Toll of Israel-Palestine crisis on children ‘beyond devastating’

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 01 November 2023

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GAZA CITY - Gaza has become a “graveyard” for children with thousands now killed under Israeli bombardment, while more than a million face dire shortages of essentials and a lifetime of trauma ahead, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths, who has been visiting Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, spoke to families in Gaza over the phone from east Jerusalem on Tuesday and said that what they have endured since the start of Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ deadly 7 October attacks is “beyond devastating”.

“When an eight-year-old tells you that she doesn’t want to die, it’s hard not to feel helpless,” he wrote on social platform X.

Hostages’ families ‘living in agony’

On Monday Mr. Griffiths met in Jerusalem with family members of some of the more than 230 hostages held in Gaza since 7 October. Reportedly about 30 of them kidnapped by Hamas terrorists are children.

The UN relief chief said that for the past weeks these families “have been living in agony, not knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive”, and that he couldn’t “begin to imagine” what they are going through.

The UN has repeatedly called for the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages.

‘Unbearable’ thought of children buried under rubble

Reportedly more than 3,450 children have been killed in Gaza according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.

Another 1,000 children have been reported missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble, awaiting rescue or recovery, UN humanitarian affairs coordination office OCHA said.

OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said that it is “almost unbearable to think about children buried under rubble with very little possibility for getting them out”.

Decades of trauma ahead

“Threats go beyond the bombs and mortars”, UNICEF’s James Elder stressed. Infant deaths due to dehydration are “a growing threat” in the enclave as Gaza’s water production is at five per cent of the required volume due to non-functioning desalination plants which are either damaged or lack fuel.

When the fighting finally stops, the costs to children “will be borne out for decades to come”, he said, due to the horrific trauma faced by survivors.

Mr. Elder cited the example of a UNICEF staffer’s four-year-old daughter in Gaza who has started self-harming because of the daily stress and fear, while her mother told colleagues, “I do not have the luxury to think about my children’s mental health – I just need to keep them alive”.

Humanitarian ceasefire essential

Mr. Elder reiterated calls, “on behalf of the 1.1 million children in Gaza living through this nightmare”, for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and opening of all access points for sustained entry of humanitarian aid.

“If we had a ceasefire for 72 hours, this would mean a thousand children would be safe again for this time,” he said.

Aid ‘a fraction of what is needed’

On Monday, a total of 26 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, OCHA’s Jens Laerke said, with the hope that more trucks will enter on Tuesday.

This brings the total number of trucks allowed through the crossing from 21 to 30 October to 143.

OCHA stressed that while the increase in the volume of aid entering Gaza in the past two days is welcome, “current amounts are a fraction of what is needed to prevent further deterioration in the already-dire humanitarian situation, including civil unrest”. Before the escalation close to 500 trucks, both commercial and humanitarian, would enter the enclave every working day, including some 50 trucks of fuel.

Briefing the UN Security Council on Monday, Mr. Griffiths spoke about the urgency of replenishing fuel supplies, “vital for powering most essential services, including hospitals and water desalination plants, and to transport humanitarian relief inside Gaza”.

Attacks on healthcare

The public health catastrophe in the enclave is being compounded by attacks on health. UN health agency (WHO) said that it has documented 82 in Gaza so far.

OCHA warned that the vicinities of two hospitals in Gaza city and northern Gaza were reportedly bombarded for the second consecutive day on Monday, prompting Mr. Griffiths to share his concern with the Security Council over “allegations of military installations in the close vicinity of hospitals and the request by Israeli authorities for hospitals, including Al Quds and Shifa, to be evacuated”.

Protect medical facilities ‘at all times’

In response to a question over these allegations, UN human rights office (OHCHR) spokesperson Liz Throssell reiterated on Tuesday that hospitals are protected buildings under international humanitarian law.

If proven, the use of human shields in hospitals would amount to a war crime, she said. However, “regardless of the actions of one side, for example using hospitals for military purposes, the other side must comply with international humanitarian rules on the conduct of hostilities” which extend special protection to medical units at all times, she insisted.

Where medical units lose their special protection as a result of being used outside their humanitarian function to commit acts harmful to the enemy, and where a warning for the harmful use to cease has gone unheeded, “still, any attack must comply with the principles of precautions in attack and proportionality”, Ms. Throssell explained.

