Gaza: UN envoy condemns deadly strike on camp in humanitarian zone

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 11 September 2024

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GENEVA - The UN Middle East envoy has strongly condemned deadly airstrikes by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday on a densely populated area in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in Gaza.

Thousands of displaced Palestinians were staying in the camp in Khan Younis, and at least 19 people were killed, according to latest media reports.

‘Nowhere is safe in Gaza’

“While the IDF said it struck Hamas militants who were operating in a command-and-control centre embedded inside the Humanitarian zone, I underline that international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack, must be upheld at all times,” Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said in a statement.

He emphasized that civilians must never be used as human shields.

“Yet again, such actions only underscore that nowhere is safe in Gaza,” he said.

Guterres 'deeply alarmed'

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said via his Spokesperson at the regular noon briefing in New York that he was "deeply alarmed by the continued loss of life in Gaza."

"He strongly condemns today’s Israeli air strikes in an Israeli-designated zone for displaced persons in Khan Younis", said Stéphane Dujarric.

"The use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas is unconscionable. Palestinians had moved to this area in Khan Younis in search for shelter and search of safety, after being repeatedly instructed to do so by the Israeli authorities," he continued.

Mr. Guterres called yet again for an immediate ceasefire and the "immediate and unconditional release of all Israeli hostages and other nationalities still being held in Gaza."

End the war

The envoy repeated his call for all sides to immediately reach an agreement that will bring about the release of all hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza, adding that the killing of civilians must stop, and the horrific war must end.

“Ultimately, only a political path that outlines tangible, irreversible steps towards ending the occupation and establishing a two-State solution can put a durable end to the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis,” he said, noting that the UN stands ready to support all efforts towards this goal.

Guterres condemns convoy incident

Meanwhile, the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, reported that on Monday the Israeli army stopped a convoy heading to north Gaza to vaccinate children against polio and held it for more than eight hours, despite prior detailed coordination.

The UN chief condemned the hours-long delay as "one of the most horrific assaults" on UN aid workers ability to deliver life-saving vaccines.

"Twelve UN staff members, whose movement was fully coordinated with Israeli forces and whose details were shared in advance, were stopped at a checkpoint on their way to northern Gaza to support the polio vaccination campaign", said Mr. Dujarric.

"Israeli forces fired live shots and the UN convoy was compacted by a military tank and a bulldozer with our staff inside.

The convoy was held at this checkpoint for seven and a half hours and ultimately unable to fulfill its humanitarian mission, the statement added: "The Secretary-General strongly condemns this incident."

UNRWA, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched a three-part campaign this month to protect more than 600,000 young children in the enclave against polio after the disease was detected in sewage samples in June.

The UN convoy carried national and international staff travelling to roll out the campaign in Gaza City and northern Gaza, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday in a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Staff threatened, vehicles damaged

The convoy was stopped at gun point just after the Wadi Gaza checkpoint with threats to detain UN staff. Heavy damage was caused by bulldozers to the UN armoured vehicles.

“This significant incident is the latest in a series of violations against UN staff including shootings at convoys and arrests by the Israeli Armed Forces at checkpoints despite prior notification,” said Mr. Lazzarini.

“UN Staff must be allowed to undertake their duties in safety and be protected at all times in accordance with international humanitarian law. Gaza is no different.”

Vaccinations underway

In a tweet later on Tuesday, UNRWA sent an update that despite the convoy delay “our teams have been able to vaccinate thousands of children in north Gaza today.”

“This is a race against time”, the agency added. “The spread of polio is a very real threat. Our colleagues continue to do the impossible to reach every child under the age of 10 across the Gaza Strip.”

One convoy, two missions

The delayed convoy was composed of two missions, UN health agency WHO said on Tuesday in Geneva.

One team was bringing fuel and vehicles for the third phase of the vaccination campaign, while another was attempting to bring desperately needed fuel to the embattled Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The enclave’s largest medical centre reopened its emergency department in early September after its destruction in an Israeli raid in November 2023 following claims that Palestinian armed groups were using the site for military purposes.

