GAZA RELIEF # 56 October 12, 2024
Testimony and video from on the ground. Israeli attacks on UN Peacekeepers, UNRWA
Media coverage is largely shifting to the broader, regional war, but there’s no let-up of strikes on Gaza.
These scenes are now being re-created in Beirut, southern Lebanon, and Syria. The death toll in Lebanon alone now exceeds 2,000.
The NYTimes continues to provide excellent coverage, below.
FROM HAITHAM
“A new massacres committed by the IDF against displaced people at the Happy Yemen hospital in the northern Gaza Strip”
Below, from Haitham:
“Tough scenes. 22 martyrs (Note: news reports now say 28) and a large number of injuries due to targeting a room at Rafidah school in Deir al-Balah area .” (Note: This is in the middle of the Gaza Strip, a few kilometers south of where Haitham and his family have been sheltering in Zawayda.
“As if it will never stop.
“Hard scene. The martyrs arrived in pieces. After the bombing of (Rafidah) school in Deir Al-Balah.”
In reply to my query about Haitham and other friends: “I'm doing okay. Nedal (injured in the attack that killed his wife and daughter months ago) is getting better slowly. But he is still living in a dangerous zone. Motaz is moving from one place to another inside of Gaza (to avoid shelling).”
Opinion | What Doctors and Health Care Workers in Gaza Saw - The New York Times
On-the-ground testimony.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-doctor interviews.html
WashPost: Families of Palestinian Americans killed in West Bank wait for justice
This article deserves to be read. Recently, a friend and reader of this column forwarded a query from an American woman interested in participating in the Palestinian olive harvest. Such participation is designed to offer a tiny bit of protection against rampaging Israeli settlers who attack the Palestinian harvesters as part of their efforts to drive Palestinians off their land. As earlier noted, once the Palestinians have fled their land, it can be declared state property and used for Israeli settlements. We had to reply that it was just too dangerous, and being an American would offer no protection against attack and possible death, and no prospect of justice for the victim, American or otherwise.
As we have previously noted, Americans of Palestinian origin are treated — by both the Israelis and the U.S. Government — as Palestinians only. Contrast that with the constant references to the “Americans,” all of them Israeli-Americans, held (horrifically) as hostages by Hamas.
Meanwhile, the same IDF and intelligence services who can track every movement of a single Palestinian with absolute precision, are never, ever, able to identify the perpetrators of crimes against Palestinians, even when they have video evidence.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/12/american-citizens-killed-west-bank-israel/
AP News: At least 22 killed in airstrikes in central Beirut, with Israel also firing on UN peacekeepers
The IDF has a history of attacking UN peacekeepers with impunity, yielding only the barest objections from the United States, which is why many of us have, for decades, objected to the idea of Americans or others serving as Peacekeepers in the West Bank and Gaza, a suggestion that arises every few years. It all sounds great until you look at the position of a 19-year-old American trooper on the ground faced with violent Israeli settlers or rampaging IDF soldiers, some of whom may also be American citizens.
A separate headline says President Biden “urges” Israel to stop attacking UN posts. Is that the best he can do? They’re using American-made and America-supplied arms and munitions to attack the UN Peacekeepers!
Reuters: UN inquiry accuses Israel of crime of 'extermination' in destruction of Gaza health system
A KEY STEP TOWARD EXPULSION
We have noted previously the intense Israeli desire to eliminate the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA.
UNRWA’s existence is the constant reminder and acknowledgement of the unique origin and character of the Palestinian refugees. Israel hates this constant reminder of both its expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and property in 1948, which fact critics use to delegitimize its very founding, as well as the Israeli failure to expel ALL Palestinians in that and later wars, as the founders intended.
In eliminating UNRWA, Israel would cut off the key means by which Palestinians exist, leaving Israel unrestrained in its programs of “caloric management,” displacement, land seizures, violence and expulsion, with the aim of forcing neighboring countries to accept the Palestinians.
Neighboring countries, of course, decline to take on the burden of the vast refugee problem that Israel created.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/11/un-peacekeepers-israel-lebanon/
Israel steps up its battles with the United Nations
Another piece well worth reading in full.
Israel’s war of words with the United Nations escalated this week when Israeli forces fired on three positions in Lebanon manned by U.N. peacekeepers.
Ishaan TharoorUpdated Published
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Israel is embroiled in conflicts on numerous fronts — against Hamas in Gaza, against the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, against a new crop of Palestinian militants in the West Bank, against the Iranian-allied Houthis in Yemen, against Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq and against the theocratic regime in Iran itself, which is in the crosshairs of a looming Israeli reprisal after a recent rocket barrage on the Jewish state.
Add the United Nations into the mix.
