Israel’s operation to free four captives held by Hamas killed more than 270 Palestinians and injured around 700 others in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. What’s being praised as a success in Israel has been condemned by several countries and organisations, including the UN, EU, and aid agencies.
Published On 9 Jun 2024
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Thousands of protesters gathered in a town under colonial rule in the 1940s. They raised national flags and placards and called for self-determination.
The authorities tried to confiscate the flags, triggering a riot that killed several officers and settlers.
The colonial army, its settler militias and police responded by bombing villages and homes where “rebels” were ostensibly hiding.
Thousands were killed and entire families wiped out.
That was not Palestine, but Setif, Algeria. And it was not Israel’s occupation, but France’s.
“Setif revealed the hypocrisy of the liberation of Europe as it maintained a settler colony,” said Muriam Hala Davis, a historian of Algeria at the University of California in Santa Cruz, referring to the incident that came as Europe celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Several scholars believe Israel’s violent occupation of Palestinian lands has sharp parallels with France’s 132-year colonisation of Algeria, which ended in 1962 after an eight-year war for independence.
France displaced Algerians, confined them to small spaces that could not sustain human life and armed French settlers against them.
Israel has done the same since the Nakba in 1948 when Zionist militias ethnically cleansed at least 750,000 Palestinians to establish Israel on top of the ruins of their homes and history.
It occupied more land in the 1967 war, subjugating Palestinians to military rule since then and expanding its settlements on their land, which are illegal under international law.
“[In both contexts], we can talk about the disregard and dehumanisation of Arab life … either as part of Islamophobia or anti-Arab sentiment,” Davis said.
Israel’s dehumanisation of Palestinians is essential to justify its occupation and repression – both to its own citizens and to its Western allies, scholars told Al Jazeera.
Rights groups say Palestinians are portrayed as a security and demographic threat to Jewish Israelis, necessitating violent raids, a blockade on Gaza since 2007 and a separation wall that fragments and reduces freedom of movement in the occupied West Bank.
“There is certainly a continuum that has some deep resonances,” Davis said.
Over the past 17 years, Israel has launched five wars on Gaza to “mow the lawn”, a phrase Israel uses to refer to its goal of degrading Hamas’s military capabilities by fighting periodic wars.
Palestinian civilians have been the biggest casualties of each conflict.
The West Bank has not been spared either. Israel killed thousands of civilians during two Intifadas (uprisings) in 1987 and 2000 against Israel’s ever-deepening occupation.
Both Intifadas started off largely nonviolent, yet Israel responded by killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
Israel’s latest war on Gaza began after Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 taken captive.
Over the past eight months, Israel has responded by killing more than 36,000 Palestinians, displacing more than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and reducing most of the enclave to rubble.
Israel’s military conduct has drawn comparisons with France’s operations against the National Liberation Front, an armed group better known by its French acronym, FLN.
Like Hamas, the FLN carried out a surprise operation on the settler town of Philippeville in August 1955, attacking settlers and military installations and killing more than 120 people.
Similar to Israel, the French authorities responded by arming settlers and coordinating attacks on several Algerian villages that killed about 12,000 people, mostly civilians.
The attack on Philippeville is on a long list of brutal attacks and incidents that unfolded during Algeria’s war for independence.
Israel’s current practice of trying to confine millions of Palestinians to “safe zones” in Gaza also echoes the eviction of hundreds of thousands of Algerians from their villages during the war, said Terrance Peterson, a scholar on the Algerian war at the University of Florida.
France bombed villages and relocated their inhabitants to “regroupement centres”, which were camps surrounded by barbed wire where people died from malnutrition and disease.
But unlike Gaza, Peterson told Al Jazeera, these areas were never bombed or attacked.
“I think the logic is the same in that [Israel and France] wanted to separate and isolate the civilian population into ‘safe zones’ in order to survey them and separate them from the insurgents,” he said.
“That means there were forbidden zones and anyone in those forbidden zones would be killed.”
Israel and France both tried to brand their enemies as rapists, according to Sara Rahnama, a scholar of the gendered history of the French-Algerian war
“In November and December, … the response to mass protests [for a ceasefire in Gaza] was that Hamas intentionally used rape as a weapon of war and that is a marker of how depraved they are and how necessary this struggle is for the values of Western civilisation,” Rahnama said.