Entire population of Gaza becoming 'dehumanised' says UN commissioner

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 31 October 2023

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Patrick Wintour, Guardian Diplomatic editor

LONDON - The entire population of Gaza is becoming “dehumanised”, the commissioner general for the main UN agency in Palestine has told the UN security council, saying a ceasefire has become a matter of life and death for millions.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for the UNRWA was one of three speakers to starkly describe the scale of the damage being inflicted on Gaza, as UN agencies piled pressure on the Security Council to set aside its divisions and back some form of immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

The speakers detailed a breakdown in civil order, the loss of clean water and a death rate of children that matches the number of children killed in conflict in the last four years.

The debate called by the United Arab Emirates was intended to build on the momentum created by Friday’s vote by the UN general assembly calling for a humanitarian truce, a vote seen as a way of shaming the superpowers to abandon their arguments for not backing a form of ceasefire.

Four previous draft UN security council resolutions on the crisis have been vetoed either by Russia or the US. Efforts are now being made by the 10 elected members of the security council – including Brazil, the current security council president – to frame a resolution that the five permanent members would feel forced to adopt.

Lazzarini accused Israel of “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza, and of forcing their displacement from the north of the territory to the south – where they are still not safe.

More than 8,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s attack, who Lazzarini said included 64 UNRWA staff.

He said that a UN worker named Samir, as well Samir’s wife and eight children, were killed just hours before the meeting.

“My UNRWA colleagues are the only glimmer of hope for the entire Gaza Strip … but they are running out of fuel, water, food and medicine and will soon be unable to operate,” said the Swiss-Italian official.

The proposed security council resolution – which would be legally binding if passed – is likely to be published in the next few days. But Russia and the US are still far apart, with Russia demanding the US back a full ceasefire, which it has previously rejected.

The UAE ambassador Lana Zaki Nusseibeh said the council may be broken altogether if it ignored the will of most of the world as expressed through the general assembly’s vote.

She said there had been 76 attacks on healthcare bodies in Gaza with 20 hospitals damaged. “Let me be clear, these sites are protected by international law,” she said, adding that warnings before attacks did not alter hospitals’ protected status.

Dangerous and unrealistic evacuation orders had to end, she said, describing them as “cruel and reckless, and so is our delay as a security council”.

She continued: “The drums of war are beating. Taking these warnings seriously begins with stopping this war in Gaza. We do not serve Israel’s security by enabling it to go on. We cannot reverse the heinous 7 October attacks by Hamas by condoning this war in which civilians are paying the price.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador, said she supported humanitarian pauses to allow hostages to get out, to allow foreign citizens to leave and to allow safe passage for civilians.

Lazzarini said no place was safe in Gaza, and warned that a further breakdown of civil order in the territory would make it “extremely difficult if not impossible” to deliver more aid.

“Most of the people of Gaza felt abandoned. They feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas. This is dangerous – an entire population is being dehumanised. The atrocities of Hamas do not absolve the state of Israel from its obligations under international humanitarian law. Every war has rules and this one is no exception,” he said.

A senior UN aid official, Lisa Doughten, said more than one border crossing was needed to deliver aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, but Kerem Shalom, controlled by Israel, is the only one equipped to take enough trucks.

Aid trucks have been trickling into Gaza from Egypt over the past week via Rafah, the main crossing that does not border Israel.

“More than one entry point into Gaza is indispensable if we are to make a difference – Kerem Shalom, between Israel and Gaza, is the only crossing equipped to rapidly process a sufficiently large number of trucks.”

Mass graves, unclaimed bodies and overcrowded cemeteries

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 29 October 2023

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By ISABEL DEBRE and WAFAA SHURAFA

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — It was neither the place nor the time for a proper goodbye, said Omar Dirawi. Not here, in this dusty field strewn with dead people wrapped in blankets and zipped up in body bags. And not now, as Israeli airstrikes crashed around him for the third week, erasing more of his neighborhood and sundering hundreds of families and friendships.

Yet on this October week in Gaza’s central town of Zawaideh, the 22-year-old Palestinian photojournalist buried 32 members of his family who were killed in Israeli air raids last Sunday.

Dirawi’s aunts, uncles and cousins from Gaza City had heeded Israeli military evacuation orders and taken refuge in his home farther south. Days later Dirawi was unloading their bodies from the back of a truck, digging a narrow trench partitioned with cinder blocks and reciting abbreviated funeral prayers before nightfall, when Israeli warplanes screeched and everyone ran indoors.

