Gaza: Fresh evacuation orders compound misery for enclave’s displaced

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 30 July 2024

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ISRAELI OCCUPIED GAZA - 

New forced displacements have continued in Gaza as regional tensions escalate after a deadly strike in the Syrian Golan Heights, where 12 youngsters were killed over the weekend, UN humanitarians have said.

Evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military have impacted Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps, forcing families to relocate “again and again, knowing that safety is non-existent in the Gaza Strip”, said the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees, UNRWA, in a post on X.

More than nine months into the war in Gaza, only 14 per cent of the enclave has not been impacted by evacuation orders, said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

“Quite often, people have just a few hours to pack whatever they can and start all over again, mostly on foot or on a crowded donkey cart for those who can afford it,” he said. “Almost everyone in Gaza has been impacted by these orders. Many were forced to flee on average once a month since the war began nine months ago.”

Water plant destroyed

In a related development, the UN agency condemned the reported destruction of a water plant in Rafah in southern Gaza, a focus of Israeli military action since early May.

“Any time, something happens - like what appears to happen in Rafah over the weekend, with a water plant destroyed - it impacts the ability we have to generate water,” said Scott Anderson, UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator and Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza. The UN agency has been unable to independently assess the situation, he noted.

Uprooted – again

Echoing the testimonies of forcibly displaced people who are among those assisted by UNRWA, Mr. Anderson recounted how one woman with twins explained the chaos of the upheaval: “She said, yeah, basically, that was one child for each arm and a little backpack, you know, and off they go to try to find safety.”

According to UNRWA, evacuation orders are now issued “every other day”, while UN aid coordination office, OCHA, reported on Friday that humanitarian partners estimated that more than 190,000 Palestinians had been displaced last week in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, since an evacuation order issued seven days ago.

Aid obstacles’ deadly result

Recent evacuation orders and intense hostilities have continued to destabilize aid operations and hampered efforts to provide critical relief to civilians in Khan Younis, OCHA insisted.

It maintained that ongoing insecurity and the designation of “only one access point for the entry and exit of humanitarian staff into and out of Gaza – the Kerem Shalom crossing – have hampered efforts to deploy additional emergency medical teams in Gaza” – even though these workers are critically needed to help support the “exhausted” local health force.

“I met a mother and a child, a two-month-old who was starving to death and the mother didn't have sufficient nutrition to lactate and feed her baby,” Mr. Anderson said in an interview with UN News.

He explained that “when you get to severe malnutrition or acute malnutrition, you can't just give milk or food and the baby will recover. You know, for a mother to start lactation again is nearly impossible…And they look at you and say, ‘What can you do to help me?’

Learning boost bid

Latest UN data indicates that 93 per cent of schools in Gaza have been damaged and many have been directly hit. A third of the affected schools are UNRWA schools, whose approximately 14,000 teachers used to teach around 370,000 students.

To help the hundreds of thousands of children now out of school in the enclave, UNRWA and the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, plan to provide an education boost beginning Thursday 1 August.

“We're going to try to get all the 600,000 children that should be in school back in some sort of learning environment,” Mr. Anderson said. “Hopefully this is the start of that process of rebuilding Gaza into something better than it was before 7 October and giving people, you know, the opportunity to continue to live in dignity.”

He added: “It's incredible that people still smile, that you see them trying to get on with their lives or some entrepreneurial spirit.”

Israel kills dozens as it steps up Gaza bombardment

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 20 July 2024

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By Nidal Al-Mughrabi

CAIRO - Israeli forces pounded several areas across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 30 Palestinians, according to health officials, as tanks advanced deeper into western and northern Rafah.

Among those killed on Saturday were local journalist Mohammad Abu Jasser, his wife, and two children, in an Israeli strike on their house in the northern Gaza Strip, a medic said.

Gaza's Hamas-run government media office said Abu Jasser's death raised to 161 the number of Palestinian media personnel killed by Israeli fire since Oct 7.

Israeli military strikes across Gaza killed 37 Palestinians in the past 24 hours and destroyed several houses. In Al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip, an air strike on a multi-floor building, wounded several people, including two local journalists, rescue workers said.

In Rafah, where Israel said it aimed to dismantle the last battalions of Hamas' armed wing, residents said tanks advanced deeper into northern areas of the city and took control of a hilltop in the west, amid fierce gun battles with Hamas-led fighters.

The army said troops continued operations in Rafah, eliminating many gunmen over the past day in the area of Tel Al-Sultan on the western side of the city. In Central Gaza, the military said it conducted raids on militants' infrastructure.

The military also said it hit a structure used by Palestinian militants in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza Strip, saying gunmen were operating from a humanitarian area, and accused Gaza militants of exploiting civilian structure and population for military purposes, an allegation Hamas and other groups reject as false to justify such attacks.

A ceasefire effort led by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the United States has so far failed due to disputes between the combatants, who blame each other for the impasse.

Israel vowed to eradicate Hamas after its fighters killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage in an Oct. 7 attack, according to Israeli tallies. At least 38,919 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory offensive since then, Gaza health authorities say.

On Tuesday, Israel said it had eliminated half the leadership of Hamas' military wing and killed or captured about 14,000 fighters since the start of the war.