She believes the Israeli accusations fit into a broader historical pattern whereby Indigenous populations are portrayed as morally and sexually depraved to justify confiscating their land and using violence against them.
“I remember thinking that this is a really old claim. From the very beginning of the French colonial project, they [propagated ideas] of Muslim sexual and gender inferiority. That was imperative to how the French legitimised their [colonial] project.”
The UN said it has “reasonable grounds” to believe some incidences of sexual violence occurred on October 7 as well as against captives taken by Hamas although it is impossible to determine the scope of such violence.
Hamas has repeatedly denied the accusations.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal expert, said Israel’s allegation of mass rapes on October 7 also reminded her of how French colonial authorities framed Muslim Algerians.
“The [French] had talked about mass rape and mentioned stories such as breasts being chopped off and fondled by FLN fighters,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Fast forward to October 7 … and Israel did the exact same thing. [Israel] portrayed [the attack] as super savage in order to elevate their [own status] and to carry out a massive genocide.”
Israel has long said it would investigate Israeli soldiers and settlers accused of perpetrating human rights abuses against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
But scholars and rights activists said Israel’s legal system is designed to legitimise its settlements and occupation, not seek justice.
From 2017 to 2021, investigations into Israeli soldiers led to indictments in less than 1 percent of the cases, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group.
Palestinians are tried in military courts and face a conviction rate of 99 percent. In many cases, Palestinians are also held without charge or trial under “administrative detention”, a relic of British colonisation in the area under which their lawyers are unable to see evidence against them.
“In the case of Palestine, … there is a legal system that facilitates a colonial process, and … its aim is the erasure of the natives,” Buttu said. “There is just no way that you will have a legal system that protects Palestinians. The national aim is the erasure of Palestinians.”
Davis added that both Israel and France entertained the belief that they could oversee a project of “good colonisation”.
In the 1950s, some French reformists called for giving political rights to a minority of Algerians who fought with France in World War II. Others advocated giving Muslim Algerians some form of self-rule in parts of the colony.
Davis said these calls are similar to Israelis who advocate for giving Palestinians limited rights or sovereignty.
“There is a fundamental fantasy … where both France and Israel blame a few bad apples for a structural project of white supremacy that was behind [France’s project] in Algeria or Israel’s project as a Jewish state,” she said.
“For those of us who have organised around Palestine, we are now horrified by the scale of the violence [in Gaza]. But none of us are fundamentally surprised by a genocide that underpins [Israel’s settler] project.”
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Latest attacks come as Israeli officials ratchet up calls for expansion of fighting along Israel-Lebanon border.
At least two people have been reported killed in southern Lebanon as cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel continues amid the threat of wider war.
The two killings were the result of Israeli attacks on the outskirts of the town of Aitaroun, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Saturday. The agency said Israeli missiles targeted a cafe at a petrol station.
In a statement, Hezbollah accused Israel of “targeting civilians”, while Israel’s military later said its forces had targeted a Hezbollah fighter in the area. The identities of those killed were not immediately known.
Also on Saturday, Hezbollah said that it had fired Falaq 2 rockets at a military command centre in northern Israel. A security source told the Reuters news agency that it was the first time the rockets had been fired at Israel. Falaq 1 rockets have been used by Hezbollah in attacks on Israel several times.
The violence comes as both Hezbollah and Israel have increased cross-border fighting that has persisted since October of last year, with the Lebanon-based group saying it seeks to draw Israeli resources away from the war in Gaza.
However, Israeli officials have ratcheted up rhetoric in recent days, raising the prospect of more destructive escalation along its northern border.
Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was “prepared for very intense operation” along its border with Lebanon.
“One way or another, we will restore security to the north,” he said on Wednesday. That day an Israeli soldier was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack in the town of Hurfeish. Ten others were injured.
Meanwhile, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went further, saying on Telegram on Tuesday that “all Hezbollah strongholds should also burn and be destroyed”, and calling for “War!” A day earlier, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a “ground invasion” to push back Hezbollah fighters from the border.
