Tag: Middle East

How a Palestinian teen’s release exposed Israeli mistreatment of prisoners | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israeli officials were displeased when Mohammed Nazal, an 18-year-old Palestinian, described his ordeal in Israeli prisons after being released as part of a truce agreement with Hamas last week.

The teenager from the town of Qabatiya in the occupied West Bank told Arab and Western media how he was beaten and denied medical assistance, but this was refuted by Israeli authorities who tried to paint him as a liar.

His testimonies and medical records have now been verified by a fact-checking agency, providing further evidence of the brutal mistreatment Palestinians suffer in Israeli prisons that has only exacerbated since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

What is Nazal saying?

Arrested in August and held without charge, Nazal was among more than 100 Palestinians kept in Israeli prisons – many arbitrarily – and released as part of a weeklong truce that ended on Friday.

After his release, he was interviewed by various news outlets, including Al Jazeera, to discuss his time in Israeli prison. He said prison guards grew significantly more violent after the war started.

“He kept beating me for eight minutes with a stick and without caring where it lands,” he told Al Jazeera of how an Israeli guard tortured him.

“I was covering my head. The stick was aimed here, at my head, but my hands would receive the blow.”

Images of Nazal with both hands held up by bandages – and his account of the ordeal – went viral. He said both hands suffered fractures and several fingers on both hands were broken. He may need surgeries on his road to recovery.

Nazal said he was “in pain on the floor for a week” in prison after the beatings, but was offered no medical assistance before his release was secured in a hostage exchange.

What is Israel saying?

Nazal was only able to talk about his experiences after he was united with his family by the Red Cross.

But after his account got out, Israeli officials sprang to action.

Ofir Gendelman, a media official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, released a video that showed Nazal did not have his hands bandaged when boarding a Red Cross bus.

That, he said, meant that his hands “were fine”. And he claimed this shows how Palestinians lie about what happens in Israeli prisons.

This is while Israel’s propaganda tactics and unfounded claims have been repeatedly laid bare publicly more than ever during the war.

Is there any proof?

So, is there any proof of the “war zone” Nazal experienced in Israeli prisons, where Palestinians are said to be living in inhumane conditions?

The young man is not the first Palestinian to come forward with such accounts. Many of the Palestinians who were released this week presented the media with similar accounts of torture, beatings and humiliation.

Practices in Israeli prisons have been thoroughly documented over a long time, as they have been ongoing for decades, ever since its occupation of Palestinian territories began in 1967, and even before, during the British control of the territory.

But Nazal has proof as well. Arab fact-checking platform Misbar analysed medical records issued by Nazal’s doctors on the day of his release. The records indicate that he had fractures on the metacarpal bones – the flat bones at the back of the hand.

Misbar also published X-rays of the teenager’s hands, taken on the day of his release on November 28. They also confirmed several fractures, corresponding with results found by a medical centre in Ramallah. Photos of Nazal after release also showed how he displayed considerable signs of bruising on his back.

The teenager’s medical records were also examined and verified by media outlets, including the BBC.

What else is happening in Israeli prisons?

Like thousands of other Palestinians, Nazal was held under “administrative detention”.

It’s a practice, supported by Israeli law, that allows Palestinians to be jailed for six months without charge or trial. That time span can be repeatedly extended for an indefinite period.

In addition to the physical abuse, rights groups have reported that the Israel Prison Service has taken other measures against Palestinian prisoners since the start of the war.

It has reportedly restricted access to water, food, medical care and communal items for prisoners, and has restricted or completely stopped family and lawyer visits.

It has also allowed prisoners to be put on mattresses on prison floors to enable already overcrowded prisons to take in more inmates.

Child inmates have also been documented to experience the same dire conditions as adults, and many of them go through Israeli military courts.

With Israel’s release of prisoners, thousands more still detained | The Take



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

‘Death corridor’: The al-Samounis recall terror of ‘safe passage’ in Gaza | Gaza News

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – It’s been two weeks, and the al-Samounis still have no idea what happened to their sons and brothers. They are in shock.

The 36 women and children, crammed into one tent for displaced people on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, have four blankets to share among themselves.

They used to live in Zeitoun, in the southeast of Gaza City, where they farmed their 69 dunams (17 acres) in peace, they said.

But from the first day of Israel’s assault on Gaza, October 7, they were forced to flee south, and decided to take what the Israeli army said was a “safe corridor”: Salah al-Din, the main road that runs north-south in the Gaza Strip. But the corridor was not so safe after all.

