Israel attacks polio vaccination site in northern Gaza, injuring children

A Palestinian family living in Bureij Camp in the central part of Gaza City, where Israel continues its attacks, struggle to survive under cold weather and difficult conditions on October 26, 2024. (Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

Saturday was the twenty-ninth consecutive day of the Israeli occupation forces’ aerial, ground, and naval bombardment of northern Gaza. The siege has included blocking supplies of food, water, medicine, and fuel, destroying homes, demolishing entire residential blocks, attacking hospitals, and assassinating individuals trying to escape.

Over 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its siege of northern Gaza.

In Gaza, at least 55 people were killed and 192 wounded in Israeli attacks across Gaza Saturday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Relatives of the Palestinians who died as a result of Israeli attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp mourn as the dead bodies brought to the al-Awda Hospital for burial in Gaza City, Gaza on November 2, 2024 (Moiz Salhi/Anadolu Agency)

Polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza hindered by Israel

The WHO said six people, including four children, were wounded in an Israeli attack on a polio vaccination center.

“The Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre in northern Gaza was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

Some areas in northern Gaza that were experiencing ongoing Israeli military offensives and a humanitarian crisis, were excluded from the vaccination campaign.

In a statement, Palestinian Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan confirmed Thursday that northern Gaza could not proceed with the second phase due to the ongoing hostilities, and plans for the next round of vaccinations in the north remain postponed.

On Oct. 27, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that deferring the campaign in northern Gaza endangered the lives of thousands of children.

According to WHO, children in Gaza require two oral doses of the polio vaccine. The initial phase concluded in mid-September, successfully vaccinating over 560,000 children.

The 11-month-old Abdul Rahman Abu al-Jidyen, who is suffering from polio, sleeps on his carrycot by his family in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on August 27, 2024. (Hassan Jedi – Anadolu Agency)

Israeli justice minister calls for 20-year prison sentence for citizens promoting sanctions against the state

Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin requested on Friday the preparation of a bill that criminalizes those calling for imposing international sanctions on his country, including a prison sentence of up to ten years, to be doubled in wartime.

This comes following an article by the publisher of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz, Amos Schocken, in which he called for imposing sanctions on Israel due to the genocide it is currently waging in the Gaza Strip, describing what is happening in Gaza as “a second Nakba”.

Minister Levin’s move reflects an authoritarian approach by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government that aims to silence critical voices and protect the government from any international accountability, even if the calls are directed to pressure Israel to stop the genocidal war in Gaza.

Levin sent a letter on Thursday to Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, requesting her to: “Urgently provide me with a draft law stipulating that actions by Israeli citizens to promote or encourage international sanctions on Israel, its leaders, security forces, and citizens shall constitute a criminal offence punishable by ten years in prison.”

“I further request that such an offense during wartime be considered an aggravating circumstance, allowing for the penalty to be doubled,” he added, noting: “Calls for sanctions against Israel … constitute a severe breach of the fundamental duty of loyalty of a citizen toward their country. Such actions promote a course intended to deprive Israel of its right to self-defense.”

US bolsters Israel defense, deploys B52 bombers, warships to West Asia

The Pentagon is sending additional bomber aircraft and Navy warships to West Asia to strengthen the US presence in the region, US officials announced on 1 November.

The AP reported that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered several B-52 Stratofortress bomber aircraft, tanker aircraft, and Navy destroyers to deploy to West Asia, citing four US and defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The officials stated that an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and its warships are preparing to leave the region. The additional bombers and warships are allegedly being sent to fill the gap until a replacement aircraft carrier arrives.

The announcement comes as tensions remain high between Iran and Israel. The Israeli Air Force attacked anti-aircraft batteries and radar sites across Iran on 26 October.

President Joe Biden has a longstanding policy of ironclad support for Israel.

The B-52 is a long-range bomber capable of dropping or launching a vast array of weapons in the U.S. inventory. (U.S. Air Force photo by William R. Lewis)

Displaced Gazans sew winter clothes from blankets

As Gaza braces for a cold, wet winter, displaced Palestinians living in tents and makeshift shelters by the sea are sewing clothes from blankets in a desperate effort to stay warm, Reuters reports.

Nidaa Attia, 31, and others measure, cut and sew the clothing in a tent near the beach at Al-Mawasi in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The work is entirely manual and labour intensive. Lacking electricity, they generate power by using the pedals of a bicycle connected by a belt to their sewing machine.

“Winter is coming for the second time (since the start of the war) and people are without any (warm) clothes,” Attia said.

Nearby a young child stood on a table while another woman measured him for a jumper to protect him from the cold winter.

“There are no clothes coming into the Gaza Strip, so we thought a lot about how we could find a solution to the lack of fabrics, and we came up with the idea of recycling thermal blankets into winter clothes,” Attia said.

(Read the full story here.)

Palestinians who stay in makeshift tents after fleeing their homes for safety struggle with flooding due to heavy rainfall in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on January 27, 2024. (Ashraf Amra – Anadolu Agency)

Microsoft workers fired over Gaza vigil say company ‘crumbled under pressure’

Two Microsoft employees who were fired last week after organizing a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza say the company retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian activism.

The two organized the event outside Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on 24 October. They were fired later that evening.

“Microsoft really crumbled under pressure, internally and externally, to fire me and to shut down and retaliate against our event, not because of policy violations, simply because we were daring to humanize Palestinians, and simply because we were daring to say that Microsoft should not be complicit with an army that is plausibly accused of genocide,” said one of the ex-employees, who has been criticized on social media and in internal Microsoft employee communication groups over his support for Palestine.

Both employees were members of No Azure for Apartheid, a group of Microsoft workers protesting the company’s sale of its cloud computing technology to Israel.

A silent protest on 29 December called out Microsoft’s business dealings with Israel and the war in Gaza. (NurPhoto/Getty Images)

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All of these journalists are a testament to the fact that the international system allows impunity for crimes against journalists.#EndImpunity #ProtectJournalists pic.twitter.com/eWNNll9rA5

— Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) November 2, 2024

Al Akhbar:

○ Washington and the US Embassy in Lebanon did not allow Iraqi Airways to land at Beirut airport and establish an air bridge to provide aid for the displaced, insisting that the aid must pass through Jordan for inspection first.

○ Washington also threatened to… pic.twitter.com/CNWHcvCNV5

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) November 2, 2024

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – NOVEMBER 2, 2024:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – November 2, 2024: at least 44,108* ( 43,341 in Gaza* – 69% are women and children, according to Gaza’s Media Office). [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 767 in the West Bank (~166 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more in Gaza still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children).

In July 2024, the Lancet said: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 300,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 25 from West Bank).
At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition (at least 37 of them children)**.
About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Palestinian injuries from October 7 – November 2, 2024: at least 108,405 (including at least 102,105 in Gaza and 6,300 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – November 2, 2024: ~1,572 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 394*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza (most recent: Nov 1); 39 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

The death toll in Lebanon since October 8, 2023 is at least 2,968, with 13,319 injuries. An estimated 1.34 million have been displaced.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis 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.

***The figure does not include the reportedly 56 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents.

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

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