For his part, deputy Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem told Al Jazeera earlier this week that the group did not seek to widen the war, but was “ready” regardless. He warned of “devastation, destruction and displacement” for Israelis if that came to pass.
Israeli attacks since October 7 have killed more than 300 members of Hezbollah and about 80 civilians, according to the group and Lebanese officials. Attacks from Lebanon on Israel have killed 18 Israeli soldiers and 10 civilians, the Israeli military has said.
The fighting has been the most volatile since Israel and Hezbollah went to war in 2006. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes on both sides of the border.
On Saturday, Hezbollah claimed six attacks on Israel. They included the targeting of the Zarit barracks and Israeli soldiers in a newly developed artillery range in the occupied Shebaa Farms. The group claimed a “direct hit” in both instances.
Israel said it had intercepted two rockets from Lebanon towards the Zarit area in the Upper Galilee region. The military also said that its jets had struck infrastructure in the area of Khiam. Its tanks had earlier fired at a Hezbollah military structure in the Kfarkela area.
Israeli attacks using “incendiary phosphorus shells” also caused forest fires in the area of Alma ash-Shaab, NNA reported.
Speaking during a joint news conference with United States President Joe Biden in the French capital Paris on Saturday, French President Emmanual Macron called for both sides to de-escalate the situation.
France, which had occupied Lebanon in the wake of the partition of the Ottoman Empire, has sought to serve as an intermediary between Israel and Hezbollah amid the most recent flare-up.
Macron said France and the US were “redoubling efforts together to avoid a regional explosion, particularly in Lebanon”.
Paris was working on “advancing parameters” to reduce tensions and end what he called an institutional vacuum in Lebanon, he added.
Meanwhile, the former head of Mossad’s intelligence gathering department, Haim Tome, told Israel’s Hayom media on Saturday that war with Hezbollah would severely harm Israel’s ability to function as a nation.
Tome warned that a full war with Hezbollah would mean attacks deeper inside of Israel, possibly targeting Tel Aviv.
The former official also warned that Hezbollah could use its sizeable arsenal, which includes precision missiles, to target Israeli gas fields.
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Gaza’s Government Media Office says an “Israeli massacre” at the Nuseirat refugee camp has killed 210 Palestinians and wounded more than 400.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said “large numbers” of killed and wounded on Saturday were arriving at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the majority of them children and women.
“Dozens of injured people are lying on the ground, and medical teams are trying to save them with the basic medical capabilities they have available,” it said, adding that it is short on medicine and food, and that its main generator has stopped functioning due to a lack of fuel.
A Health Ministry spokesman earlier said that there were still “a lot of” bodies and wounded people that remained on the streets.
Communications were affected amid the intense bombardment, but reporting from inside the “overwhelmed” hospital via a telephone call, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said the situation is tense, with terrified people on the street not knowing where to turn.
“There are explosions happening every minute. Ambulances are transferring the wounded to the hospital where we are trapped. It’s chaos inside the hospital. There are children among the wounded,” she said.
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described Al-Aqsa Hospital as a “complete bloodbath”, adding that it looked “like a slaughterhouse”.
The devastating attacks took place as Israeli forces conducted a rescue operation in Nuseirat to free four Israeli captives. At least one Israeli captive was killed in the operation.
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Four Israelis held hostage by Hamas were freed in a daring raid in central Gaza on Saturday.
Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andri Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, were all rescued, the Israel Defense Forces said after the mission, the BBC reported.
The hostages were rescued during a “complex” operation at two locations in Nuseirat, central Gaza, the IDF said. They are the first rescued since two others were freed during a raid in February.
Israel says that another 130 hostages remain in Gaza, though a high percentage of them could be dead as a result of deprivation from captivity.
Video of Argamani embracing her father after being reunited was broadcast by Israel News 12.
Footage of Argamani had been dragged into Gaza by Hamas terrorists circulated widely after their Oct 7 attack in the country. More recently Argamani had been featured in propaganda videos broadcast by the group.
The Saturday raid is the largest single recovery of hostages captured by Hamas, brining the total number of rescued up to seven.
