Gaza: Israel’s war tactics condemned as aid remains blocked from reaching the north
Updated information from the United Nations aid coordination office, OCHAsaid that in the past two days alone, “six attempts to provide life-saving assistance to besieged areas in North Gaza province have been blocked.”
The missions on Tuesday and Wednesday aimed to bring food and water to Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, along with protection and psychosocial support for deeply traumatized children after 13 months bombed.
“People are trapped in residential buildings, they are hiding from military operations going on around them, they are running out of food,” Louise Wateridge, senior officer at the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said: UNRWA.
In comments to the media, Ms Wateridge relayed testimony from staff and residents in the North who described seeing dead bodies on the streets and an almost complete lack of service supplies Emergency health care forced people to use donkey carts to get to hospitals that were barely functioning.
Almost all of Gaza was forced to relocate
According to OCHA, about 79% of the Gaza Strip is still under evacuation order. “Palestinians continue to be directed towards areas in and around Al Mawasi, southern Gaza, lack of basic infrastructure and essential services” said the United Nations aid agency.
Latest data from Gazan health authorities indicates that at least 43,736 people have been killed and 103,370 injured in Israeli military attacks since October 7, 2023, with 24 Palestinians killed killed and 112 people injured in the past 24 hours.
Equivalent to two nuclear bombs
Development takes place as one Special Committee of the United Nations General Assembly condemned the Israeli military’s tactics in Gaza since the war broke out, following “terrible” terrorist attacks led by Hamas on October 7 against multiple Israeli targets that killed some 1,250 people. network and more than 250 people were held hostage.
Between October 2023 and July this year, a report from the panel asserted that Gaza was hit by some 25,000 tons of explosives – equivalent to two nuclear bombs – in early 2024.
The resulting devastation – along with the collapse of water and sanitation systems, agricultural devastation and toxic pollution – is “consistent with the characteristics of genocide” and will have an impact on the health of Gazans for generations, the report’s authors assert.
“Use by the Israeli military AI-assisted targeting, with minimal human oversight, combined with heavy bombs, highlights Israel’s disregard for its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and take appropriate protective measures to prevent civilian deaths,” United Nations Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Activities Affecting the Human Rights of Palestinians and Arabs other in the occupied territories said.
‘Hunger as a method of war’
“Through the siege of Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, and targeted attacks and killings of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated calls from the United Nations, binding order from the United Nations. International Court of Justice and resolutions of Security Council, Israel is deliberately causing death, famine and serious injury, using famine as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian people,” the Commission asserted.
Palestinian women are ridiculed and shamed
On the ground in Gaza, Israeli soldiers were also found to have been involved “inhumane, cruel and humiliating behavior against Palestinians, including women and children,” the commission said, alleging that the military shared photos of Palestinian women on social media “in order to mock, embarrass and humiliate them.”
The Council was established by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1968 to review the human rights situation in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
The Commission’s member states – Malaysia, Senegal and Sri Lanka – call on Israel and Palestinian armed groups to “urgently agree to a lasting ceasefire and release all hostages and detainees.” arbitrarily”. provide free access to the ICRC for detainees and open all border crossings to allow life-saving humanitarian aid to enter Gaza on a large scale.
End UNRWA ‘smear campaign’
The Council also condemned the “ongoing smear campaign” against the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and expressed concern about “deliberately silent coverage” of the conflict in Gaza. They said that Israel’s “increased media censorship” and “crackdown on dissent and targeting of journalists” were “deliberate efforts to prevent the access to global information”.
The committee also highlighted that social media companies have “disproportionately removed ‘pro-Palestinian content’ compared to posts inciting violence against Palestinians”. Its report will be read. presented at the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on 18 November 2024.
