Israel attacks UNRWA convoy as Blinken lands in region for talks

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 05 February 2024

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OCCUPIED GAZA - Israel's naval forces attacked an UNRWA aid convoy that was waiting to enter northern Gaza according to the aid agency, although there were no casualties reported from the incident.

The attack comes as an independent review group is appointed to investigate allegations that six UNRWA staff members were involved in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.

In addition US Secretary of State has arrived to Saudi Arabia in a bid to secure a ceasefire and hostage exchange between Hamas and Israel.

The arrival of blinken comes as Israeli continues its airstrikes throughout Gaza, hitting the 'safe zone' of Rafah and killing 30 people in Deir el-Balah on the Gaza war's 122th day.

A mosque and homes were destroyed as well as residential homes in the city, with tens of injuries also reported.

Fighting continues in the southern city of Khan Younis, with the Israeli military announcing it has killed dozens of Palestinian fighters over the past 24 hours.

Clashes between Hezbollah and Israel were also reported on the Israel-Lebanon border, with the deaths of three of its members in the cross-border exchange.

Israel's war on Gaza has killed 27,478 Palestinians since 7 October, with a further 66,835 reported wounded according to Gaza's health authorities.

One week on, is Israel complying with ICJ genocide ruling on Gaza?

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 03 February 2024

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KHAN YUNIS, GAZA - A week has passed since the ICJ ruled against Israel's war on Gaza, but has Israel complied with any of the ordered measures?

One week has passed since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) made a ruling in the genocide case South Africa lodged against Israel last December.

In its ruling on 26 January, the court ordered Israel to comply with six provisional measures. These include taking every necessary step to avert genocide, curbing and penalising any direct and overt calls to genocide, and swiftly implementing measures to guarantee access to essential services and humanitarian assistance for Gaza’s civilian population.

Additionally, the ICJ demanded Israel safeguard genocide evidence and report on its compliance within a month.

Yet, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said on Wednesday that Israel has repeatedly defied the court’s orders, escalating violence by killing hundreds of civilians in Gaza in mere days.

The New Arab looks at whether Israel is actually complying with the ICJ’s orders, one week after they were made.

Has Israel taken measures to prevent genocidal acts?

Israel has carried on its offensive in the same way it did prior to the court orders a week ago.

Since 26 January, Israel has killed almost 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the enclave's health ministry.

As has been the case throughout the Israeli onslaught that began on 7 October, the vast majority of those killed have been civilians.

On Friday, several civilians were killed as Israel intensified strikes of civilian neighbourhoods in Rafah, as reported by WAFA, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority.

In another clear violation of the ruling, Israel is continuing to target civil infrastructure, including hospitals, further burdening Gaza's struggling healthcare system and punishing civilians.

This week, the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza faced attacks, with reports of tanks striking parts of Khan Younis – notably around Nasser Hospital, the largest operational hospital in southern Gaza.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has also documented the Israeli siege of the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis that by Friday had been held for 11 straight days.

The PRCS has said the hospital is becoming a "living graveyard", with 15 patients dying and being buried in makeshift graves in its courtyard since the siege began.

Israeli forces also stormed the hospital on Thursday, with the PRCS documenting heavy gunfire at the entrance to the hospital as medical staff continued to work on patients.

Several displaced people sheltering in the hospital were injured when a ceiling collapsed after intense Israeli shelling in and around the hospital complex.

Has Israel escalated potential acts of genocidal violence since then?

Not only is Israel continuing its current war on Gaza, but it is expanding it.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who was named in the ICJ ruling for inciting genocide against Palestinians, said on Thursday that Israel now plans to assault Rafah, the border city in the south of the enclave.

Rafah has become a last refuge for over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, with only the tightly sealed border with Egypt lying beyond it.

If Israel carries out an assault on the city with the same ferocity as its attacks on Gaza City and Khan Younis, it could potentially lead to a huge amount of civilian casualties and the destruction of yet more vital civil infrastructure.

Has Israel prevented and punished officials who make calls to genocide?

The compilation of Israeli officials inciting genocide against Gaza, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s referencing of "Amalek" to President Isaac Herzog saying that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, was considered to be one of the strongest parts of South Africa’s case against Israel.

Since the ruling, not a single Israeli official has been prosecuted or even investigated for any comment that could fall under incitement to genocide.

In fact, numerous government ministers, among them the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, participated in a conference held in Jerusalem last Sunday calling for the settlement of Gaza with Jewish settlers.

Has Israel ensured humanitarian aid can easily enter Gaza?

On the same day that the ICJ ordered Israel to ensure basic services and humanitarian aid for civilians, Tel Aviv accused 12 UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) employees of involvement in the 7 October attacks on southern Israel.

Consequently, major donors like the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany suspended their funding to UNRWA, with Israeli officials openly calling for the destruction of what is the main humanitarian agency in Gaza.

This has raised concerns that UNRWA could collapse by the end of February, potentially leading to an unprecedented deterioration of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

What if Israel fails to comply with the ICJ’s ruling?

The ICJ has full legal authority, and if, in one month’s time, Israel fails to submit a report showing it has adequately lived up to its ruling, prosecution could apply.