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The body of John the Baptist is believed to be buried beneath Sebastia’s picturesque Ottoman-era village centre. In the Bible, he is said to have baptised Jesus in the Jordan River east of Sebastia.
He was reputedly beheaded by Roman-appointed King Herod I, who ruled Palestine from 37 BC, and his head was buried in Damascus.
The Israeli government, however, focuses on Sebastia being the reported site of the capital of the Kingdom of Israel during the First Temple Period (circa 1,200 to 586 BC).
The importance Israel gives to the site can be seen in the boundary between Sebastia’s archaeological park and the village of Sebastia itself.
The second Oslo Accord in 1995 divided the Palestinian West Bank into three areas with roughly two-thirds in Area C under full Israeli administration and control, including Sebastia’s archaeological park.
The rest of Sebastia is in Area B under Palestinian control although Israel still controls security.
Mayor Azem said the conservation of historical sites in Sebastia has always caused conflict between Palestinians and their occupiers who want to “Judaise the site”.
Last year, the Israeli government announced about 30 million shekels (more than $8m) for the restoration of the archaeological park. Recently, senior Israeli government ministers, including Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman and far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, have visited the site.
Azem fears once the war on Gaza is over, the Israeli government will revive the scheme.
“When Sebastia is mentioned, Israel’s extremist government is convinced, or the politicians are trying to convince themselves, that the history of the site belongs to the Jewish people.
“And that’s why they have prepared a budget … under the pretext of restoring the archaeological area and protecting it, but really they want Sebastia transformed into a Jewish-only site.”
Al Jazeera made inquiries with Israeli authorities about the claims Azem and others in this article made but received no response by the time of publication.
Palestinian efforts to work on the site have often been delayed, Azem said, with the municipality unable to excavate, work on the ruins or even clean the site without aggression and intimidation from the military.
“All of these things lead to a … fear of visiting as a result of the pressure exerted by the occupation through the army and settlers,” Azem said.
“They’re doing [this] to scare us, trying to kick us out of our homes and lands to empty it for the settlers.”
Sebastia’s archaeological park has been under the control of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority since 1978. The Yesha Council, which oversees all Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, has its headquarters at Shavei Shomron. Azem says this only emphasises Israel’s intent to control the village and its historical sites.
Tour guide, archaeologist and villager Suhaib Huwwari said settlers are guilty of “crimes against history” and the village is unable to stop artefacts from being looted. Some settlers, he said, have artefacts from the archaeological park on display in their homes.
“We spoke to UNESCO and gave them information about the Israeli project and called for protection, but ultimately, Israel doesn’t care about international criticism,” Azem said.
Al Jazeera contacted UNESCO about these claims to ask whether progress has been made on registering Sebastia as a World Heritage Site and whether UNESCO condemns violence in the village.
A UNESCO spokesperson did not comment on the behaviour of the settlers and the Israeli military in Sebastia and said the body has not received an application from Palestine for full World Heritage Site status.
In Sebastia itself, Azem says, life has changed after the two “catastrophes” – first, the killing of Fawzi and, second, Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 36,000 Palestinians.
“Of course [Fawzi’s killing] left a big impact,” he said. “People are scared – parents are scared.… When soldiers invade Sebastia, parents try to get their kids back to their houses.”
“[And] since October 7, the army kills without any accountability. You see the massacres in Gaza every day, and no one cares. [It’s the] same here in Sebastia. When they come to the village to kill and shoot, … there is no accountability.
“But we will not give up on our home nor Palestine’s history.”
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Health Ministry reports ‘large numbers’ of killed and wounded rushed to hospital as a result of nonstop Israeli bombardment.
The Israeli military is conducting intense assaults across the Gaza Strip by air, land and sea, killing more than 200 people and spreading fear among its war-weary displaced population.
Dozens of air raids hit the besieged territory on Saturday, particularly in Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat in central Gaza, homes west of the city of Rafah in the south and multiple areas in Gaza City to the north.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said “large numbers” of killed and wounded were arriving at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the majority of whom are children and women.
“Dozens of injured people are lying on the ground, and medical teams are trying to save them with the basic medical capabilities they have available,” it said, adding that it is short on medicine and food, and that its main generator has stopped functioning due to a lack of fuel.