Zahwa al-Samouni, 56, could barely talk when she recounted how the Israeli soldiers took her three sons away.

Zahwa al-Samouni saw her sons taken by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint as they were fleeing south [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

The family were walking on the road, trying not to fixate on the bodies of dead Palestinians on the ground, when they reached a newly erected Israeli checkpoint. Before the family could pass through the turnstiles, the soldiers ordered Abdullah al-Samouni, 24, to step to the side of the road, in a trench hidden from view. His younger brother Hamam, 16, started calling for Abdullah, visibly distraught. The soldiers ordered Hamam to join his brother.

The oldest brother, Faraj, a farmer and father of six, shouted at the soldiers, asking them where they were taking Abdullah and Hamam. His protest resulted in the soldiers commanding him to join his brothers.

The rest of the family, stunned, made their way through the turnstiles.

“When we passed the checkpoint, I saw two men stripped to their underwear in the trench with numbers marked on their shoulders,” Zahwa said. “There were other men, and I could make out my son Faraj.”

Her sister-wife Zeenat, who is Abdullah and Hamam’s mother, said she informed the Red Cross of the brothers’ names, ID numbers and mobile phone numbers.

There are 36 al-Samounis in one tent in the central town of Deir el-Balah [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

“Every day that goes by is like a year for us,” she said. “I sit by the entrance of the tent hoping someone will have news of them. I just want to know what happened to them, if they’re OK, if they’re alive.”

The mother of seven had taken the so-called safe corridor three days before her sons and stepchildren. She had been staying at a relative’s house, then tried staying at a school shelter, but the bombings became too intense.

“We were afraid, but we decided to take the risk because we knew other people who managed to reach south,” the 49-year-old said. “We walked past our land, and we saw so many Israeli tanks there and all our homes destroyed.”

Zeenat and her family raised white flags and their IDs in front of the Israeli snipers.

“We walked with our hearts about to jump out with fear, starting from nine in the morning,” she said. “When we finally got to Deir el-Balah, the sun was setting.”

She said she had seen children’s torn limbs among the bodies on the road.

Zahwa said that when she made the same trek three days later, Israeli soldiers told them anyone who stopped moving at all or looked back would be shot.

“They jeered at us as we passed the checkpoint,” Zahwa said. “They swore at us in Arabic, using the most foul words, and cursed our prophet Muhammad and God. They called us Hamas supporters, and promised to finish us off when we go south.”

She gripped her face, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Her granddaughter and namesake, 10-year-old Zahwa, recalls the events of that day.

Zahwa al-Samouni shows a photo of her father Faraj, who was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers on November 16 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

“We were walking, my parents and two brothers and three sisters, and when we got to the checkpoint the Israelis took my dad and uncles,” she said, speaking with a clarity beyond her years.

“My dad [Faraj] was holding my hand, and the Israelis took him from me,” she said, pain etched on her face. “The soldiers also took the bag that had our clothes in it. Just clothes, not bombs or weapons,” she scoffed.

The younger Zahwa said the Israeli soldiers shot a man in front of them and did nothing as he bled to death.

“The man had learning disabilities,” she said. “He was walking in a line and looked back. The soldiers told him to look straight ahead, and as he turned his head they shot him in the stomach.”

“This is not a safe corridor, it’s a death corridor. It’s a corridor of fear,” she added. “They killed people, they beat them, and they made them take off their clothes.”

A pillar in the family

The horrors that the al-Samouni clan experienced are the latest in a series of traumas that began during the 2008-2009 Israeli offensive when soldiers killed 48 of their family members in Operation Cast Lead.

The army had corralled several families under one roof and fired missiles at the house, killing dozens. Some people managed to get out, waving white flags, but when the Red Cross was granted permission to enter the building three days later, they were met with the harrowing sight of 13 injured people, including eight children, who spent days without food or water, surrounded by the bodies of their parents and relatives.

Hamam al-Samouni, 16, was one of the brothers kidnapped by Israeli soldiers. Their fates are unknown [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

One of those killed was Zahwa’s husband, Attiya. Their daughter Amal, who is Abdullah’s twin sister, was only eight at the time but remembers everything in vivid detail.

“That cold January day, 100 Israeli soldiers raided our home and killed my dad in front of us,” the 24-year-old said. “They first threw a grenade at the entrance of the house, engulfing us in smoke.”

