Israel dropped over 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza since start of genocide – Day 396

Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says Israeli military

Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes”.

He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but not the north, since there are “no more civilians left”.

International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

(Read the full article here.)

Israeli Strike on Home in Northern Gaza Kills 25, Including 13 Children

An Israeli strike on a home in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, killed at least 25 Palestinians, including 13 children, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Tuesday.

Medical sources told WAFA that people are still missing under the rubble, meaning the death toll could rise. Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which has come under repeated Israeli attacks, said the home that was targeted was sheltering several displaced Palestinian families.

According to The Associated Press, Israel claimed it targeted a weapons storage facility but, as usual, offered no evidence for the claim.

Israel dropped over 85,000 tons of bombs inside Gaza since start of genocide

The Israeli military has dropped more than 85,000 tons of bombs inside the besieged Gaza Strip since the start of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, according to a statement by the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority.

Palestinian officials say the continuous bombing “has caused the destruction of vast areas of agricultural land and contaminated soil with toxic chemicals, which will hinder agriculture in the enclave for decades.”

Furthermore, the officials say Israeli attacks have caused significant damage to Gaza’s water sources, “causing polluted water to seep into groundwater basins, [posing] a health and environmental crisis that endangers hundreds of thousands of residents for future generations.”

Earlier this year, the UN warned that removing tens of millions of tons of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 15 years and cost between $500-600 million. Moreover, rebuilding destroyed homes could take at least until 2040.

In economic terms, the UN Conference on Trade and Development said in a report released last month that if the war ends soon and Gaza returns to the status quo before 7 October 2023, it could take 350 years for its economy to return to its precarious prewar level.

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel’s Scholasticide and the Irrelevance of US Politics: 11,923 Palestinian students didn’t go back to school this fall because Israel killed them

Israel signs $5.2B deal to acquire advanced F-15 fighter jets

Israel, which continues to strike both Gaza and Lebanon, announced signing a deal to purchase 25 next generation F-15 fighter jets from US aviation giant Boeing.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the agreement, signed on Wednesday, is part of a broader aid package approved by the US administration and Congress earlier this year and includes an option for 25 additional aircraft.

The jets will be “equipped with cutting-edge weapon systems” and integrated with advanced Israeli technologies, the statement said.

According to the ministry, the upgraded aircraft will help the air force “maintain its strategic superiority in addressing current and future challenges in the Middle East.”

Delivery of the aircraft will begin in 2031, with four to six aircraft to be supplied annually.

New criminal probe alleges Netanyahu tried to make discussions of the war “untraceable”

Israeli police are investigating “criminal incidents” reportedly linked to meetings held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet at the start of the war on Gaza in October last year, Israeli media reported on 5 November.

“The police’s Lahav 433 investigation unit is conducting a criminal probe related to incidents from the start of the war, including several open investigations,” a police statement said, adding that further details remain under gag order and are barred from publication.

The Times of Israel added that reports appearing in Hebrew media earlier this year claimed that Netanyahu had been “attempting to keep his conversations regarding the management of the war in Gaza untraceable.”

Senior figures in the security establishment allegedly fear that efforts were being made to edit the minutes of wartime discussions held with Netanyahu after discovering discrepancies between transcripts of the meetings and what officials in attendance had heard first-hand.

Knesset Passes Law to Deport Relatives of Resistance Fighters for Up to 20 Years

Israel’s Knesset approved a bill on Wednesday to allow the deportation of relatives of resistance fighters (their word: “terrorists”) from Israel for up to 20 years. A temporary five-year provision was also passed, enabling the imprisonment of minors under 14 years of age who are convicted of homicide as part of a terror act.

It was proposed by Likud lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky, and states that family members may be deported by the Interior Minister to to Gaza “or another destination determined by the circumstances” if it is found that they “knew in advance of the [so-called] terrorist’s plan and did not take necessary measures to prevent it.”