A statement released by the Gaza Government Media Office said that 210 people had been killed in the Israeli attacks on Nuseirat and other parts of central Gaza.
A health ministry spokesman earlier said that there were still “a lot of” bodies and wounded people that remained on the streets.
Communications were affected amid the intense bombardment, but reporting from inside the “overwhelmed” hospital via a telephone call, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said the situation is tense, with terrified people on the street not knowing where to turn.
“There are explosions happening every minute. Ambulances are transferring the wounded to the hospital where we are trapped. It’s chaos inside the hospital. There are children among the wounded,” she said.
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described Al-Aqsa Hospital as a “complete bloodbath”, adding that it looked “like a slaughterhouse”.
“The images and videos that I’ve received show patients lying everywhere in pools of blood … their limbs have been blown off,” she told Al Jazeera.
“That is what a massacre looks like,” she added. “It means parents running around caring for their children who have blood running from their head trying to find a medic to treat them. But it’s so chaotic and there’s so many patients that is vastly outnumbering the healthcare ability to care for them.”
In a short statement, the Israeli military said its forces were “targeting terrorist infrastructure in the area of Nuseirat”. It later announced its forces rescued four captives during the operation in Nuseirat. The four, who were taken into Gaza after the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7, were in “good medical condition”, the military said.
Also in central Gaza, at least six Palestinians from one family were killed by Israeli forces after they shelled their home in the Bureij refugee camp in the morning.
Dozens of air raids targeted the southern areas of Gaza City, with witnesses reporting that entire residential blocks were wiped out, while gunships bombarded the area near its fishing port.
The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reacted to Saturday’s attacks by calling for an emergency UN Security Council session on what he denounced as a “bloody massacre that was carried out by the Israeli forces”.
The Israeli military is only intensifying its deadly campaign in Gaza after an attack on Thursday killed about 40 people sheltering at a United Nations-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where some 6,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
It claimed it killed 17 “terrorists” in that attack, but the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in a condemning statement that the “school turned shelter” was targeted without any warning and those responsible must be held to account.
Hamas accused the Israeli military of providing “false information” about the 17, saying at least several of those announced killed are still alive.
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UN says it is ‘pursuing all available channels’ to secure the safe release of its personnel ‘as soon as possible’.
Yemen’s Houthi group is detaining at least 11 United Nations personnel, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric has said, calling for the staff’s unconditional release.
Dujarric said on Friday the UN was seeking clarification from the Houthis about why the Yemeni employees were detained. The two women and nine men work for five different UN agencies and the UN envoy for Yemen.
“We’re pursuing all available channels to secure the safe and unconditional release of all of them as rapidly as possible,” said Dujarric, adding that the UN also wanted access to the staff.
In a series of raids, armed Houthi intelligence officers also detained three employees of the US-funded pro-democracy group National Democratic Institute (NDI) and three employees of a local human rights group, three officials of Yemen’s internationally recognised government told Reuters on Friday.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) decried the detentions, saying that the Yemeni group’s refusal to disclose the location of the detained individuals “can amount to enforced disappearance” under international law.
.@UN_Spokesperson: “We can confirm that the Houthi de facto authorities have detained 11 United Nations national personnel working in #Yemen. We are pursuing all available channels to secure the safe and unconditional release of all of them, as rapidly as possible.”@OSE_Yemen pic.twitter.com/lPqQOdvhy2
— UN Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (@UNDPPA) June 7, 2024
“The Houthis should immediately release any UN employees and workers for other independent groups they have detained because of their human rights and humanitarian work and stop arbitrarily detaining and forcibly disappearing people,” Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at HRW said in a statement.
“Such detentions not only attack the rights of these individuals but also undermine essential humanitarian and human rights work in Yemen at a time when the majority of Yemenis do not have adequate access to basic necessities like food and water.”
The reason behind the detentions remains unclear. But the apparent crackdown comes at a time of increased tensions and questions over the sustainability of the relative calm between the Houthis and the internationally recognised government.