The soldiers shouted in Hebrew for the homeowner to step forward. Attiya, who had worked previously in Israel, raised his arms and identified himself.

“They shot him between the eyes, then in the chest,” Amal said. “Then they kept shooting, riddling his body with bullets.”

Earlier, as the tanks surrounded their home, Attiya had taught his children to say in Hebrew “We are children”, but it made no difference.

“After they shot my dad they began firing at us,” Amal said. “Abdullah and I were both wounded. They set a fire in one of the bedrooms, and we were suffocating from the smoke.”

Hamam was barely a year old at the time. Their brother Ahmad, four years old at the time, was shot twice in the head and in the chest and was left to bleed to death until dawn the next day, as the Israeli army prevented any ambulances from reaching the area.

Ahmad died in his mother Zahwa’s arms. She had lost her husband, her son, and her home and in the 15 years since that fateful day, the family had to work twice as hard to rebuild their lives.

Shifa al-Samouni, Faraj’s wife, said her six children cannot sleep without their father [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Faraj was at the centre of it all. He immediately took on the role of the man of the house with no complaints and helped raise his younger siblings. He was a farmer, and very handy. He built his home with his own hands and, despite their modest background, refused any charity.

“He was a pillar we all relied on,” his mother Zahwa said. “He was so caring, and with him around we never had to beg for anything.”

His daughter Zahwa can’t sleep at night, wondering whether her dad is dead or alive.

“I want him back,” she sobbed. “He’s my rock; without him I am nothing. I miss holding his hand, I miss giving him hugs.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Released Israeli captive urges gov’t to get others out of Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict

NewsFeed

An Israeli captive released last week has spoken publicly for the first time. Yelena Trupanob addressed a rally in Tel Aviv following the collapse of the Israel-Hamas truce, to plead that more be done to bring the remaining captives home, including her son still held in Gaza.

Published On 3 Dec 2023

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

UK to start Gaza surveillance flights to locate captives held by Hamas | Israel-Palestine conflict News

British officials say ‘unarmed and unmanned drones’ will conduct surveillance flights in efforts to recover captives from Hamas.

The UK’s military will conduct surveillance flights over Gaza to help locate captives held by Hamas, according to the British Ministry of Defence, joining the US in backing Israel in its war against the Palestinian armed group.

Hamas fighters seized about 240 Israelis and foreign captives during their October 7 attack, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel says 110 have since been freed – 86 Israelis and 24 foreigners – in exchange for some 240 Palestinian prisoners, mainly during a recent weeklong truce that ended on Friday.

Israel’s military said on Friday it had resumed bombardment of the besieged Palestinian territory. It blamed Hamas for the end of the truce that brought respite to people in Gaza from weeks of devastating bombing.

The resumption of combat has frustrated hopes for the swift release of the about 130 captives the Israeli army has said are still being held in Gaza.

The UK has said at least 12 British nationals were killed in the October 7 attacks – in which Israeli officials say about 1,200 people died, mostly civilians – and that a further five are still missing.

London has not confirmed how many of its citizens are being held by Hamas.

Israel responded to the October 7 attack by vowing to eliminate the Hamas group and its subsequent relentless air and ground campaign has killed more than 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to the authorities in Gaza.

Hamas has stated that it will continue negotiations on the release of further captives only after the end of the Gaza war, while Israel withdrew from the talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

‘Drones to be utilised’

Britain did not reveal when its military surveillance flights over the territory would start but stressed they would be unarmed and focused only on the captive recovery efforts.

“In support of the ongoing hostage rescue activity, the UK Ministry of Defence will conduct surveillance flights over the Eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza,” it said in a statement.

“Surveillance aircraft will be unarmed, do not have a combat role, and will be tasked solely to locate hostages,” the ministry added.

“Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage rescue.”

UK government minister Victoria Atkins told the BBC on Sunday that the aircraft to be utilised were “unarmed and unmanned drones”.

Alongside the United States, the UK in October deployed various military assets to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter “any malign interference in the conflict”.

That included maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft as well as a Royal Navy task group moving to the region, the Defence Ministry said at the time.

Britain’s defence exports to Israel were 42 million pounds ($53m) last year, according to Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who has said that London has no plans to stop arms sales to the UK.

Meanwhile, the White House, the largest supplier of arms to Israel, aims to lift nearly all restrictions on Israel’s access to weapons from the US.

If granted by lawmakers, the request would enable Israel to access more high-powered US weapons at a reduced cost, with less congressional oversight.