On Thursday, Israeli forces fired on three positions in Lebanon staffed by the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. At least two peacekeepers were injured and had to receive treatment, according to a UNIFIL statement, after an Israeli tank fired toward an observation tower at their main headquarters in the southwest city of Naqoura. A second round of explosions near UNIFIL headquarters Friday left two peacekeepers injured. The group — a legacy of international efforts to maintain the peace after Israeli invasions of Lebanon — has a force of some 10,000 peacekeepers of varying nationalities in bases scattered across the Israel-Lebanon border.
Their presence has been complicated by Israel’s ongoing operations against Hezbollah, which include both heavy bombardments and airstrikes across the country as well as ground maneuvers. More than 2,000 Lebanese people have been killed, many of whom are civilians. Satellite imagery obtained by my colleagues showed Israeli military vehicles encircling at least one U.N. base. Israel had issued vague orders for UNIFIL to evacuate at least some of its positions, but the peacekeepers’ countries of origin collectively agreed to maintain the mission.
A statement from the Israel Defense Forces noted that Hezbollah operates in areas near UNIFIL bases, and suggested the peacekeepers remain in “protected” areas. A UNIFIL statement Thursday, meanwhile, accused Israeli soldiers of deliberately targeting at least one U.N. base, where they fired at and disabled its perimeter-monitoring cameras.
The spat is only the latest flash point between Israel and the world’s most important international organization. A General Assembly resolution last month called on Israel to dismantle illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a withdrawal that would be unthinkable to Israel’s far-right government. Separate cases for genocide and war crimes against Israel and Israeli officials are running through the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s top court, and the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, in Israeli discourse, the United Nations is a frequent target of scorn, seen as a biased instrument of myriad member states angry at Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories. When he addressed the General Assembly in New York in September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the international body a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”
Earlier this month, the country’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, declared the U.N. Secretary General António Guterres “persona non grata,” barring him from entering Israel after the latter made a statement condemning the “broadening” nature of the conflict in the Middle East without specifically decrying Iran’s rocket barrage. Guterres later said his disapproval of Iran’s actions was “obvious” in the context of his remarks, while a host of Western powers chided Katz for his reaction.
The U.N.’s main agency for Palestinians, known by the abbreviation UNRWA, has long been reviled by Israel as an alleged accomplice to Palestinian extremists. UNRWA forms the bedrock of the entire aid and humanitarian system in the region for Palestinians, and is deeply embedded in Palestinian society. It’s a sprawling agency with tens of thousands of local employees — a tiny fraction of whom may have ties to groups like Hamas.
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Israeli authorities have sought to scrap funding to UNRWA and undermine its international mandate. This week, the country’s parliamentarians pushed legislation that would evict UNRWA from its holdings and strip the agency of its privileges and protections. On Thursday, it appeared Israel was set to confiscate UNRWA’s headquarters in Jerusalem and use the land upon which it sits for new settlements.
U.N. and Western officials fumed over the latest moves. If UNRWA was impeded from doing its “essential” work, Guterres said, citing its crucial role in the delivery of aid to stricken Gaza, “it would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, said at a Wednesday session of the Security Council that the proposed Israeli legislation was a violation of international law. He warned that it would collapse the entire humanitarian system in Gaza and wipe out the prospect of schooling for Palestinian kids. “More than 650,000 children would lose any hope of resuming their education and an entire generation would be sacrificed,” he said.
Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. envoy, said the extremist “infiltration” in UNRWA “is so ingrained, so institutional, that the organization is simply beyond repair,” declaring that terrorists were “running classrooms” in UNRWA schools. U.N. officials have dismissed these Israeli allegations as hyperbole.
In the same session, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, appeared to side with UNRWA, saying that only “a small percentage” of UNRWA staff were alleged to have ties with Hamas and called on Israel to furnish more evidence substantiating some of its claims. “We know that U.N. personnel, including from UNRWA, are vital to the humanitarian response in Gaza and face tremendous danger while performing their work,” she said, gesturing to the perilous security situation in Gaza.
Lazzarini laid out the larger stakes behind the feud. “They target not just UNRWA, but any individual or entity calling for compliance with international law and peaceful political solution,” he said, taking aim at the Israeli handling of the war, which has flattened Gaza, displaced virtually the entirety of its population and led to ten of thousands of civilian deaths. He said Israel’s attempts to ostracize a U.N. agency, if successful and unchallenged, “would mean the post-World War II rules-based international order is at an end.”
Israeli officials would likely scoff at such rhetoric. They instead cast their actions as necessary to restore their country’s security against myriad rocket-firing enemies. Netanyahu has issued statements essentially calling for regime change in both Lebanon and Iran, while Israel’s boosters in the United States see in its expanding wars an opportunity to “remake” the political map of the Middle East.
Others are more wary. “There is a scenario in which Israel’s military exploits change the region for the better,” Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, wrote. “Unfortunately, far from being the standard-bearer for some enlightened political vision, Israel’s current government is committed to fighting a war on all fronts, with no view toward any political future that Israel’s neighbors could possibly accept.”
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