Israeli defense minister issues “final warning” to civilians: War on Gaza Day 531

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

At least 110 Gazans were reportedly killed on Thursday; at least 600 total have been killed since Tuesday.

Gaza’s government media office said on Thursday that 70 percent of those killed were children, women and elderly people, pointing to the deliberate targeting of civilians.

The true number of fatalities is likely much higher, with the bodies of many people still under the rubble.

Month-old girl pulled from the rubble in Gaza after her parents were killed

Israeli defense minister’s genocidal “final warning”

Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, issued “a final warning” to the population of Gaza in an apparent declaration of genocidal intent.

“Things will become much more difficult, and you will pay the full price,” Katz said, adding that “evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume.”

“Take the US president’s advice. Return the hostages and remove Hamas, and other options will open up for you, including relocation to other places in the world for those who choose,” Katz added. “The alternative is total destruction and total devastation.”

Katz’s statement will likely be added to a long list of declarations of genocidal intent by Israeli officials since October 2023.

“What you’re hearing is the sound of impunity,” Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer, told The Electronic Intifada Livestream on Thursday, commenting on Katz’s video statement.

Mokhiber said that Katz is “committing crimes in public because the West, beginning with the United States, has guaranteed Israeli impunity.”

“That can only be described as a Nazi-like statement,” added Mokhiber, who resigned from his post as a UN human rights official in October 2023 in protest over the world body’s inaction in the face of Israel’s unfolding genocide (continue reading here).

Human Rights Watch: Israeli Military Commits War Crimes While Occupying Hospitals 

Israeli military forces caused deaths and unnecessary suffering of Palestinian patients while occupying hospitals in the Gaza Strip during the current hostilities, amounting to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. 

Witnesses at three hospitals told Human Rights Watch that Israeli forces denied electricity, water, food, and medicines to patients; shot civilians; mistreated health workers; and deliberately destroyed medical facilities and equipment. Unlawful forced evacuations put patients at grave risk and left desperately needed hospitals nonfunctional. 

“Israeli forces repeatedly demonstrated deadly cruelty against Palestinian patients in hospitals that they seized,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli military’s denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals.”

Israeli authorities have not announced any investigations into alleged serious violations of international humanitarian law, including apparent war crimes, by Israeli ground forces while in control of these or other hospitals. Unlawful forced evacuations of hospitals knowingly carried out as part of the Israeli government’s policy of forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza would amount to crimes against humanity. 

Human Rights Watch interviewed nine patients and two healthcare workers present when Israeli forces raided and occupied al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City in November 2023 and again in March 2024; Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in January 2024; and Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis in February 2024. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 84 patients, and possibly many more, died from lack of care in the three hospitals at these times, excluding people killed by shelling or gunfire.

Israeli forces occupying hospitals severely interfered with the treatment of wounded and sick patients. Medical workers said Israeli forces denied doctors’ pleas to bring medicine and supplies to patients and blocked access to hospitals and ambulances, leading to the deaths of wounded and chronically ill patients, including children on dialysis (read full report here).

West Bank: Israeli forces strip, ‘terrorize’ Palestinian boys aged 7, 13

Israeli forces forcibly stripped, detained, humiliated, and terrorized two Palestinian children, after a military raid in the northern occupied West Bank last week.

Israeli forces raided the home of the grandparents of seven-year-old Ibrahim Abu Ghali and 13-year-old Omar Mohammed Dirar Zaben, located west of Jenin, where they had traveled for a short stay in the early morning of March 10, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Around 4:20 a.m., as Ibrahim’s grandmother stepped outside to listen for the call to prayer, Israeli soldiers opened fire, leaving the rest of the family trapped inside.

Soldiers proceeded to detain Ibrahim, Omar, and their grandfather, forcing them to strip down to their underwear at gunpoint. Israeli soldiers bound their hands with plastic ties and held them outdoors, exposed, in cold temperatures, for about an hour. They were then crammed onto the back floor of a military vehicle, still without clothes, before being taken to Jalameh interrogation center, located in northern Israel. 

“Forcing young children to strip, detaining them in degrading conditions, and subjecting them to psychological terror is a clear violation of international law and amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “The Israeli military’s systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children is not an isolated incident but part of its entrenched system of control and oppression over Palestinians.”

Once they were released after 12 hours, they learned that Israeli soldiers had killed their grandmother.

The Israeli occupation army has “systematically” escalated its targeting of Palestinian women, including arrests, under the pretext of “incitement” on social media, the Commission of Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said yesterday.

In a joint statement issued following Israel’s extension of the detention of five recently arrested Palestinian women, the groups said: “The occupation authorities continue to escalate their targeting of women through systematic arrests, with the number of female prisoners reaching 25 after the release of journalist Latifa Abdul-Latif from Jerusalem yesterday [Tuesday].”

“This escalation has affected women from various Palestinian areas, and minors have not been spared.”

The Israeli occupation army, they explained, is using arrests as a means of putting pressure on Palestinian families, with dozens of women detained to force their family members to surrender, a policy that has escalated significantly since the start of the genocidal war.

Al-Qassam Brigades today announced that they had fired a barrage of rockets toward Tel Aviv, central Israel, marking the first rocket firing from Gaza after Israel launched an intense bombing campaign in Gaza in the latest violation of the ceasefire deal.

In a brief statement, Al-Qassam Brigades said it fired a rocket barrage of M90-type toward Tel Aviv “in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians” in Gaza.

The Israeli occupation army confirmed rockets had been fired from Gaza, claiming that one was intercepted by the army’s air defenses, while two others struck open areas.

Palestinian political prisoner given green light to challenge Trump’s deportation efforts

A federal court in Manhattan on 19 March rejected a claim by the White House to dismiss Palestinian political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil’s legal challenge against his detention and deportation.

“These are serious allegations and arguments that, no doubt, warrant careful review by a court of law; the fundamental constitutional principle that all persons in the United States are entitled to due process of law demands no less,” Judge Jesse Furman wrote in his ruling, describing Khalil’s ordeal as an “exceptional case.”

Furman stressed the need for a thorough legal review to determine whether the White House acted “unlawfully or exercised its authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner” and said that his previous order barring the government from deporting Khalil must remain in place while the case is under review.

He also ruled that the legal case must be transferred to New Jersey, where Khalil was held when the challenge was filed, instead of Louisiana, where he is currently detained at an immigration enforcement facility (continue reading here).

Anadolu Agency: ‘I don’t want to be deported or put in Guantanamo’: Cornell student warns US campuses are no longer safe