Death feels imminent for 96 percent of Gaza’s vulnerable children – Day 432

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

Israeli attacks killed at least 71 Palestinians, including eight children, across the Gaza Strip, medical sources said. At least 33 of the dead were martyred in a “barbaric and heinous massacre” in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Israeli airstrikes have killed many in Gaza, including seven children, Palestinian health officials reported, as the region is gripped by food shortages and fears of famine.

The attacks were launched hours after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and expressing support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which has been banned by Israel.

The Gaza Government Media Office says Israeli attacks on a residential area in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza have killed at least 33 people, most of whom from the al-Sheikh Ali family.

“The occupation army knew that this is a residential block with many apartment buildings housing dozens of civilians, children, women and displaced people,” the office said, calling the bombing a “barbaric and heinous massacre”.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the latest reported attack on security guards protecting aid shipments. According to local media, their work was integral in facilitating the delivery of essential supplies to displaced Palestinians in Gaza, where food shortages and the looming threat of famine persist.

On Wednesday, the UN general assembly approved resolutions demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. 

Israeli drone targets, kills Gaza’s sole orthopedic doctor

Israeli occupation forces killed Dr. Saeed Joda on Thursday while en route to Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, Al-Jazeera reported.  

The administration of Al-Awda Hospital said in a statement that Dr. Joda was the sole orthopedic surgeon serving the northern Gaza Strip, an area that has been under siege for 70 days.  

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed Dr. Joda’s death, stating that he was struck by an Israeli Quadcopter drone while traveling from Kamal Adwan Hospital to Al-Awda Hospital to treat the wounded. 

The ministry reported that the drone directly targeted him, killing him instantly. In response, it called on international and human rights organizations to ensure the protection of hospitals and medical personnel as they carry out their humanitarian duties.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, the ambulance driver accompanying Dr. Joda recounted the incident, revealing that the doctor was fatally shot in the head while transporting injured patients to Al-Awda Hospital for emergency surgeries.  

The death of Dr. Joda brings the total number of medical personnel killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip to 1,750 since the beginning of the war.

Death feels imminent for 96 percent of Gaza’s vulnerable children, survey reveals

Death feels imminent to most children in Gaza, a shocking new survey which details the psychological impact of Israel’s ongoing and relentless war on Gaza has found.

The survey, carried out by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management, based in Gaza and supported by the UK-based War Child Alliance, found that 96 percent of Gaza’s children surveyed felt that death is imminent and 92 percent of children surveyed were “not accepting reality”.

The survey interviewed over 500 children, parents and caregivers from families where at least one child is disabled, wounded or unaccompanied. The study also surveyed a significant portion of households where children under the age of 17 headed the family.

“In my 23 years or so working in the system, I have never seen a statistic that bleak that 96% of children feel death is imminent,” Helen Pattinson, CEO of War Child UK told The New Arab.

“It’s a very, very sad reality indeed” she added.

The CEO says in a conflict typically 22 percent of a child population would need psychological support and recovery, but in Gaza, that number is 100 percent.

Because of the war, 49 percent also wished to die, and the same number believed they would die (continue reading here).

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In Northern Gaza, Buildings Weakened by Airstrikes Are Collapsing on Families Seeking Shelter from Cold and Rain

The Abu al-Omrin family chose to stay in their home after it was bombed and severely damaged in a series of Israeli airstrikes on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City in May. The structure was badly damaged and partially caved in, yet with nowhere else to go, they felt they had no choice but to remain living in it.

On September 23, the structure finally gave way and collapsed on top of them, killing or burying alive 10 members of the family, including four children. A teenager and a young child were the only survivors.

The situation in northern Gaza is beyond catastrophic now. The Israeli military has destroyed nearly all of the homes and shelters in the area in a concentrated campaign of ethnic cleansing. Displaced families are forced to seek refuge in UN schools only to be bombed and attacked there. Just last week, the Israeli military forced thousands of Palestinians to flee the Abu Tamam school complex in Beit Lahia and sent them on a death march southward.

With no place to go and with the onset of winter cold and rain, displaced families are increasingly seeking refuge in severely damaged buildings and bombed out homes in a desperate bid for shelter, only for the structures to eventually collapse on them, turning homes into mass graves of concrete rubble (continue reading here).

The Israeli army blocked a UN convoy carrying fuel and medical supplies meant to support the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza amid ongoing hostilities, the hospital’s director said Thursday, forcing it to return to southern Gaza.

Highlighting the dire situation, Hussam Abu Safiya said that the World Health Organization (WHO) said: “There is a severe shortage of medical supplies needed to treat the injuries arriving at the hospital. We are operating at a minimum capacity with limited resources.”

“Daily operations occur under constant bombing, threats, and fear, with shrapnel landing in hospital sections due to nearby strikes,” Abu Safiya added.

The hospital director called on the international community to protect health care facilities and ensure the delivery of essential medical supplies.

West Bank: Israeli forces kill two Palestinian young men

Undercover Israeli agents executed a Palestinian young man, on Thursday, after chasing and firing live rounds at his vehicle in the city of Qalqilia, in the northwestern part of the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced that the General Authority of Civil Affairs informed it that the army killed the young man, Mohammad Abdul Karim Khaled Brahma, 25, after chasing his vehicle and shooting at him, causing critical injuries, before confiscating his body.

After the shooting, military reinforcements arrived in the area, while soldiers prevented Palestinian ambulance crews from reaching the wounded man, and stormed many citizens’ homes.

Videos shared on social media platforms show occupation forces kicking and abusing the body of the slain young man, before seizing the body.

Also on Thursday, Israeli forces killed Jihad Yousef Hussein Abu Salim, 25, in the Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus,  with a gunshot wound to the chest the Balata refugee camp.

Soldiers again blocked ambulance crews from entering the camp to provide first aid.

Since the beginning of the Israeli military onslaught against the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed 812 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 169 children, and injured 6,450.

Israel arrested 12,100 Palestinians in West Bank since Oct 2023

Israeli occupation forces have arrested 12,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since they launched the war on Gaza on 7 October 2023, a prisoners’ rights group said.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club pointed out that the figure does not include Palestinians detained in Gaza, which are estimated in the thousands.

According to the rights group, the detainees included more than 440 women and 795 children, noting a majority of the arrests took place in the governorates of Jerusalem and Hebron.

Occupation forces have also arrested 141 journalists, of whom 59 remain in detention, including five women and 33 journalists from Gaza.

More than 10,000 administrative detention orders were issued during that period.

The ongoing arrest campaigns are accompanied by escalating abuse and severe beatings, and verbal and physical threats against detainees and their families, sabotage and destruction of citizens’ homes, as well as the confiscation of personal vehicles, cash and jewelry, the organization added.

Detainees were also used as human shields, while their families were held as hostages for periods.

In addition to the arrest campaigns, the Prisoners Club said occupation forces carried out field executions, including against family members of the prisoners.

Israel continues to withhold the bodies of 47 Palestinian prisoners who died in its jails since the start of the war on Gaza.

NOTE: Israel holds Palestinians in  inhumane conditions where many are systematically tortured. Those held as administrative detainees are being held without charge or trial. Administrative detention is intended to be used only in “exceptional” circumstances, but Israel uses it widely. Read more here.

UN General Assembly overwhelmingly demands permanent ceasefire in Gaza

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

The resolution was approved by 158 votes in favor out of the 193-member assembly on Wednesday, with nine votes against and 13 abstentions.

Notably, it also marked the first time that Germany and Italy voted in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. As a result, the United States is the only country in the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized nations that continues to oppose it.

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but they hold political significance, representing the global opinion on Israel’s war in Gaza.

Congress Keeps Trying to Hide the True Gaza Death Toll

Tucked into a $895 billion Pentagon bill making its way through Congress is a little-noticed provision to further conceal the death toll in Gaza — the latest effort by U.S. policymakers to cast doubt on casualty figures reported by Palestinian health officials. 

The House approved this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, on Wednesday and sent it to the Senate for a vote, despite Democratic objections over a GOP proposal to prohibit transgender children on military health insurance from receiving gender-affirming care. 

The death toll provision of the must-pass bill, which passed 281-140 with 81 Democratic votes, has received significantly less attention. It would bar the Pentagon from publicly citing as “authoritative” casualty data from the Gaza Health Ministry, effectively concealing the full extent of the death toll in Gaza in the military’s public communications. 

The data from Palestinian authorities has been the only consistent and reliable count of the death toll out of Gaza over the last 14 months, with Israel consistently denying human rights workers access to the enclave and preventing foreign media journalists from entering. 

“This is an alarming erasure of the suffering of the Palestinian people, ignoring the human toll of ongoing violence,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in a statement to The Intercept.

NOTE: See statistics below.

‘Holy Land Foundation 5’ – Mufid Abdulqader Released from US Prison

The Palestinian-led US-based community organization ‘Within Our Lifetime’ announced on Thursday the release of Palestinian-American political prisoner Mufid Abdulqader, a member of the ‘Holy Land Foundation 5’, after 16 years of imprisonment.

Abdulqader had been sentenced in November 2008 by a federal jury to 20 years in prison on charges of providing material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization in the United States.

The Holy Land Foundation (HLF), once the largest Muslim charity in the US, had long been a target of pro-Israel organizations due to its substantial support for impoverished Palestinians living under occupation. 

The charity raised millions of dollars for essential aid in occupied Palestine, mitigating the humanitarian impact of the occupation. 

Since 1993, the foundation’s leaders were placed under FBI surveillance, and, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network Samidoun, “racist and Zionist commentators like Steven Emerson repeatedly attacked the Foundation.”

Samidoun also highlighted that the HLF faced increasing pressure during the post-Oslo period, as financial sanctions and new laws criminalized support for groups listed as ‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations.’

The situation worsened after September 11, 2001, when the US government, under the guise of counterterrorism efforts, froze HLF’s assets, raided its offices, and labeled it a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ organization (continue reading here).

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