“There’s nothing that feels right about this,” Dirawi said of the mass burial. “I haven’t even grieved. But I had no choice. The cemetery was full and there was no space.”

Palestinians say this war is robbing them not only of their loved ones but also of the funeral rites that long have offered mourners some dignity and closure in the midst of unbearable grief. Israeli strikes have killed so many people so quickly that they’ve overwhelmed hospitals and morgues, making the normal rituals of death all but impossible.

And along with everything else stolen by the bombardments, Palestinians on Saturday added another loss: cellular and internet service. A few in Gaza who managed to communicate with the outside world said people could no longer call ambulances or find out if loved ones living in different buildings were still alive.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas mounted a bloody and unprecedented attack on Israel, the Israeli military’s response has left over 7,700 Palestinians dead, said the Gaza-based Health Ministry. Of the dead, it added, nearly 300 have not been identified. Fear and panic were spreading Saturday as Israel expanded its ground incursion and intensified bombardment.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble as Israel’s air raids impede and imperil civil defense workers, one of whom was killed during a rescue mission Friday. Sometimes it takes days for medics to recover bodies. By then corpses are often too swollen and disfigured to be recognizable.

“We have hundreds of people being killed every day,” said Inas Hamdan, a Gaza-based communications officer for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency. “The whole system in Gaza is overwhelmed. People are dealing with the dead however they can.”

Overcrowded cemeteries have compelled families to dig up long-buried bodies and deepen the holes. That’s how survivors interred Bilal al-Hour, a professor at Gaza’s Al Aqsa University, and 25 of his family members killed Friday in airstrikes that razed their four-story home in Deir al-Balah.

Al-Hour’s brother, Nour, exhumed his family’s old plots in the local cemetery Friday to place the newly deceased inside. His hands dark with grave dirt, he became breathless listing each relative being lowered into the ground.

“There’s Bilal’s son with his wife and children, his other younger son and of course his daughter who finished high school last year and was supposed to be a doctor,” he said before trailing off and quoting the Quran. “To Allah we belong, and to him is our return.”

Overflowing morgues have compelled hospitals to bury people before their relatives can claim them. Gravediggers have laid dozens of unidentified bodies side by side in two large backhoe-dug furrows in Gaza City now holding 63 and 46 bodies, respectively, said Mohammed Abu Selmia, the general director of Shifa Hospital.

The nightmare of ending up as an anonymous body piled up in a morgue or chucked into the dirt has increasingly haunted Palestinians in Gaza.

To increase the chances of being identified if they die, Palestinian families have begun wearing identification bracelets and scrawling names with marker on their children’s arms and legs.

In some cases, bodies have decomposed so much they are unrecognizable even to their kin. In other cases, not a single family member may survive to claim the dead.

“We often find this during our work, even just (Thursday) night in Gaza City when 200 people were killed, there were names and ID numbers written in ink on the children’s bodies,” said Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson of the Palestinian Civil Defense. “It’s a pain I can’t describe, to see that.”

Gaza’s Awqaf ministry, which is in charge of religious matters, now urges hasty burials and authorizes the digging of mass graves due to the “large numbers of people killed and the small amount of space available.” Each Gaza governorate has at least two mass graves, authorities say, some holding over 100 people.

In the crowded Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Wednesday, a fierce barrage of Israeli airstrikes leveled an entire block — some 20 multi-story buildings — killing 150 people and trapping more beneath the ruins, residents said. Shell-shocked survivors staggered out of the hospital, not knowing what to do with the dead.

“We have no time to do anything and no space anywhere,” said 52-year-old Khalid Abdou from the camp. “All we can do is dig a big hole with our hands. Then we throw bodies inside.”

Residents of Nuseirat peered into dozens of blood-smeared body bags arranged outside Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Thursday, searching for familiar faces, Abdou said. Workers labeled some body bags “unknown” before shoveling them into mass graves. Families were buried together.

When trying to sleep, Abdou said he hears sounds from that night — the thunder of the blast mixing with screams of shock and the cries of children.

But what keeps him up most, he said, is the thought that no one washed the bodies of the dead or changed their clothes before burial. No one lovingly shrouded their bodies, as is customary in Islam, or held a poignant service.

And certainly no one served the traditional bitter coffee and sweet dates to friends and relatives paying condolences.

“In Islam we have three days of mourning. But there’s no way can you observe that now,” Abdou said. “Before the mourning ends you’ll probably be dead, too.”