A report by The Wall Street Journal recently said that Washington gave so-called ‘bunker buster’ bombs and an array of other munitions to Israel for its war on Gaza.

The US has transferred 100 BLU-109 bombs to Israel that are meant to penetrate hardened structures before exploding, the report said, quoting unnamed US officials. Washington has also promised $14bn in aid to Israel – its closest ally in the Middle East – in addition to the $3.8bn annual military assistance.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israel is using the same tactics in Gaza that al-Assad employed in Syria | Opinions

As the humanitarian pause took effect in Gaza, footage of the massive destruction in the northern part of the enclave has started to trickle in.

Seeing these images of devastation, one cannot but think of Thomas Friedman’s reference to what he calls the “Hama rules”  in an article he published with The New York Times on October 14.

A neologism he coined many years ago, it refers to then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s violent razing of the city of Hama in 1982 that killed more than 20,000 Syrians. Friedman argues that brute force commands legitimacy in the Middle East. This idea is deeply problematic, but the scale of destruction in Gaza suggests that the Israeli government and the military have embraced it.

Indeed, Israel’s war on Gaza bears striking similarities to events in Syria. But we need not go as far back as the 1980s to find those parallels.

In 2011, when Hafez’s son, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, faced a nationwide uprising against his rule, he unleashed a violent campaign against the protesters that soon turned into a civil war.

The tactics of collective punishment he used, aided and abetted by the systematic dehumanisation of the opposition by some parts of Syrian society, are similar to what we are seeing in Gaza today.

In the earliest stages of the conflict, Israel justified a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off the supply of food, water, electricity and fuel, through systematic dehumanisation of its residents. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians “human animals”, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness”. Such language used by Israeli officials appeared to make the use of starvation as a weapon of war acceptable.

This sentiment seeped into social media where videos appeared of Israelis rapaciously mocking the residents of Gaza under siege by indulging in clean water or lavish meals. Some stooped even lower, producing racist vignettes making fun of Palestinian victims of Israeli bombardment.

And as Israeli military targets came to include Gaza’s hospitals and other civilian structures, the dehumanisation campaign of the Palestinian population also expanded. The official government narrative, maintained by Netanyahu and others, states that “terrorists had used hospitals as military bases”. Accordingly, medical staff became “terrorist collaborators” while patients and families who had sought refuge in medical facilities were – willing “human shields”. Their deaths – even in the eyes of Israeli doctors – were therefore justified.

But what seems lost in the present moment is that this campaign of dehumanisation is not unique. Since 2011, al-Assad has relied on eerily similar strategies to justify nearly identical military sieges and attacks on civilian infrastructure in rebel-held territories.

The 2015 siege on the town of Madaya near Damascus bears a striking resemblance to the current Israeli weaponisation of starvation in Gaza. As the al-Assad regime dismissed the local residents as “agents of terror”, Syrians in government-controlled areas bought into the narrative.

As the people of Madaya were reduced to subsisting on leaves, Syrian social media was filled with images and videos of detractors enjoying lavish meals and mocking their starvation. The Twitter hashtag “solidarity with the siege of Madaya” was flooded with culinary content to further brutalise an already brutalised population under siege. More than 420 people died in Madaya, including dozens of children, as a result of the blockade.

The al-Assad regime continued this policy of “starve or surrender” in multiple rebel-held territories, including Aleppo, Ghouta, and Daraya, without any meaningful response from the international community.

In parallel, the al-Assad regime also targeted civilian infrastructure as a war tactic, especially hospitals. According to the International Rescue Committee, only 64 percent of hospitals and 52 percent of primary healthcare centres remain operational in Syria as a result of attacks on healthcare facilities. The al-Assad regime has justified these offensives under the nebulous banner of “countering terrorism”, claiming that 119 healthcare facilities were “taken over by terrorist groups”.

But many of these facilities were put on a deconflicting list, shared with Damascus, and as the UN has pointed out, it was running at least one of them. An investigation by Human Rights Watch has also challenged the Syrian regime’s claims, pointing out they could not find any evidence of military equipment or personnel near the hospitals when they were targeted.

Israel is currently playing by al-Assad’s rules of war, in large part because to date the Syrian leader has not been held to account for those war crimes, or the dehumanisation of his people that enabled them.