The interior minister would also have the authority to deport a relative who “expressed support or sympathy for the act of [so-called] terrorism or published praise, admiration, or encouragement.” A decision on the deportation will be made after a hearing.

The law, which was fast-tracked, is considered extreme, and the Attorney General’s office did not issue an opinion on it after a representative claimed that despite the Attorney General’s request, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position on the matter was not submitted.

The law applies to the immediate family of [so-called] terrorists: parents, siblings, children, and spouses. Israeli citizens who meet the criteria will be deported for at least seven years and up to 15 years. Non-citizen deportees will face a minimum of 10 years and up to 20 years. Additionally, the police will have the authority to enforce deportations, “including the power to enter any premises, remove individuals, and use reasonable force.”

NOTE: The use of the word “terrorist” for a group that resists occupation and oppression is a political, not fact-based choice. In reality, international law supports the efforts of resistance groups against an occupying power, the UN extending that right to the point of armed resistance. Hamas has clearly and openly stated that its enemy is not the Jewish people, but the supremacist ideology of Zionism – the ideology under which Israel dispossessed 750,000 Palestinian people and exiled them to Gaza and other locations. 

UN signals to Israel: Replacing UNRWA would be your responsibility

The United Nations responded to Israel’s decision to cut ties with the Palestinian relief agency (UNRWA), by saying it has no responsibility to replace the agency’s operations in Gaza and the West Bank, signalling it was Israel’s problem as the occupying power, according to a letter excerpt seen by Reuters.

Under a new law, Israel ended a 1967 cooperation agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the Agency. The law will also ban UNRWA’s operations in Israel from late January. UNRWA has said that its operations in Gaza and the West Bank are now at risk of collapse.

“I would note, as a general point, that it is not our responsibility to replace UNRWA, nor do we have the capacity to do so,” UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres’ chef de cabinet, Courtenay Rattray, wrote to a senior Israeli foreign affairs official late on Tuesday.

The mention of responsibility is a veiled reference to Israel’s obligations as an occupying power.

The UN views Gaza and the West Bank as Israeli-occupied territory. International humanitarian law requires an occupying power to agree to relief programs for people in need and to facilitate them “by all the means at its disposal” and ensure food, medical care, hygiene and public health standards.

NOTE: According to the Congressional Research Service, UNRWA’s budget for 2023 alone was $1.47 billion. 

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel Is Restricting Aid More Than Ever, UNRWA Warns as Millions Starve

Israeli Settler Kills Palestinian, Israeli Forces Kill Another

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, on Wednesday night, injured several citizens and abducted others, during a prolonged military assault on the northern West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp.

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced that the citizen, Abdullah Mohammad Saeed Saadi, 53, succumbed to a critical gunshot wound inflicted on him by occupation forces.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that its ambulance crews transported a critically injured citizen to hospital for treatment, while sources at the Ibn Sina Hospital said that they received a seriously injured man who was shot in the thigh, later announcing his death.

The PRCS added that occupation forces shot Saadi with three live rounds while he was in the “Hursh Al-Sa’ada” neighborhood in the western part of Jenin city.

On Wednesday afternoon, an Israeli colonizer killed a Palestinian man after an alleged car-ramming attempt near the illegal “Shilo” colony, built on citizens’ lands northeast of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.

The General Authority of Civil Affairs informed the Palestinian Health Ministry that the young man, Harith Khaled Abdullah Jabara, 32, succumbed to critical gunshot wounds during an alleged car-ramming attempt.

The Health Ministry announced that occupation forces shot Jabara after his vehicle crashed at the entrance to the “Shilo” settlement, near the town of Turmus Ayya, injuring two Israeli colonizers.

Israeli media reported that two Israeli settlers sustained minor injuries, while an armed colonizer shot and killed the suspect after he exited his vehicle.

Since the beginning of the Israeli military onslaught against the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed 777 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 167 children, and injured 6,300.

