devastated that our beloved Sayfollah Musallet, nicknamed Saif, was brutally beaten to death on our family’s land by illegal Israeli settlers who were attempting to steal it. After the mob of Israeli settlers cleared hours later, Saif’s younger brother rushed to carry him to the ambulance. Saif was killed and died before reaching the hospital.”

Other settler pogroms were reported elsewhere in the West Bank this week. On 14 July, Israeli settlers and soldiers launched several more attacks, including in Bethlehem, where settlers uprooted hundreds of olive trees in al-Maniya village, while Israeli authorities demolished a four-story residential building, Al Jazeera reported.

The head of al-Maniya village council told Wafa news agency that a group of settlers stormed the center of al-Maniya, set up four tents and uprooted approximately 1,500 olive tree saplings belonging to Palestinian families.

On 11 July, Israeli settlers attacked and injured a 3-year-old Palestinian girl, throwing rocks at her head during a raid on Sair village, in the Hebron area. The settlers attacked residents as they gathered to celebrate a wedding.

The United Nations reported that between 8 and 14 July, its humanitarian office documented at least 30 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both.

These attacks led to the death of two Palestinians, one by settlers and one where it is unknown if he was killed by settlers or Israeli forces, the UN said. Another 92 Palestinians were also injured during these attacks: 14 by Israeli forces and 78 by Israeli settlers.

Highlighting resilience

Finally, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Palestine and around the world.

In Gaza, a teacher named Saja sets aside a few moments for a popular social media trend, giving the phone to a student, who passes the phone to another.

The Gaza Great Minds Foundation, which supports education initiatives in Gaza, said “One phone. Countless smiles. Endless love. This is what true community looks like: seeing each other’s gifts and lifting them up.”

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Nora Barrows-Friedman

Nora Barrows-Friedman's picture

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).