Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
BREAKING: Israel has resumed the war on Gaza – after consulting with Trump
After more than two weeks of “limbo” (phase one of the ceasefire ended on March 1, but Israel refused to move on to phase two), the Israeli military without warning unilaterally resumed the war on Gaza, starting at about 3 am local time.
At least 404 Palestinians have been killed and 562 others wounded in the latest wave of Israeli attacks across Gaza, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. [NOTE: the death toll has risen to at least 413, and is expected to rise further.]
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abou Azzoum said, “Most of the air strikes have been on heavily built-up neighborhoods, makeshift schools and residential buildings where people are taking shelter.”
Pictures and videos from Gaza that have surfaced online show there is a large number of child casualties. “Israeli bombardment has returned to Gaza, bringing massacres with it once again,” Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif wrote on X. “The bodies of children, killed in their sleep, lay scattered in the aftermath.”
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital, said the hospital is unable to cope with the influx of casualties from Israel’s latest air strikes due to a severe shortage of medical supplies. “Every minute, a wounded person dies due to a lack of resources,” Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera Arabic.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the operation was open-ended and expected to expand.
Israel claims it is doing this to force Hamas to release the captives being held in Gaza. It also claims it knows that Hamas was rearming and planning a new attack.
There are about 59 Israeli captives left in Gaza, of whom less than half are believed to still be alive, according to the Israeli government.
Trump’s contribution
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “the Trump administration and the White House” had been consulted by Israel on the attacks.
“As President Trump has made it clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay – all hell will break loose,” she said.
Gaza Media Office names 4 senior non-military officials killed in Israeli attacks
In a statement, Gaza’s Government Media Office has named four high-ranking government officials killed in Israel’s overnight bombardment: Issam al-Dalis, the head of government public works, Ahmed al-Hatta, undersecretary of the Justice Ministry, Mahmoud Abu Watfa, undersecretary of the Interior Ministry and Bahjat Abu Sultan, director general of the internal security service.
Hamas says Israel’s claim of imminent threat ‘unfounded’
The Palestinian group stated that Israeli claims that it was rearming and preparing to carry out attacks are “unfounded” and “just flimsy pretexts to justify its return to war,” adding, “Hamas adhered to the agreement until the last moment and was keen to continue it, but Netanyahu, looking for a way out of his internal crises, preferred to reignite the war at the expense of the blood of our people,” the group said.
Netanyahu was expected to testify in a corruption trial against him, but his appearance was postponed due to “security developments” in Gaza.
Monday news:
One person was killed and three others were injured in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on Monday, in a new violation of a ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
Lebanese authorities have reported nearly 1,100 Israeli violations of the November 2024 truce, including the deaths of at least 92 victims and injuries to more than 285.
Israeli warplanes killed two civilians and wounded 19 others in airstrikes on the southern Syrian city of Daraa late Monday, according to Syria’s official SANA news agency.
Palestinian children remain deprived of the most essential supplies and services, says UNICEF
The Middle East and North Africa Regional Director of UNICEF has just concluded a four-day mission to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “The situation is extremely concerning,” said Edouard Beigbeder in a press release.
“Stalled just a few dozen kilometers outside the Gaza Strip sit more than 180,000 doses of essential childhood routine vaccines, enough to fully vaccinate and protect 60,000 children under two years of age, as well as 20 lifesaving ventilators for neonatal intensive care units.”
While UNICEF managed to deliver 30 CPAP respiratory machines — which significantly aid newborns experiencing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and prematurity — the ventilators are essential for infants needing advanced respiratory support.
Tragically, approximately 4,000 newborns are currently unable to access essential lifesaving care due to the major impact of the Israeli genocide on medical facilities in the Gaza Strip. Every day without these ventilators, UNICEF reports, lives are lost, especially among vulnerable, premature newborns in the northern Gaza Strip.
“UNICEF is advocating for these lifesaving children’s health supplies to be allowed to enter. There is no reason why they shouldn’t be,” insisted Beigbeder. “In accordance with international humanitarian law, civilians’ essential needs must be met, and this requires facilitating the entry of life-saving assistance whether or not there is a ceasefire in place.”
FOR MORE FROM UNICEF, READ
Gaza food kitchens shut down 16 days into Israeli blockade
Israel’s most recent blockade of Gaza has reached day 16, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the strip and forcing desperately needed community kitchens and bakeries to shut down, Al Jazeera reported on 17 March.
“The operator of 10 charity food kitchens and other humanitarian services in the Gaza Strip says only two food distribution centers are now open after Israel’s blockage of all humanitarian goods,” the Qatari news outlet stated.
“We had 80 pots every day that we were serving to people. Now we’re working on about 20,” Omar Abuhammad, coordinator with the Heroic Hearts organization, told Al Jazeera.
Before Israel imposed the blockade, the kitchens were providing food for about 40,000 people in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. But now, only 10,000 Palestinians are receiving meals.