Election: In Dearborn, Rashida Tlaib Did Nearly Twice as Well as Kamala Harris

Harris refused to distance herself from the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza. Tlaib railed against it.

Voters in the biggest U.S. city with an Arab-majority population shifted decisively toward Donald Trump on Tuesday, in a stinging rebuke of the Biden administration’s policies in the Middle East.

Trump claimed 43 percent of the vote in Dearborn, Michigan, to Kamala Harris’s 36 percent. Jill Stein claimed 15 percent of the vote in the city, where the Green Party had notched less than 1 percent in 2020.

Trump’s margin of victory in Dearborn represents a massive reversal from the 2020 election, when Joe Biden won 69 percent to Trump’s 30.

The huge shift toward Trump will not be decisive in a race where he cruised to a Electoral College victory without the help of Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans. The state had yet to be called Wednesday morning.

Still, it was a telling sign of how completely the administration has lost Arab Americans over the war.

Down-ballot results suggest that the move was motivated in large part by anger toward the Biden administration rather than dissatisfaction with Democratic policies overall.

Letter to U of Minnesota admin protesting suspension of students for protesting Gaza War

Dear President Cunningham and Colleagues:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about the decision of the administration of the University of Minnesota (UMN) to indefinitely suspend eight students who participated in an occupation of a university building, Morrill Hall, on 21 October 2024.

Whatever one thinks of the students’ action, we regard the university’s decision to bar them from classes, dormitories, dining halls and campus jobs as an unduly harsh sanction that violates their rights to education and sustenance.

The fact that this sanction was imposed without the students having had the opportunity to defend their actions in a properly conducted disciplinary process makes it all the more egregious.

The university’s actions in this regard seem aimed at deterring students from exercising the dictates of their conscience on matters of urgent public concern. They also contravene the University of Minnesota’s laudable tradition of countenancing contentious student protests…

(Read the full letter here.)

MORE NEWS:

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – NOVEMBER 6, 2024:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – November 6, 2024: at least 44,159* ( 43,391 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 778 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.

1. 1. • 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 6, 2024: at least 108,647 (including at least 102,347 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 6, 2024: ~1,574 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 396*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza (most recent: Nov 2); 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 3,050, with 13,658 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.

• Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
• More than 100 BBC staff accuse broadcaster of Israel bias in Gaza coverage
• Witnesses Say The Israeli Army Is Using Facial Recognition Technology In Its Assault On North Gaza
• US Identified 500 Cases Where Its Weapons Harmed Gazan Civilians, But Hasn’t Taken Action
• UN schools in Gaza shaped our reporter’s childhood. She worries for the future.
• The powerful elites behind the Ukraine & Middle East wars – Col. Douglas Macgregor
• How Does AIPAC Shape Washington? We Tracked Every Dollar.
• The Religious Extremism That Motivates Israeli Settler Expansion in the West Bank
• Police escalate the British state’s war on independent journalism
• U.S. Media’s Doublespeak: Israelis Live in “Densely Populated Areas,” Palestinians Are “Human Shields”
• Where was Amnesty International during the Genocide in Gaza?
• FLASHBACK 2014: U.S. Senators Are Nearly All Stooges for Israel
• More on Israeli Atrocities: Attacking UN peacekeepers is a dangerous policy
• How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on October 7
• The most precarious place in the world to be a child: Israel’s year of war on children
• Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’
• Most Americans want to stop arming Israel. Politicians don’t care.
• Happy 100th birthday, Jimmy Carter – loved by many, smeared by some
• You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?
• How Does Israel Justify Mass Killings? It Starts in the Schools.
• From the Americas to Gaza: Spreading disease has long been used by colonizers to commit genocide
• Contrived charges of antisemitism are the new ‘Red Scare’
• How Israel’s quadcopters traumatize, maim and kill Palestinians in Gaza
• Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
• The unpublished genocide diaries of Refaat Alareer