Last month, the government demanded all banks move their headquarters to its seat in the southern city of Aden, a move that could put further economic pressure on Houthi-controlled areas. The Houthis control the capital Sanaa and present themselves as the legitimate authorities in the country.
Bloomberg News reported on Thursday that Washington is looking to block major parts of a United Nations peace plan that the warring parties in Yemen adopted in December unless the Houthis cease their attacks on international shipping.
Since November, the Yemeni group has been launching drone and missile strikes targeting ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a campaign it says is intended to pressure Israel to end its war on Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians.
In a statement on social media platform X, Yemen’s Saudi-backed government’s Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani called the detentions an “unprecedented escalation and a flagrant violation of international laws and conventions”.
Former employees of the United States Embassy in Sanaa, which shuttered in 2015, also have been detained and held by the Houthis.
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The United States military has announced it has reinstalled a temporary aid pier in Gaza that had been damaged in bad weather, saying humanitarian assistance will flow through the floating dock in the “coming days”.
The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Friday that the pier will enable the delivery of “much-needed humanitarian aid” to Gaza.
The Palestinian territory has been brought to the verge of famine due to a suffocating blockade by Israel, a top US ally that receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington every year.
“In coming days, CENTCOM will facilitate the movement of vital food and other emergency supplies, in support of the US Agency for International Development,” the US military said in a social media post.
Jun 7, 2024 at 16:09
At approximately 2:15 p.m. (local Gaza time) on June 7, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) successfully reestablished the temporary pier in Gaza, enabling the continued delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. In coming days, CENTCOM will… pic.twitter.com/YMJiCVGvwP— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) June 7, 2024
Aid groups have long warned that the US pier is an ineffective way to deliver aid and cannot be a substitute for opening land routes, which had been blocked or severely restricted by Israel.
Late in May, 20 aid organisations, including Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, called the US-installed dock part of “cosmetic changes” that fail to address the crisis adequately.
“As Israeli attacks intensify on Rafah, the unpredictable trickle of aid into Gaza has created a mirage of improved access while the humanitarian response is in reality on the verge of collapse,” the groups said in a statement.
“The ability of aid groups and medical teams to respond has now all but crumbled, with temporary fixes such as a ‘floating dock’ and new crossing points having little impact.”
To critics, the $230m pier has come to symbolise the failures and contradictions of US policy in Gaza.
The administration of President Joe Biden denies that Israel is blocking aid to Gaza while regularly urging the US ally to allow more assistance into the territory.
The US also provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, including heavy bombs and artillery shells that Biden has admitted have killed Palestinian civilians.
US laws prohibit military aid to go to countries that block US-backed humanitarian assistance.
Biden announced plans to build the pier in his State of the Union Address in March, saying the dock would be able to “receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelter”.
The project was completed in mid-May, but days later, waves swept away vessels supporting the pier, raising questions about the initiative’s viability. By the end of the month, the pier itself sustained damage and required repairs.
The pier is set to be operational again as Israel continues to block the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which previously served as a major artery for aid and humanitarian workers.
Another major issue worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the inability to deliver aid to people once it reaches the territory.
Israel has killed more than 200 humanitarian workers since the beginning of the war, according to Save the Children.
An Israeli air raid in April killed seven World Central Kitchen workers delivering aid in the territory, sparking global outrage.
Still, Biden has resisted calls to restrict or condition military aid to Israel, often reasserting his “ironclad” commitment to the US ally.
In recent days, Israel has killed dozens of Palestinians at UN schools in Gaza serving as shelters for displaced people.
An Al Jazeera visual analysis concluded this week that US weapons were used in an Israeli strike that killed at least 40 people at a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
On Friday, Hamas said the targeting of schools by Israel is part of the ongoing US-backed “genocide” against Palestinians.
“The administration of US President Joe Biden bears full responsibility for these ongoing crimes by continuing to supply the fascist entity with weapons and munitions, as well as political and diplomatic support, and terrorizing and obstructing international justice from assuming its role in stopping this genocide and holding its perpetrators accountable,” the Palestinian group said in a statement.