At the very worst, UN sanctions could be imposed on Tel Aviv.

However, sanctioning Israel would require complete consensus in the UN Security Council. The US would almost certainly veto any attempt to prosecute and then duly sanction Israel, regardless of what the ICJ says.

The cover provided to it by the US at the UN is likely why Israel has not heeded a single word of the ruling against it by the ICJ one week on, and why it is unlikely to do so in the future.

Israeli ministers reportedly considering limiting aid entering Gaza

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 01 February 2024

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JERUSALEM - Ministers in Israel’s war cabinet are reportedly considering limiting the amount of aid reaching Gaza, as rightwing protesters disrupt the entry of trucks carrying desperately needed humanitarian supplies to the besieged Palestinian territory.

Benny Gantz, the centrist retired army general who joined an emergency wartime government formed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after 7 October, and Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israeli army and war cabinet observer, have suggested temporarily limiting aid to weaken the Hamas, Israel’s Channel 12 reported late on Wednesday.

The two National Unity party politicians put the proposal forward in meetings this week, the station said, after receiving a report from Israel’s internal security service that estimated up to 66% of aid entering Gaza was being hijacked by Hamas. That figure cannot be independently verified, but reports of desperate people or armed men seizing aid deliveries have become common in the strip.

“We can consider reducing the scope of supplies as part of the pressure to build a different mechanism in the Gaza Strip and as part of the efforts to free the hostages,” the politicians reportedly said.

No final decision has been made on the issue, Channel 12 said. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

Humanitarian groups including the UN estimate that 500 lorries carrying aid are required daily to provide the minimum help required to the people of Gaza, but the number able to cross through Egyptian and Israeli checkpoints is often below 100. Kerem Shalom crossing, which before the war was where commercial goods entered Gaza, was reopened by Israeli officials in mid-December at the request of the US, in order to increase and speed up deliveries.

The Channel 12 report comes a week after the international court of justice ruled that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to avoid a genocide in its war with Hamas, as well as to immediately “enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” to address the devastating humanitarian crisis facing Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

About 27,000 people in Gaza have been killed and more than 85% of the population have been forced from their homes in the nearly four-month-old war sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israeli communities, in which 1,200 people were killed about 250 abducted.

Revelations last week that 12 members of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which employs 13,000 people in the Gaza Strip and provides essential public services, had been accused of taking part in the 7 October attack have put a spotlight on humanitarian agencies working in the territory. Several western countries have suspended funding in response to the allegations. Palestinians and aid workers have urged donor countries to reconsider, saying that the funding freeze amounts to collective punishment and will lead to famine.

According to Marwan al-Hams, the director of al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, much of the medical aid that is entering the strip is “largely random”. Deliveries have included special refrigerators for storing Covid-19 vaccinations, Covid testing devices, and personal protective equipment. Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, has been inundated with people displaced from elsewhere in the territory.

While there are no statistics on what is sent or whether it is used, Hams said, a list of needs is compiled by the Palestinian ministry of health and distributed to all parties. Representatives for UNRWA and the World Health Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Much needed items like sterile surgical gauze often do not reach Gaza, and anaesthetics enter at a very small rate. Medications for kidney failure and cancer are nonexistent, and those for chronic diseases are very scarce,” he said. “Many essential devices, such as drills used in orthopaedic surgery, are not available because the existing ones are broken, and hospital beds are in acute shortage.”

The reported proposal to limit aid comes after protests by Israel’s far right at the Kerem Shalom and Nitzana crossings with Gaza and Egypt respectively, aimed at halting the flow of aid into the territory.

The demonstrations, now in their second week, managed initially to severely slow the movement of aid lorries. Several relatives of the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza attended the first handful of protests. Four drivers were reportedly assaulted during protests last Sunday.

The demonstrations have been somewhat curtailed after an army decision on Monday to declare the two crossings as closed military zones and set up checkpoints. A few dozen people still managed to make it to the crossings on Wednesday, some walking for several hours across fields after cars and buses were turned back.

About 30 people were arrested in scuffles with police on Wednesday.

“Not one bit of aid goes into Gaza until the last hostage is released,” one of the leaders of the campaign, Sefi Ben Chaim, told about 200 demonstrators on Sunday. “Every drop of aid goes to a Hamas fighter who is shooting at our soldiers … No country in the world aids its enemies in such a way.”

Rivka, 38, from Rehavot, said she had taken a day off work to be at the protest on Wednesday. Blocking aid to Gaza was an initiative that “transcends left and right”, she said.

“I don’t believe there are innocent people in the Gaza Strip any more,” she said. “If it comes down to my children, or their children, there is no contest. I don’t want to take my traumatised three-year-old into the bomb shelter any more.”

The Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh travelled to Cairo on Wednesday to discuss a ceasefire proposal that would reportedly involve the staged release of Israeli hostages.

The plan emerged from talks in Paris involving intelligence officials from Israel, the US and Egypt, and the prime minister of Qatar. Efforts to broker a ceasefire have been under way since a seven-day truce in November, in which about 100 Israeli hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails.