Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza, invasion in central Gaza, carpet bombing in north – Day 218

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Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza, invasion in central Gaza, carpet bombing in north – Day 218
Israeli forces amassed this week in southern Israel near the border with Gaza (photo)

Israeli attacks from all directions, evacuation orders – but where to go?; hospitals in crisis; Israel uses children as human shields; West Bank death; US offers Israel intel, supplies in exchange for holding off on Rafah invasion; Doctors Without Borders slams Biden report; Greta Thunberg arrested at Gaza protest, more

By IAK staff, from reports

Casualties as Israeli warplanes attack Jabalia with massive carpet bombings

WAFA reports: Following Israeli evacuation orders in parts of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, several Palestinian civilians were reported killed this evening as Israeli fighter jets carpet-bombed the eastern areas of Jabalia refugee camp, according to local sources.

The sources reported that Israeli warplanes launched successive fire belts on residential areas east of the camp, resulting in the murder and injuries of several civilians.

Additionally, Israeli fighter jets carried out fierce airstrikes around the displaced people’s shelters at the heart of Jabalia, as well as the Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque on Al-Sekka Street east of the camp. Residential houses and evacuation centers have been flattened.

The death toll is currently unknown.

Al Jazeera is reporting Sunday morning that Israeli forces have begun an invasion of Deir Al Balah in central Gaza

People ‘at risk of dying at any moment’ due to Al-Aqsa Hospital fuel shortages

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports from Deir Al Balah: It’s been six days since Israel has allowed aid trucks into Gaza. Famine is spreading and food supplies are only expected to last for a few days.

The effects of the fuel shortage are also being acutely felt at hospitals, which the UN has warned will be unable to function unless Israel allows fuel into Gaza.

At Al-Aqsa Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza and the only healthcare facility in the central city of Deir el-Balah, fuel is running low, and people are at risk of dying.

One hospital worker told us that there is intensive care, a nursery with 24 incubators for newborns, and those are at risk of dying if the power goes out.

UPDATE: As of Sunday morning, Al-Aqsa Hospital is the only hospital operating and responsible for providing medical treatment for the population. They are facing problems in terms of shortages of fuel, medical equipment and necessities.

8,000 liters (2,113 gallons) of fuel have arrived at Al-Aqsa Hospital, which will be barely enough for two days of operations.

Israel behaves as if it has a license to kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure in Gaza City.
Israel behaves as if it has a license to kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure in Gaza City. (photo)

Israeli forces used children as human shields, says rights group

Middle East Eye reports: Defense for Children International (DCI) says it has heard testimonies of three children who described how they were used as human shields by Israeli forces in the West Bank during a recent assault on Tulkarm refugee camp on 5 May.

According to Geneva-based DCI, the children said Israeli soldiers forced them to walk ahead of them as they searched the camp, describing two instances of soldiers placing their rifles on their shoulders.

A 13-year-old recounted how Israeli forces stormed his family’s apartment on 6 May and then forced him to lead them through the apartment block as they searched it. He said the soldiers placed a rifle on his shoulders and fired two shots towards an apartment door.

Another child described how, during a raid on his home, he was forcibly separated from his family and then told to knock on doors in the apartment building, asking residents to leave.

“When we reached the door of one of the apartments and found it empty, the soldiers blew up the door and forced me to enter alone to inspect it,” he said.

A Palestinian girl carries a toddler as people flee Rafah
A Palestinian girl carries a toddler as people flee Rafah (photo)

Gaza civil defense says unable to reach Jabalia camp due to intense Israeli fire

Andalou Agency reports: As Israel’s military has returned to the devastated Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City in northern Gaza, civil defense has said its teams are unable to access the areas where people need rescue services.

“The direct and deliberate Israeli targeting of civil defense crews prevents us from reaching some of the targeted places in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City,” spokesman Mahmoud Basal said, including 16 members of a family who were trapped under the rubble of a house.

“The Israeli army is targeting innocent civilians in the neighborhoods of Gaza and the northern Gaza Strip, most of whom are women and children,” he added.

Even rescue workers are not spared in the bombing, he said.

“All the hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip are out of service,” he added.

An aerial view of a destroyed UNRWA school following Israeli attacks hit the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza on December 12, 2023. Israel has targeted schools, hospitals and residential areas during its 96-day military campaign
An aerial view of a destroyed UNRWA school following Israeli attacks hit the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza on December 12, 2023. Israel has targeted schools, hospitals and residential areas during its 96-day military campaign (photo)

Infrastructure damage another factor hampering humanitarian aid: UN

OCHA reports: Many humanitarian missions to the Gaza Strip are regularly denied or delayed by Israeli authorities, but the destruction inside the enclave also presents significant challenges to humanitarian movements.

“Routes that remain available for use by humanitarian organizations are frequently blocked by debris, heavily congested, and contaminated with unexploded ordnance,” according to the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Some 2.3 million tonnes (2.5 million tons) of debris – from the total 37.5 million tonnes (41.3 million tons) across Gaza – is attributed to damaged roads, with the UN Mine Action Service reporting a “considerable” amount contains undetonated bombs.

At least 10 percent of fired ammunition potentially fails to function, leading to 1,000-pound (450kg) bombs being left at major intersections and within school premises.

Debris also is estimated to contain about 800,000 tonnes 882,000 tons) of asbestos and other contaminants, OCHA reports.

U.S. offers Israel intelligence, supplies in effort to avoid Rafah invasion

Washington Post reports: The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers.

American officials have also offered to help provide thousands of shelters so Israel can build tent cities — and to help with the construction of delivery systems for food, water and medicine — so that Palestinians evacuated from Rafah can have a habitable place to live, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose secret diplomatic talks.