On the contrary, al-Assad has emerged from isolation by the international community, particularly after the February 2023 earthquakes in Syria. He has ridden the wave of normalisation by attending Arab League summits and has even been invited to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

Indeed, the victims of the Syrian regime’s brutality have recognised the parallels with Gaza. Zina Najjar, a Syrian activist, posted on X that what is transpiring currently in the besieged enclave is analogous to the events of Madaya eight years ago. Recollecting the brutal siege, Najjar warns that “international failure and silence” in Syria is encouraging the same crimes in Gaza.

That international silence must end immediately, both in Syria and in Gaza. More pressingly, the Israeli government must face swift pushback from the international community for its dehumanisation of the people of Gaza and for the collective punishment it is inflicting on them.

Otherwise, as in Syria, starvation and the deliberate bombardment of hospitals as war tactics will become chillingly normalised as par for the course.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Near Sfax, refugees scramble after violent clashes with Tunisia police | Features

Sfax, Tunisia – On the outskirts of Tunisia’s second-largest city and the destination point for thousands of sub-Saharan African refugees hoping to get to Europe, 15-year-old Osman Bah from Guinea points to his sleeping quarters.

The spot is hard to make out among the grey sand and plastic bags scattered across the wasteland, but it is there, he says, in the lee of some piled-up dirt and stones.

Other than the squat, yurt-shaped shelter, put together with pallets and plastic, there is nothing here but the distant outline of phosphate heaps, the occasional passing train and a white horse, tethered to a tree and standing defiant against the bleakness of its surroundings.

All the same, it is here and to the olive groves of Al Amra, about 25km (15.5 miles) away, that thousands of Black refugees and migrants were either bused or fled to after the Tunisian security services launched an operation to evict them from Sfax’s city centre in September.

Osman Bah, 15, came to Sfax from Guinea hoping to reach Europe [Simon Speakman Cordall/Al Jazeera]

Since then, the situation has deteriorated further. Right now, the fields around Al Amra have been locked down by the police and national guard as security units comb the area for a gun and ammunition reportedly lost during confrontations with the refugees and migrants sleeping rough there. A situation those living on the scrubland refer to as “the problem”.

The choice of Al Amra as the site where the authorities moved them is significant.

Long before the evictions, Al Amra and the small, hardscrabble hamlets around it, such as El-Hamaziah, were already established departure points for those seeking to escape their lives in sub-Saharan Africa for new ones in Europe. There, crude metal boats would be assembled by local fishermen and their families, the refugees say, before being bought and chartered for Europe by the refugees themselves.

The decision to flood the region with yet more arrivals from sub-Saharan Africa has not been explained. However, some say it is not insignificant that the move came amid rising tensions between Tunisia and the European Commission surrounding a “pact on migration” that the two sides signed in July.

An influx of refugees fleeing the war in Sudan, which has raged since April, has already sorely tested Tunisia’s resources and put its relations with Europe under increasing strain.

Violence against Black people had exploded across Tunisia in February when President Kais Saied accused the refugees of bringing “violence, crime and unacceptable practices” to the country as part of a wider plot to change the predominantly Arab country’s demographic makeup.

A horse tethered to a tree on the outskirts of Sfax, Tunisia, where refugees from sub-Saharan Africa wait, hoping to get on a boat to Europe [Simon Speakman Cordall/Al Jazeera]

‘The police released tear gas, lots of tear gas’

On November 24, the situation in Al Amra escalated again. “Lots of police arrived,” Omar Jjie, an 18-year-old Gambian tells Osman, who translates roughly. “They dug up the boats [to be used for transporting people to Europe] buried under the sand.

“The boys, they grew very angry and threw stones, so the police released tear gas, lots of tear gas.”

In the ensuing melee, four national guardsmen were reportedly injured. Video shared widely on social media ostensibly shows a stricken guardsman lying on the ground, immobile and bleeding.

The people camped there claim that three of their number lost their lives during the violence as well. One, Mohammed Ceesay, was well known to those sleeping rough.

Twenty people were arrested in the confrontation’s immediate aftermath. Reports of more being rounded up and expelled to Libya and Algeria are also growing, which would be an act in contravention of international law and is one Tunisia has denied undertaking.

Omar insists he played no role in the violence, saying he only witnessed it. But as someone who had already paid the 500 euros ($545) for a place on one of the boats, raised through casual work picking olives and money sent by wire from his family in Gambia, he had no choice but to watch as his boat was unearthed and destroyed by the police.

Now, he sits slumped outside a cafe on the far side of the wasteland, back on the outskirts of Sfax, a small crowd gathered around him, asking if what friends in Al Amra have told them about the events over social media is true.