‘Not an isolated incident’

“This is not an isolated incident,” said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević, who deplored the lack of a “functioning deconfliction mechanism,” 11 months into the Gaza war.

Between 7 and 10 September, WHO teams tried to reach Al-Shifa hospital four times with no success.

“But we will try again today,” he said. “We really do our best, but this is a pattern: in August the number of denied requests for access doubled compared to previous months”.

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill more than a dozen as polio vaccinations continue

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 07 September 2024

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By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY and JACK JEFFERY

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak.

The vaccination drive was launched after health officials confirmed the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, in a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralyzed. The nine-day campaign by the U.N. health agency and partners aims to vaccinate 640,000 children, an ambitious effort during a war that has destroyed Gaza’s health care system and much of its infrastructure. The third phase of vaccinations is in the north.

Israel, meanwhile, kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.

In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.

The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry says more than 94,000 people have been wounded.

Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A dayslong military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead. “They (Israeli forces) besieged the area and brought in bulldozers. As you see, they destroyed the whole area,” said a resident, Mahmoud Al Razi.

On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reported shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who also holds Turkish nationality, died after being shot in the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she had posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.

The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area.

Her family in a statement said that “given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate” and urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation. They called the recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.

Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed 13-year-old Bana Laboom in the village of Qaryout.

The Israeli military said an initial inquiry indicated that security forces had been deployed to disperse a riot involving Palestinian and Israeli civilians that “included mutual rock hurling.” Security forces fired shots in the air, it said.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.

Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out negotiations by issuing new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.

Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continue between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team that was fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The blaze was sparked by a previous Israeli strike, the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.

Israel’s military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel in several barrages, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the area of Qabrikha in southern Lebanon.

Defiant Netanyahu insists Israel must control strategic border corridor in Gaza

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 03 September 2024

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By JULIAN BORGER

TEL AVIV - Benjamin Netanyahu has defied protests at home and criticism from Joe Biden by vowing that Israel would not relinquish control over a strategic corridor along the Gaza-Egyptian border.

In a combative press conference, the Israeli prime minister presented control of the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt as a primary war aim, entrenching a position that has emerged as a key obstacle to a ceasefire deal.

“Israel will not accept the massacre of six hostages, Hamas will pay a heavy price,” said Netanyahu, standing in front of a wall-sized map of the Gaza strip that included clip art of bombs and missiles crossing the border. “Iran’s axis of evil needs the Philadelphi corridors … Israel must control it.”

The remarks came hours after the US president met with his top advisers on the Gaza conflict and told reporters that he did not believe Netanyahu was doing enough to secure a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Netanyahu’s remarks came after protests this weekend prompted by the discovery of the bodies of six hostages in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and efforts to release dozens of hostages who remain in captivity.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Biden said that his administration was “very close” to proposing a “final” hostage deal to both sides that has assumed new urgency since the discovery of the bodies, including that of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

The Washington Post had previously reported that the Biden administration was preparing to propose a “take it or leave it” deal that, if it failed, could mark the end of US-led efforts to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Biden did not reveal details of the new proposal and, asked why he thought a new deal could prove successful after months of unsuccessful attempts, said: “Hope springs eternal.”

The White House said that Biden received a briefing from top-level advisers including the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, where they discussed “next steps” in the ceasefire efforts in collaboration with co-mediators Egypt and Qatar.

Netanyahu has remained defiant over Israeli claims to strategic points in Gaza, despite significant internal and international pressure to secure at least a temporary ceasefire in the 11-month-old war.

During his remarks on Monday, the Israeli prime minister apologised to the families of the six hostages found dead in Gaza over the weekend, but then quickly pivoted to defend his government’s control over the Philadelphi corridor. That has been seen as a non-starter for a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas.

“In the war against the axis of evil, in this specific war against Hamas and also in the north, we have set four goals: defeat Hamas; return our hostages; ensure that Gaza does not pose a threat; and to return residents to the south,” he said. “Three of these goals pass through the Philadelphi route, Hamas’s oxygen pipe.”

The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, derided Netanyahu’s presentation as “political spin” with “no relation to reality”.