President Biden and his senior aides have been making such offers over the last several weeks in hopes they will persuade Israel to conduct a more limited and targeted operation in the southern Gaza city, where some 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering after fleeing there from other parts of Gaza under Israeli orders. Israel has vowed to go into Rafah with “extreme force,” and this week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a number of steps that raised fears at the White House that the long-promised invasion could be materializing.

Administration officials, including experts from the U.S. Agency for International Development, have told Israel it will take several months to safely relocate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are now living in decrepit and unsanitary conditions in Rafah. Israeli officials disagree with that assessment.

West Bank: Palestinian shot dead by Israeli occupation forces in Nablus

WAFA reports: Sunday morning, a Palestinian young man identified as Samer Nasser Rumana, 27, was shot dead and another one injured by Israeli occupation forces during their raid on Balata refugee camp, located east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The Ministry of Health reported that Rumana was shot dead by the Israeli forces during a raid into the camp, and was subsequently transported to Rafidia Governmental Hospital.

A 16-year-old was shot in the back with live ammunition by Israeli occupation soldiers during the raid, and was subsequently rushed to hospital for medical treatment.

Doctors Without Borders responds to Biden report on Israel’s war in Gaza

Avril Avril Benoît, executive director of MSF USA, says,

The Biden administration’s analysis of Israel’s war in Gaza has not proceeded as a good faith effort to uphold US law. Instead, excuses about the impossibility of monitoring the deployment of American assistance serve to deflect responsibility.

The horrific reality we witness on the ground in Gaza is that Israeli military operations continue to maim and kill civilians and block the provision of lifesaving humanitarian aid. This can’t be chalked up to unintended consequences of war; the massive death, destruction, collective punishment, and forced displacement are the result of military and political choices that blatantly disregard civilian lives.

As the leading provider of military and financial support to Israel, the US has an obligation to assess if the conduct of the war is consistent with international and US laws designed to protect civilians and to apply the appropriate legal procedures.

In seven months, 35,000 people—mostly civilians—have been killed, including nearly 500 health workers. Israeli forces have obstructed aid by attacking humanitarian convoys and bombing and raiding hospitals. They have forced medical staff to hastily evacuate health care facilities and leave patients behind.

The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) alone has been attacked 20 times, and five of their colleagues have been killed.

A view of destroyed UNRWA Palestinian School following Israeli attacks hit Jabalia Camp in Jabalia, Gaza on December 12, 2023
Israeli attacks on schools and universities in the Gaza Strip are “systematic”, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian Territories (photo)

Dozens of professors among those arrested in campus protests

CNN reports: As police cracked down on anti-war protests on college campuses across the US in recent weeks, among those arrested were a pair of silver-haired 65-year-old professors armed only with their cell phones.

Annelise Orleck was knocked to the ground and restrained with plastic handcuffs at a protest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She later complained of whiplash.

Steve Tamari was tackled by officers and taken into custody at a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis, an attack he said resulted in multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.

Each had been filming the protests in the moments before they were arrested. Both Orleck, who is Jewish, and Tamari, who is Palestinian American, said they were motivated to attend in part by a desire to support student protesters exercising their right to free speech.

Their stories illustrate a facet of the student-led protests that has received comparatively little attention: The role professors have played in the demonstrations, and the response by their administrations and police.

(Read the full article here.)

Climate activist Greta Thunberg arrested at Eurovision pro-Palestinian protest

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was arrested on Saturday night at a pro-Palestinian protest outside of the Eurovision arena by the local police in Malmo, Sweden, Y-Net reported on Saturday night.

Reuters: Pro-Israel website Canary Mission Canary Mission ramps up attacks on pro-Palestinian student protesters, inciting messages to the students saying they should be raped or killed

A foundation controlled by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an annual budget of over $100 million, secretly helped to fund Canary Mission. Another covert funder was the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, with net assets of $726 million.

University of California Davis students celebrate the passage of a resolution to safeguard activism on campus. Students like these are being targeted by the Israel-based Canary Mission, secretly supported by the powerful San Francisco Jewish Community Federation. (photo)
Israeli officials brief the senior management, leadership and donors of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles in May 2017. The foundation secretly funds Canary Mission. Pictured with Eli Groner, director-general of the office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (fourth from left) are (from left): Daniel Rothblatt, Foundation senior vice president-philanthropic services; Foundation trustee Selwyn Gerber; Marvin Schotland, Foundation president and chief executive officer; Israeli Consul General Grundwerg; and Lewis Groner, Foundation director of marketing and communications.

More News

Al Jazeera: Gaza’s mass graves: Is the truth being uncovered?

IMEMC: The Israeli army continued the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in several parts of the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of Palestinians, including many women and children…

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – MAY 11:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – May 11: at least 35,412* (35,543 in Gaza* (at least 14,690 children, 9,680 women), and at least 509 in the West Bank (117 children). This does not include an estimated 7,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 42,510 Palestinian deaths.

At least 42 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 14 from West Bank).

At least 31 Palestinian children and several adults have died due to malnutrition**.

About 1.7 million, or 75% of Gaza’s population are currently displaced.

About 1.1 million (out of total population of 2.3 million) are facing Catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Palestinian injuries from October 7 – May 11: at least 83,755 (including at least 78,755 in Gaza and 5,000 in the West Bank).

It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – May 11: ~1,426 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 272 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza;, 16 in the West Bank) and~8,730 injured.

Times of Israel reports: The IDF also listed 41 soldiers killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents – nearly 16%.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals. 

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org
 

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