“I walked [here] on the back road,” he says, switching to English. “I walked from 19km,” he says, using the shorthand common among many here, supplanting road distance markers for place names. “I don’t want the police to see me. There are so many police there. They are looking for the gun.”

Locked down

Since November 24, security units have essentially locked the region down. French newspaper Le Monde reported increasing numbers of special units from the national guard being deployed as well as police officers with the National Rapid Intervention Brigade.

The local member of parliament, Fatma Mseddi, spoke on local radio, accusing the refugees of “terrorising” local inhabitants and being members of Boko Haram despite the majority coming from Sudan, not a location typically associated with the armed group.

Ibrahim Njie from Guinea, who says some of his friends have been detained by police, avoids the authorities [Simon Speakman Cordall/Al Jazeera]

“The police, they are angry and they lose one gun and six rounds,” Ibrahim Njie from Guinea says as he stands outside a nearby mosque, its foundation skirted with rubble and isolated scrub. “My friend says the police came and took them prisoner. They say, ‘If you return the gun, we will let you go.’”

One young man who gives his name simply as Mohammed adds: “If [the police] catch you here, they take away your phone and your money. Sometimes they take you away to Libya or Tebessa [a town in Algeria close to the border with Tunisia]. Many of my friends have been taken.”

“Six buses, they come here,” he says gesturing around the desolate scrubland.

According to Mohammed and others, two days after the confrontation in Al Amra, two Black refugees died after falling from a rooftop while trying to escape the police.

Osman believes he will get to Europe eventually, whatever the circumstances, he says.

He texts from a friend’s phone later in the day. He had just talked to his sister in Gambia.

It had been months since he last talked with them. For Osman, at least, there is still hope.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Over 700 killed as Israel pounds Gaza, widens evacuation orders | News

The Israeli army has ordered more people to evacuate from southern Gaza, which was earlier declared ‘safe zone’.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air raids in the past 24 hours in Gaza as the Israeli army ordered more areas in and around the enclave’s second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate.

The Director General of the Government Media Office in Gaza told Al Jazeera on Sunday that more than 700 Palestinians have been killed since Israel resumed bombardment after a seven-day truce ended on Friday.

More than 1.5 million people have been displaced, most of them from northern Gaza, since Israel launched a military offensive on October 7 in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.

Overnight and into Sunday, intense bombing was reported in Khan Younis, Rafah, and some northern parts targeted by Israel’s air and ground attacks.

“Everywhere you turn to, there are children with third-degree burns, shrapnel wounds, brain injuries and broken bones,” James Elder, UNICEF’s global spokesperson, told Al Jazeera from Gaza.

“Mothers crying over children who look like they are hours away from death. It seems like a death zone right now.”

People check a house hit by Israeli bombing in Khan Younis [Mahmud Hams/AFP]

The main hospital in Khan Younis received at least three dead and dozens wounded on Sunday morning from an Israeli air raid that hit a residential building in the eastern part of the city, according to an Associated Press journalist at the hospital.

Separately, the bodies of 31 people killed in Israeli bombardment across the central areas of the strip were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza’s central city of Deir el-Balah, said Omar al-Darawi, an administrative employee at the hospital.

In northern Gaza, rescue teams with little equipment scrambled on Sunday to dig through the rubble of buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp and other neighbourhoods in Gaza City in search of potential survivors and dead bodies.

An injured man being rescued after a house was hit by Israeli bombing in Khan Younis [Mahmud Hams/AFP]

Hopes of any future cessation in the fighting were dashed on Saturday when Israel announced it was pulling out negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, saying talks had reached an “impasse”.

Israel has said it is working to eliminate the armed Palestinian group Hamas, which launched deadly attacks on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking more than 240 captives, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel has killed more than 15,200 Palestinians in Gaza attacks since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Evacuation orders

The Israeli military on Sunday expanded evacuation directives in Khan Younis and the vicinity, urging residents from at least five additional areas to relocate for safety purposes.

Leaflets distributed by the military instructed residents to move south to Rafah, or a coastal area in the southwest, emphasising that Khan Younis was a “dangerous” combat zone.

Rights groups have raised concerns against Israel’s stepped-up attacks in the southern part of the besieged enclave, which was earlier declared a “safe zone”.

Following an Israeli air raid on an eastern residential building, the main hospital in Khan Younis reported at least three deaths and dozens of injuries on Sunday morning, according to an AP journalist.