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The United Nations is adding Israel to its so-called “blacklist” of countries that have committed abuses against children in armed conflict, an Israeli diplomat has confirmed, as thousands of Palestinian children have been killed in the Israeli military’s continued assault on the Gaza Strip.
In a social media post on Friday, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said he received official notification of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s decision.
“This is simply outrageous and wrong,” Erdan wrote, alongside a video of him speaking into a telephone and condemning the move.
“I responded to the shameful decision and said that our army is the most moral in the world. The only one being blacklisted is the Secretary-General who incentivizes and encourages terrorism and is motivated by hatred towards Israel.”
Commenting on Erdan’s remarks later in the day, Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said a UN official had called the Israeli envoy as “a courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed on the annexe” of the annual “Children in Armed Conflict” report.
“It is done to give those countries a heads-up and avoid leaks,” Dujarric told reporters, adding that the report is set to be presented to the UN Security Council on June 14 and then officially published a few days later.
“Ambassador Erdan’s video recording of that phone call, and the partial release of that recording on Twitter, is shocking and unacceptable – and frankly something I’ve never seen in my 24 years serving this organisation,” Dujarric said.
I received the official notification about the Secretary-General’s decision to put the IDF on the “blacklist” of countries and organizations that harm children. This is simply outrageous and wrong because Hamas has been using children for terrorism and uses schools and hospitals… pic.twitter.com/o1civfJFAk
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) June 7, 2024
The annual report on children in armed conflict compiles “a list of parties engaging in violations against children”, including killing and maiming, sexual violence and attacks on schools and hospitals.
Guterres faced criticism from Palestinian rights advocates for failing to place Israel on the so-called list of shame, which included Russia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Syria and Haiti.
The blacklist is meant to call out parties engaged in abuses against children. But other countries can use it to restrict arms sales to the offenders.
Senior Palestinian official Riad Malki welcomed the UN’s decision on Friday, saying that the move is overdue.
“Now, faced with the catastrophe in Gaza that the world sees with its naked eyes with the genocide that specifically targets children and women, the UN secretary general no longer has excuses not to place Israel on the blacklist,” Malki said in a statement.
Rights groups have condemned the dire toll Israel’s bombardment and siege of Gaza has had on Palestinian children across the enclave.
More than 36,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since early October, including 15,571 children, according to the Gaza government media office.
UN experts have also said Israel’s restrictions on deliveries of food, water, medicine and other critical supplies have created a humanitarian crisis, with parts of the coastal territory facing the threat of famine.
Earlier this week, the UN’s child rights agency UNICEF said nine in 10 Palestinian children in Gaza were living in “severe child food poverty, surviving on diets comprising two or fewer food groups per day – one of the highest percentages ever recorded”.
By comparison, in 2020, only 13 percent of children in the Gaza Strip were living in severe child food poverty, UNICEF said.
The World Health Organization also said last week that more than four in five Palestinian children in Gaza “did not eat for a whole day at least once in the three days” ahead of a food insecurity survey.
Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) has also reported on the dire consequences Israel’s continued military assault on Gaza is having on Palestinian children, including thousands that have been critically injured since October.
The collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system has meant many patients, including children, are unable to get the care they require, the group said.
“Palestinian children who survive Israeli attacks face a lifetime of recovery to heal from the physical and psychological trauma,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, DCIP’s accountability programme director, said in a statement on Wednesday.
In one testimonial gathered by DCIP, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy named Mohammad described his difficult journey to recovery after he was shot in the back by an Israeli quadcopter in March.
He is now paralysed in the lower part of his body.
“I spend most of my time on a mattress, lying on my back. Also, I suffer from ulcers due to prolonged sitting, and have not healed yet. The medicine for these wounds and painkillers are expensive and my father cannot always afford them,” Mohammad told DCIP.
“I used to love playing football, as I always stood as a goalkeeper,” he said. “I also loved repairing watches and electrical appliances, but now I cannot do that due to my disability.”
In January, Save the Children said more than 10 children in Gaza lose limbs daily.
But Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz slammed the UN’s decision on Friday, calling it “shameful”.
“The [Israeli military] is the most moral army in the world – and no fictitious report will change that. This step will have consequences for Israel’s relations with the UN,” Katz said in a social media post.
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