“Not one professional buys this spin. Not the security personnel, not the international system, not the fighters who are actually in Gaza and know the reality there,” Lapid said, according to the Times of Israel.

The Philadelphi corridor has only emerged as an Israeli government talking point in recent weeks, and was not part of the plan that Biden presented in May, which the Israeli government said at the time it accepted.

The Hostage Families Forum vowed that their protests would continue, but the far-right members of Netanyahu’s government coalition declared victory after a labour court ruling that the strike had to end at 2.30pm local time (12.30pm BST).

Even before the court ruling, the strike, called by the Histadrut trade union federation, was not seen as a significant threat to the government. It had only been due to last a day, and only a few local authorities took part.

Banks and many private businesses closed or gave their employees the option of taking the day off, but it was not the prolonged stoppage that activists hoped would have an impact on the economy and force the coalition into a ceasefire-for-hostage deal with Hamas.

Public anger erupted after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) found the hostages’ bodies in a tunnel deep under the Palestinian city of Rafah over the weekend. According to Israel’s health ministry, they had been shot at close range about two days before their remains were discovered. Some of them – including Goldberg-Polin – would have been in the first batch of hostages to be released under the proposed ceasefire deal.

Goldberg-Polin’s funeral was held in Jerusalem on Monday. Addressing the family at the ceremony, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, apologised for his death on behalf of the state.

“We are sorry we failed to protect you in the terrible failure of 7 October,” Herzog said. “We are sorry we failed to bring you home safely. We are sorry that the country you immigrated to at the age of seven, wrapped in the Israeli flag, failed to keep you.”

About 250 hostages were seized by Hamas in its 7 October surprise attack on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians. In the Gaza war that followed, Israel forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, the large majority of them civilians.

Other countries have slightly increased pressure on Israel since the botched rescue of the hostages. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, on Monday announced the suspension of 30 of 350 arms export licenses to Israel. Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said he was “deeply disheartened” by the decision at a time when “we fight a war on seven different fronts”.

The extreme right members of Netanyahu’s coalition welcomed the decision of the Bat Yam labour court to order Monday’s strike to end early. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the strike had been “political and illegal”, serving the interests of Hamas.

The Hostage Families Forum said that protests would still continue after the strike, in the interests of the 101 hostages still unaccounted for in Gaza, of whom Israeli intelligence believes about a third are already dead.

The forum said the surviving hostages had been “abandoned” on Thursday last week, when Netanyahu’s cabinet voted to stand behind the prime minister’s negotiating position insisting on Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor. Gallant was the only cabinet member to vote against the stance, and has called for the decision to be reversed.

About 100,000 protesters took part in demonstrations in Tel Aviv on Sunday night, temporarily blocking the north-south motorway that runs through the city. On Monday, there were sporadic protests blocking key road junctions around the country and another big demonstration was called for Monday night.

Among even the most determined demonstrators however was an acceptance that they did not yet have the strength to threaten Netanyahu’s hold on power and force him to change course.

“I’m not sure the strike was as powerful as people expected,” said Debbie Mason, a social worker for the Eshkol regional council, an area of southern Israel abutting Gaza, where many of the victims of the 7 October Hamas attack lived.

“Unfortunately, there are too many things that are going to obstruct a deal. Whether it’s on our side, whether it’s on Hamas’s side, it just doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest that something should happen,” Mason said.

She was speaking in “Hostages Square”, a plaza between the national library and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where hostage families and their supporters gather every day.

Rayah Karmin, a vitamin supplement salesperson from Mabu’im, a village near Netivot near the Gaza frontier, agreed that a one-day strike would change little.

“Only a longer strike will make the people in government understand that the economy of Israel is going to go down,” Karmin said.

She pointed out that all the protests faced an immovable political reality: that if a ceasefire were agreed, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich would lead a far-right walk-out from the cabinet and the coalition would fall, removing Netanyahu’s immunity against corruption charges he faces in Israeli courts.

“Smotrich and Ben-Gvir will leave Netanyahu, and then he will be without a coalition, and he will have to go home,” Karmin said. “And he knows that next time he won’t be elected, so he wants to stay as long as he can.”