A significant portion of the 2.3 million inhabitants in the territory now resides in the southern areas due to the war.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a 21-year-old Palestinian was shot dead on Sunday by Israeli forces in a raid in Qalqilya.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Israel arrested at least 60 Palestinians in overnight raids in the occupied territory.

The latest arrests add to more than 3,000 Palestinians arrested in the West Bank since October 7, according to the UN Human Rights Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Analysis: Israel resumed bombing Gaza, what has happened since? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Fighting in Gaza resumed almost on cue on Friday when the last extension of the truce expired and hopes in attempts to renew it again faded.

Back in action first were Israeli F-16 bombers, pounding more than 400 targets in Gaza, including some in the very south near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. However, the focus appeared to be in the north and there is little doubt that the Israeli army will try to advance deeper towards the centre of Gaza City just as Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced: tanks, artillery, armoured bulldozers, then infantry.

Meanwhile, contradictory news from Qatar, where intermediaries from the host country, Egypt and the United States were still trying to convince the warring sides to reach another pause. The first announcement on Saturday said the talks were continuing.

Then at mid-afternoon, the Israeli prime minister’s office issued a statement: “Following the impasse … David Barnea, head of the Mossad, ordered his team in Doha to return to Israel.”

Writing official statements is an art: One should never lie but there is no need to tell the whole truth. While the “official” Israeli secret service delegation may indeed be on its way home, I have no doubt that at least a small team remains in Doha. They may not be Mossad, but it would be foolish not to leave qualified liaison officers who can keep talking.

Another reason for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to maintain at least a core team of officials in Qatar would be to avoid straining relations with traditional ally the United States, which has supported Israel greatly in the post-October 7 crisis.

US President Joe Biden visited Israel offering Bibi a photo op the cunning veteran of Israeli politics jumped on, splattering the media with their embraces and carefully selected soundbites. Washington followed with massive supplies of military goods, some commercial sales, and others loans. The biggest may be the $14.3bn aid package “for Israel’s defence”.

Weapons and armaments have been pouring into Israel by US C-17 aircraft and commercial airlifters practically from October 8. The Washington Post reported that 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells (155mm) came by air, a figure consistent with the estimated amount of ordnance expended in the eight-week campaign and the carrying capacity of the aircraft.

Less urgent supplies will be arriving on less glamourous, higher-capacity ships.

As the bombing campaign resumed, the media revealed the types of bombs shipped to Israel, focusing mostly on the specialised heavy “bunker busters”. The report claims that 100 BLU-109 bombs were shipped. Some media speculated that this delivery may signify a change in tactics against the Hamas, but there is nothing to be excited about.

Palestinian children wait for food aid amid food shortages, as Israel resumes bombing Gaza, in Rafah southern Gaza Strip, December 2, 2023 [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

The 900kg (2,000lb) BLU-109 is nothing more than a “dumb bomb” with thicker outer walls than general-purpose bombs, that help it penetrate deeper into the earth or through thicker layers of reinforcing concrete before exploding. The corresponding weight class general-purpose MK84 bomb carries 430kg (950lb) of explosives to the “bunker-busters” 240kg (530lb).

But the BLU-109, which costs US taxpayers $65,000 apiece versus $16,000 for the MK84, is of little use to Israel as a dumb bomb. To be effective and able to hit targets with precision, it needs to be upgraded with a far costlier laser guidance head unit and a control tail unit. According to the same reports, the US delivered 3,000 such JDAM kits that convert dumb bombs into smart weapons.

Apart from 100 bunker busters, US deliveries reportedly included two sizes of general-purpose dumb bombs: 5,400 MK84s – 900kg (2,000lb) – and 5,000 MK82s – 450kg (1,000lb) – and 1,000 precision-guided GBU-39 “small diameter bombs” – 150kg (300lb).

Worried about the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of Palestinian targets that could be compared to carpet bombing, the US warned Israel on several occasions to reduce the number of civilian casualties.

After the resumption of bombing on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel that “the massive levels of loss of civilian life and displacement scale we saw in the north must not be repeated in the south”.

Explosions in Gaza after Israeli air raids shown in a long-exposure photo taken from southern Israel, on December 2, 2023 [John MacDougall/AFP]

He allegedly received Israeli assurances that they would try to kill fewer civilians, but the casualty toll in the first 24 hours of renewed fighting, with nearly 200 reportedly killed in the bombardment, leaves little room for optimism.