Israel says 326 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza.

Hamas does not release casualty figures and said Israel exaggerates its reports to give the impression of a "fake victory".

Gaza: Fresh airstrikes on defenceless Palestinians in centre, south, as conflict intensifies

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 18 July 2024

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Israeli occupied Gaza - New Israeli airstrikes reportedly struck southern and central areas of Gaza on Monday as UN humanitarians and partners continued to treat the victims of a deadly strike on Al Mawasi in southwest Gaza on Saturday that reportedly left at least 90 dead and around 300 injured.

In an update from Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis where victims have been admitted, veteran UN aid official Scott Anderson reported witnessing “some of the most horrific" scenes he had experienced in his nine months in Gaza.

“With not enough beds, hygiene equipment, sheeting or scrubs, many patients were treated on the ground without disinfectants, ventilation systems were switched off due to a lack of electricity and fuel, and the air was filled with the smell of blood,” said Mr. Anderson, Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator and Director of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza.

Left on hospital floor

The overwhelmed facility received more than 100 severe cases in one day, the UNRWA official continued. “I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment and others separated from their parents,” Mr. Anderson said, adding that parents had moved into the “so-called humanitarian zone” of Al Mawasi, in the hope that their children would be safe there.

In a statement, the Israeli military said that it had been targeting a Hamas military commander at Al Mawasi, which lies west of Khan Younis city, by the coast. The sand and seafront zone is now home to hundreds of thousands of people, including many forcibly uprooted from Rafah in southernmost Gaza in early May ahead of an incursion by Israeli forces.

Monday’s renewed hostilities in Rafah and central Gaza followed media reports of another strike on an UNRWA school-turned-shelter on Sunday in Nuseirat refugee camp. At least 17 people are believed to have died in the attack at the school, according to the local authorities.

Two other UNRWA schools were hit last week, with 190 of the UN agency’s facilities struck since the war erupted.

Tent misery

Last Wednesday, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, led an inter-agency mission to two informal shelter sites at Al Bureij and Al Maghazi refugee camps in Deir al Balah, central Gaza.

In Al Bureij, OCHA reported that 3,800 people were sharing 388 tents with no health services nor basic items including water and hygiene products. In Al Maghazi, more than 1,000 people including seven cancer patients were crammed into a damaged UNRWA school with no medical care, water or food.

“My colleagues from the humanitarian community are doing everything possible to increase medical capacity in Gaza, but impediments to humanitarian operations prevent us from supporting people anywhere near the scale necessary,” Mr. Anderson said, before repeating calls for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all remaining Israeli hostages taken during Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October, and a “meaningful opportunity” for healing to begin, stressing that civilians must be protected at all times.

No escaping aid delays

Multiple obstacles continue to prevent an appropriate level of aid entering Gaza, including long delays at checkpoints and a breakdown in law and order among people desperate for food. But efforts to provide referral services, tents, beds, stretchers, disposables and medications are ongoing, Mr. Anderson said.

Around 1.9 million displaced people in Gaza face dire conditions as the conflict continues to escalate, with thousands lacking clean water, sanitation and food, according to the latest reports from humanitarian agencies.

At a school in Deir al Balah where 14,000 people are sheltering, only 25 toilets are available, UNRWA noted. An ongoing lack of fuel deliveries into the enclave has also continued to hamper aid relief operations and the running of desalination plants, hospitals and other public services, with only 25 per cent of the daily fuel needed for humanitarian operations reported to have entered Gaza so far in July, causing a 40 per cent drop in public water distribution.

And amid ever-present fears of rising levels of malnutrition among the most vulnerable, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) warned that lack of access to food, water, sanitation and basic health services was leaving people more vulnerable to disease.

Between 8 and 11 July, 152 Palestinians were killed and 392 injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health (MoH). Since 7 October, at least 38,345 Palestinians have been killed and 88,295 injured, according to local health authorities in Gaza.

Gaza’s displaced ‘need everything’

Nine out of 10 Gazans are displaced and many “can’t afford to move anymore”, Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator Anderson told UN correspondents in New York on Monday, speaking from Khan Younis.

UNRWA teams are trying their hardest to make sure basic necessities such as access to food, water, medicine and hygiene kits, are being met.

Among the constant impediments to reaching people in need are restrictions on movement, safety for humanitarian staff, telecommunications challenges and fuel, he said.

“Recently there’s been a substantial breakdown in law and order”, he added, with municipal policing virtually non-existent following the Israeli order for officers to stay at home last February.

Hunger, anger, desperation

The lack of public order is having a “significant impact on our ability to bring things in, to scale”, he said, noting that truck drivers have also “been regularly threatened or assaulted.”

“We have had some challenges with people looting, which really isn’t a surprise after nine months. People are hungry, people are angry, people are desperate.”

Telling the story

Mr. Anderson also bemoaned the lack of international media access given by the Israeli military, emphasizing that factual reporting is “desperately needed” and “a very vital function by informing the public about what is happening”, especially regarding the impact on innocent civilians.

“So we would urge the Israeli authorities to allow international journalists to enter the Gaza Strip and at the same time, every effort must be made to protect the journalists and media workers wherever they are in Gaza.”

Most importantly, he told the briefing, “civilians must be protected at all times.”