June 16, 2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on the humanitarian situation in
Gaza this week in the aftermath of the United Nations Security Council demand
(14-0 with Russia abstaining) for a ceasefire in Gaza. It required Hamas and
Israel to reply with a letter outlining their response.
Hamas has done so but
Israel has not, and members of the government, including Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, have made it clear in public remarks that they will defy
the Security Council and will reject the Biden peace plan.
Saddam Hussein’s apparent defiance of UNSC
resolutions was given as a legitimate causes belli by the George W. Bush
administration, bolstering its case for invading Iraq in 2003.
To underline this defiance of the will of the world
community, between June 10 when the UNSC order came down and June 14, the
Israeli armed forces killed 142 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 396. According
to the professionals at the Gaza Ministry of Health, since October 7 the
Israelis have killed 37,266 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 85,102, the vast
majority of them women and children, with many of the rest elderly and other
noncombatant men.
Doctors without Borders (French acronym MSF) points
to the casualties since the start of this month as further proof of the
“complete dehumanization of the Palestinians,” saying that “since the beginning
of June, more than 800 people have been killed and over 2,400 wounded in
intense bombing and ground offensives by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip,
Palestine.”
These are physicians at the few hospitals still
partially functioning, so they see the influx of the wounded and dead bodies.
Brice de le Vingne, Head of MSF Emergency Unit,
asked, “How can the killing of more than 800 people in a single week, including
small children, plus the maiming of hundreds more, be considered a military
operation adhering to international humanitarian law? We can no longer accept
the statement that Israel is taking ‘all precautions’ – this is just
propaganda.”
De le Vingne added, ““Catch-all phrases like ‘war is
ugly’ act as blinders to the fact that children too young to walk are being
dismembered, eviscerated, and killed.”
Children too young to walk. Some children begin
walking as early as 10 to 11 months old.
It reminds me of when President Joe Biden dismissed
Palestinian deaths, saying “people get killed in war,” or words to that effect.
MSF rejects Israeli propaganda that they are letting
in aid. They’ve seen with their own eyes that it isn’t happening. Plus, they
note, “Israel repeatedly bombed so-called safe zones, refugee camps, a school
and multiple humanitarian warehouses, which were formally registered as
‘deconflicted’ by Israeli forces.”
In the path month and a half, the UN’s OCHA reminds
us, a million Palestinians were again displaced from the south, and 100,000
were displaced from the north. Displaced means made homeless and likely
sleeping rough with few toilets or potable water or food. Most of the domiciles
in Gaza have been made into rubble by the Israelis, though 16% of the displaced
have tried to go home. Some erect tents over their former homes. Some 31% go to
new shelters.
At “informal displacement sites” (tent cities?) in
Deir al-Balah, “families reported irregular food distributions, overcrowded and
dilapidated shelters with an average of eight to 10 persons per shelter, lack
of sanitation infrastructure, and a range of health issues such as skin
diseases, hepatitis A, gastroenteritis, and respiratory illnesses.”
Water shortages are severe among these refugees in
Deir al-Balah: “average water availability per person per day was less than two
litres [half a gallon] at Abo Dalal displacement site and only 0.7 litres [less
than a quart] at Ard Al Ghusain displacement site. This is less than the
internationally recognized minimum requirement for survival of three litres [3
quarts] per day and significantly lower than the minimum amount of 15 litres [4
gallons] per day needed in an emergency for drinking, washing and cooking.
As for food, some 8,000 children in Gaza have been
formally diagnosed with malnutrition and another 3,000 have been identified as
in imminent danger of it. Given the poor state of medicine in the Strip, these
figures are only the tip of the iceberg.
Israeli airstrikes have taken out water pipes,
wells, and sewage treatment plants. There is only 28% the potable water in Gaza
that existed on October 6. This is not an accident, as MSF pointed out. People
are forced to collect surface water that is tainted with sewage, causing a
range of diseases of the intestinal tract and liver.
Apparently the Israeli military has expelled all but
about 90,000 people from Rafah, which had had a pre-war population of 300,000
and had swollen to 1.2 million before the Israeli invasion of early May.
Those 90,000 people have no functioning hospital,
since Israel has destroyed the medical facilities there, according to the World
Health Organization.
OCHA finds that “Over 76 per cent of schools in Gaza
are now assessed as requiring full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to be
functional again.” The Israeli Air Force continues to directly target schools;
this week it smashed a UN school functioning as a shelter, killing 30 refugees.
The children of Gaza have lost a school year. If
they lose two more, studies suggest that they will never get back on track.
Palestinians are the most educated people in the Middle East, but Israel is
depriving those in Gaza of a basic education. Those who suffer malnutrition
will suffer permanent cognitive losses as well as emotional problems. Others
have PTSD and are traumatized, and may never be right in the head again.
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