Can anything about the intentions of the next stage of aerial bombardment be determined from the numbers and types of bombs delivered to the Israeli army?

First, there is no reason to put too much importance on the delivery of 100 bunker busters. Israel already had those in its arsenal and used some, so this may be a simple replenishment or a modest build-up. While long and sometimes deep, Hamas tunnels are mostly not covered in thick layers of concrete, so Israel would need just a handful of bunker busters.

Second, one could compare the number of conventional bombs delivered, 10,400 of two different weight classes, with the number of JDAM kits, 3,000. Along with the transfer of 1,000 small but precise “small-diameter bombs”, these figures may suggest that one in every three or four bombs dropped in future might be “smart” and that Israel would be making an effort to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, as it allegedly promised the US.

Such a conclusion would be premature. Without knowing the number of dumb bombs and smart kits that were in Israeli warehouses and bases before October 7, a top military secret, the ratio of precision-guided bombs versus dumb ones that indiscriminately destroy civilian infrastructure and kill non-combatants, cannot be made and it will take several more days to establish whether there is any change in the way targets on the ground are attacked.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 58 | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel continues to ignore international calls for putting a stop to the war and civilian deaths – here are the major updates.

Here’s what is to know about the situation on Sunday, December 3, 2023:

The Israeli bombardment

  • The Israeli army continued to relentlessly bomb different areas across the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians since the truce ended on Friday. At least 15,207 Palestinians have been killed so far, including 6,150 children.
  • On Sunday morning alone, more than 30 Palestinians were killed in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. Israel has conducted more than 600 air raids since Friday. The Israeli army has called on residents from certain neighbourhoods in Khan Younis to evacuate to other areas. The warning came through a new evacuation system that divides Gaza into many small blocks with the stated purpose of avoiding civilian casualties.
  • Israel appears to be planning to expand its ground offensive to include southern Gaza as well. This and the brutal aerial raids have left Palestinians wondering where to take shelter.
  • Hamas launched the largest barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire ended, hitting multiple places within Israeli territory in the south, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Most of them were intercepted.
  • The Times of Israel reported that an Israeli official had confirmed Israeli intentions to create a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Gaza border to prevent future attacks after the war.

Diplomacy

  • Israel recalled the Mossad delegation it had sent to Qatar to negotiate late on Saturday, saying an “impasse” had been hit in the talks.
  • A Hamas official told Al Jazeera negotiations on prisoner exchanges were over and would not resume until Israel halted its attacks and handed over all Palestinian prisoners.
  • United States Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said he learned from his time leading forces against ISIL (ISIS) that “you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians”. He added that Washington “will remain Israel’s closest friend in the world”.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron, who is in Doha to help negotiate a truce, said, “There is no lasting security for Israel in the region if its security is achieved at the cost of Palestinian lives.”
  • Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), visited Israel and the occupied West Bank on Saturday. Palestinian rights groups boycotted Khan’s visit and asked why he did not visit refugee camps in Gaza under Israeli bombardment.

Humanitarian aid and West Bank

  • Humanitarian aid in Gaza has “largely halted” after Israeli attacks resumed on Friday, according to the United Nations. It also said there were only limited distributions of flour in areas south of Wadi Gaza in the past few days.
  • Sharing data from the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company, the UN has also said the besieged enclave has had no electricity since October 11. Palestinians also continue to struggle to get water.
  • Israeli raids have not stopped across the West Bank either. A 21-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead on Sunday morning in Qalqilya in the occupied territories, where more than 250 people have been killed since October 7.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Photos: More deaths and destruction as Israel targets southern Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel has carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza for a second day after a weeklong truce with Hamas collapsed despite international calls for an extension.

Clouds of grey smoke from the strikes hung on Saturday over Gaza, where the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said nearly 200 people had been killed since the pause in hostilities expired early on Friday.

Residents feared the latest bombings presage an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pin them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them into Egypt.

The southern part of Gaza, including Khan Younis and Rafah, was pounded by Israeli war planes and artillery on Saturday. Thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering there because of fighting in the north.

Residents said houses had been hit and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks had taken up positions near the road between Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah.

“A night of horror,” said Samira, a mother of four. “It was one of the worst nights we spent in Khan Younis in the past six weeks since we arrived here. … We are so afraid they will enter Khan Younis.”

Officials said the overall death toll in Gaza since the October 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war has surpassed 15,200 while more than 40,000 people have been wounded in the Israeli attacks.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version