“As the main source of food for them, we no longer have the ability to serve them,” Abuhammad said.
Director of the Government Media Office in Gaza, Ismail al-Thawabta, stated on Monday that more than 10,000 aid trucks have been blocked from entering Gaza as part of a “systematic policy of starvation against the Palestinian people.”
“The occupation has also denied entry to 850 fuel and cooking gas trucks, leading to a complete paralysis of the transportation sector, the closure of bakeries, and a total halt to humanitarian operations,” Thawabta added.
Israeli army ‘in worst position’ to confront Hamas: Military source
According to the Israeli public broadcaster KAN, any large-scale military operation to weaken Hamas will require a massive ground invasion, which could require the renewed call-up of tens of thousands of reserve soldiers.
With preparations ongoing to resume the genocidal war in Gaza, the Israeli military is facing a troop shortage that could be worsened by the refusal of reservist soldiers to report for duty, Haaretz reported on 11 March.
“For the first time, it seems that there is a danger that some reserve soldiers will not report for service if the return to war is controversial this time,” the Hebrew report reads.
West Bank: Jenin camp ‘100 percent destroyed’ after two-month Israeli siege
The Municipality Director of the occupied West Bank’s Jenin, Mamdouh Assaf, said on 17 March that the city has been almost completely destroyed by the Israeli siege and assault, which has been ongoing for nearly two months.
“Jenin has been under full occupation for 56 days, and 3,200 homes have been evacuated,” Assaf said, adding that “one-hundred percent of the Jenin Refugee Camp has been leveled, and 85 percent of the streets in Jenin have been destroyed.”
“Life is completely disrupted in Jenin, and we have around 8,000 commercial establishments completely closed. Entire neighborhoods surrounding Jenin Camp have had their residents displaced,” the municipality director went on to say.
The Israeli army launched a widescale operation against the city of Jenin on 21 January, invading and besieging its refugee camp and beginning a systematic campaign of destruction and displacement.
The operation quickly expanded to include other cities in the occupied West Bank – namely Tulkarem, which has been under attack for 50 days. The city’s two main camps – Nour Shams Refugee Camp and Tulkarem Refugee Camp – have borne the brunt of the attack.
Yemen targets USS Harry Truman twice in 24 hours
The Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) targeted Washington’s aircraft carrier the USS Harry Truman twice in 24 hours, in response to the deadly US–British attack against Yemen over the weekend.
“For the second time within 24 hours, the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman was targeted in the northern Red Sea with a number of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones in a clash that lasted for several hours,” the YAF said in a statement early on 17 March.
The army said it “succeeded in thwarting a hostile attack that the enemy was preparing to launch against our country,” adding that “its warplanes were forced to return from where they had taken off after a number of missiles and drones were launched at the aircraft carrier and a number of its warships.”
The operation came shortly after renewed US bombardment on Yemen.
NOTE: The Houthis have made clear that their actions are directly tied to Gaza. Their demand is simple and would bring an end to the bloodshed in Gaza: end the war and open the crossings, which have been completely sealed for two weeks, to allow aid in to the starving Palestinians.
RELATED: US ‘doing the world a favor’ with airstrikes on Houthis: Secretary of state
LAPD Surveilled Gaza Protests Using This Social Media Tool
One week after Hamas’s October 7 attack, thousands rallied outside the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles to protest the country’s retaliatory assault on Gaza. The protestors were peaceful, according to local media, “carrying signs that said ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘End the Occupation,’” and watched over by a “sizable police presence in the area.” The LAPD knew the protests were coming: Two days earlier, the department received advanced warning on Dataminr, a social media surveillance firm and “official partner” of X.
Internal Los Angeles Police Department emails obtained via public records request show city police used Dataminr to track Gaza-related demonstrations and other constitutionally protected speech. The department receives real-time alerts from Dataminr not only about protests in progress, but also warnings of upcoming demonstrations as well.
Based on the records obtained by The Intercept, which span October 2023 to April 2024, Dataminr alerted the LAPD of more than 50 different protests, including at least a dozen before they occurred.
It’s unclear whether the LAPD used any of these notifications to inform its response to the wave of pro-Palestine protests that spread across Southern California over the last two years, which have resulted in hundreds of arrests.
Privacy and civil liberties experts argue that police surveillance of First Amendment activity from afar has chilling effect on political association, discourse and dissent, and have concluded that the software provides the government with visibility that far surpasses what any individual user or even team of human officers could accomplish. Indeed, Dataminr’s own law enforcement marketing materials claim “30k people working 24/7 would only process 1% of all the data Dataminr ingests each day.”
Previous reporting by The Intercept has shown Dataminr has used this privileged access to surveil abortion rights rallies, Black Lives Matter protests, and other constitutionally protected speech on behalf of both local and federal police. Dataminr sources told The Intercept in 2020 how the company’s human analysts, helping tailor the service to its various police and military customers, at time demonstrated implicit biases in their work — an allegation the company denied (continue reading here).
