“4 percent of Gazans are dead, wounded, or missing” – Day 92

EuroMed Monitor reports on Israel’s profound damage to Gaza, torture of Gazan prisoners; Israeli public invited to conference on settling in Gaza; 8 Palestinians (including a toddler), 1 Israeli soldier killed in West Bank/E. Jerusalem; 2 more journalists killed, including son of Al Jazeera’s Wael Dahdouh, Blinken offers hollow condolences

EuroMed Human Rights Monitor: As Israel’s genocidal war enters its fourth consecutive month, about 4% of the total population of the Gaza Strip—more than 90,000 people—are now dead, wounded, or missing, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor revealed in a statement issued Friday. Included in this number is injured Gazans with long-term disabilities, the rights group said, noting that the genocide is a mass-disabling event.

Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that Israel’s continuous air, land, and sea attacks have destroyed about 70% of the Gaza Strip’s civilian facilities and infrastructure since 7 October, citing the clear Israeli aim of implementing collective punishment against the entire population and making the Strip, which has been under siege for over 17 years, uninhabitable. Israel is pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians towards mass forced displacement.

According to Euro-Med Monitor estimates, 30,676 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli attacks as of Thursday evening, including 28,201 civilians. The death toll includes 12,040 children, 6,103 women, 241 health workers, and 105 journalists. An additional 58,960 individuals have been injured, hundreds of whom are currently in serious condition.

Euro-Med Monitor stated that, in addition to the statistics provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry, its own figures include people who have been missing beneath the debris of buildings hit by Israeli air and artillery strikes for more than 14 days now, with very little hope of survival. Hundreds of bodies that cannot be recovered remain on the roads, according to Euro-Med Monitor, particularly in areas where the Israeli army has conducted ground incursions.

EuroMed also released a report detailing mistreatment and “torture” of Palestinians taken prisoner by the Israeli army. The report was built on testimony from newly released Palestinians who spent days in Israeli custody, during which army and Shin Bet members treated them as “non-human animals”.

According to the report, detainees are regularly beaten, stripped naked, and made to sit on their knees on the street for long periods. They are also made to curse themselves and Palestinian groups, endure electric-shock torture, are burned with cigarettes, and held in iron cages, it said.

Israeli news (Hebrew) reports that Israel’s Knesset (parliament) will be hosting a conference January 28th, on building settlements in Gaza “after the war,” and will offer precise maps and plans. The news site says that Knesset members and other public figures are expected to speak, and thousands of Israelis have already applied to join the settlement nuclei in Gaza.

The organizers of the event stated, “We are working both on the political level and on the practical side towards the moment when they can get on the ground. There is a great demand in the public that the victory of the war includes within it Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.”

Notably, the Biden administration does not support Israeli re-settlement of Gaza.

Israeli settlements and settlers on Palestinian land are a violation of international law.

The US secretary of state says the United Nations can play a crucial role in allowing displaced civilians in Gaza to return home as Israel moves to a “lower-intensity phase” of its military campaign. “Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow,” Blinken said. “They cannot – they must not – be pressed to leave Gaza.”

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The Israeli army killed at least eight Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry: seven Palestinians lost their lives when Israeli forces bombed a public gathering in Martyrs Square near the city of Jenin in the West Bank; another Palestinian died of wounds he sustained from Israeli army fire in the town of Abwein near Ramallah.

At least one Israeli border police officer was killed due to injuries sustained during an earlier raid in the same area. This was the first Israeli killed outside Gaza since November 30.

Another Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire in Abwein village north of Ramallah, said the health ministry. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

2 more journalists killed in Gaza: the Committee to Protect Journalists has called for an independent investigation into an Israeli drone strike that killed Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza Al Dahdouh, who is the son of Al-Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al Dahdouh, and freelance journalist Mustafa Thuraya  on Sunday as they drove their car to an assignment in southern Gaza. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists says that the killings of journalists Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya must be independently investigated to determine whether they were targeted, and those behind their deaths must be held accountable.

“The continuous killings of journalists and their family members by Israeli army fire must end,” said a CPJ spokesperson, adding, “The Dahdouh family and their journalist colleagues in Gaza are rewriting what it means to be a journalist today with immensely brave and never-seen-before sacrifices.”

Wael Al Dahdouh, Al-Jazeera Gaza bureau chief, has lost five family members in Israeli attacks. On October 25, an airstrike killed his wife, daughter, son and grandson when it hit the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, and now his son Hamza has been killed. He himself was wounded last month in an attack that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the killing of journalist Hamza Dahdouh an “unimaginable tragedy.” He added “This is why we are pressing the need – the imperative – not only of making sure that humanitarian assistance can get to people who need it, but that people are protected from harm from this conflict in the first place.”

Blinken’s US Department of State has, however, issued emergency declarations twice in recent weeks to deliver bombs to Israel without congressional oversight.

Palestinian-American academic Noura Erakat posted a video of a recent virtual conversation she had with the slain Palestinian journalist. In it, Hamza opens up about the dangers of being a journalist in Gaza and the injury his father Wael Dahdouh in an attack that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa last month. “Our message is that we must persevere,” Hamza said.

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Hani Al-Masdar, who coached Palestine’s Olympic football team, has been killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza, the Palestinian Football Association has said. Al-Masdar, 42, was a midfielder for the Al-Maghazi and Gaza Sports clubs before retiring in 2018 and becoming the coach of Palestine’s national team.

According to the Palestinian Association, more than “1,000 members of the youth, sports and scouting movement” were killed so far in the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, which started on October 7. The head of the Association accused Israel of “targeting sports facilities and the headquarters of the Palestinian sports and clubs.”

Israeli police said a Palestinian child was mistakenly killed by security forces Sunday and a Border Police officer was lightly injured during a car-ramming attack at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Video footage showed officers checking a van at the checkpoint and allowing it through before a second car accelerated into the Border Police officer, in her 20s.

According to police, the officer was lightly wounded. The officers chased after the second vehicle, opening fire and killing its occupants. The three-year-old Palestinian girl who was mistakenly killed by the gunfire was in the first car that had passed, police said, and added the incident was under further investigation.

The video appeared to show the first vehicle was in security forces’ line of fire as they shot at the attackers.

(Read about how Israeli checkpoints disrupt Palestinians’ freedom of movement here.)

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) staff have joined Doctors Without Borders in fleeing from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital due to Israeli bombardment.

MAP said: “The Israeli military has dropped leaflets designating areas surrounding the hospital as a ‘red zone.’ Given the recent history of attacks on medical staff and facilities in Gaza, the team is unable to return. Many local health workers have also been unable to access the hospital to care for the hundreds of patients that remain due to the conflict.”

Palestinian death toll since October 7: at least 22,455* (~22,364 in Gaza* (at least 9,600 children), and at least 332 in the West Bank, about 77 of them children). This does not include an estimated 8,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 30,676 Palestinian deaths.

*IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation.

About 1.9 million people have been displaced (about 85% of the population).

Palestinian injuries since October 7: at least 61,245** (including at least 58,416 in Gaza** and 3,949 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to provide an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. 

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

Reported Israeli death toll since October 7: ~1,139  (8 killed in West Bank, 173 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and 8,730 injured, approximately 36 children).

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

For more news, go here and here. Broadcast news from the region is here.

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