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Nonstop Israeli raids on Gaza
Several hospitals turned into graveyards
By Asim Qadeer Rana
France’s President Macron urges Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and children. UN humanitarian chief says no justification for acts of war in health care facilities. OIC and Arab leaders call for a binding resolution ending Israeli aggression.
Doctors’ group says two premature babies have died at Al-Shifa. Gaza medics are feeling completely and utterly broken. A surgeon at Gaza’s biggest hospital has said that the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) has been struck and is damaged. Two patients who were on ventilators have now died, one of whom was a baby.
The hospital is out of fuel, food, and water; the surgeon said adding that there is constant shooting and bombardment around the hospital. He also said people trying to leave the hospital had been shot at and some had died.
Israeli forces have Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital surrounded and there is great concern for staff and patients who remain there. If there is no ceasefire or medical aid, all the patients who are remaining in these hospitals will just die, and these hospitals will turn into graveyards, says Dr. Mohammad Abu Mughaiseb, the deputy medical coordinator for the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza.
He told the intensive care unit of the main pediatric hospital in Gaza had been targeted by tanks, forcing MSF teams and other medical staff to leave and abandon patients. In the pediatric hospital, the medical team left the hospital and there were five babies in the intensive care unit. These babies now are left alone in a hospital that is bombed, and these babies will die. He also said the shortage of drugs was so dire that surgeries were being performed without anesthesia.
Another night of bombardment for Gazan hospitals continues. Red Cross says Gaza hospitals are at the point of no return. A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson said that the Al-Shifa hospital was coming under bombardment, adding that 20 other hospitals in Gaza were also completely out of action.
With ongoing strikes and fighting nearby (Al-Shifa), we are gravely concerned about the well-being of thousands of civilians there, many children among them, seeking medical care and shelter.
Human Rights Watch said on social media site X. Al-Rantisi Pediatric Hospital and Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital have been witnessing a series of direct attacks and bombardments.
There were explosions near the Indonesian Hospital overnight, which damaged parts of the hospital, located at the northern end of the narrow coastal enclave.
Gaza’s health ministry has said 18 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals and 40 other health centers were out of service either due to damage from shelling or lack of fuel.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the increasing intensity of the war against the civilian residents of Gaza, the expansion of the scope of the war has now become inevitable.
Israel’s military advance on central Gaza City, which brought tanks within about 1.2 kilometers (3/4 mile) of Al-Shifa, according to residents, has raised questions about how Israel will interpret international laws on protecting medical centers and displaced people sheltering there.
Deadly air strikes on refugee camps, a medical convoy, and near hospitals have already prompted fierce arguments among some of Israel’s Western allies over its military’s adherence to international law.
US President Joe Biden said in a post on X on Thursday that Israel has an obligation to distinguish between terrorists and civilians and fully comply with international law. The White House said that Israel agreed to pause military operations in parts of north Gaza for four hours a day, but there was no sign of a let-up in the fighting.
The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday reiterated the Kingdom’s condemnation of Israeli violations in the Gaza Strip and the forced displacement of Palestinians in the enclave.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General World Health Organization has warned of a dire and perilous situation in Gaza’s hospitals, saying more patients, including premature babies, are tragically dying. All hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip were out of service.
Gaza’s two largest hospitals, al-Shifa and al-Quds have both closed. Israeli snipers continue to fire at anyone near al-Shifa hospital trapping thousands inside. The International Committee of the Red Cross has said the conditions under which civilians are evacuating in the Gaza Strip are precarious and unsafe.
European Union foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell has said pauses are needed to enable the evacuation of hospital patients who need urgent medical care. Even during pauses, people are dying from Israeli bombardment.
More than 11,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza although the number has not been updated since contact was lost with key hospitals.
Mansour Shouman, a resident in Khan Younis tells people across the Gaza Strip are living in uncertainty as conditions worsen. For the last five weeks, we have not seen any aid trucks that are supposed to have come in from the Rafah crossing. The only time we have seen something is when water bottles came in. But they got over within two minutes, he said.
The bakeries, 95% of them are closed and whatever bakery lines are open, people wait for 7-8 hours outside, waiting for bread. There is no clean water, no fuel, and no medical supplies. People are angry and living in despair. However, they are channeling all their emotions into actions, he added.
Shouman said this action includes mothers trying their best to take care of their children with limited supplies and residents trying to communicate to the outside world through media platforms, seeking to expose the difficulties people in Gaza are going through.
The UN report says that Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than eleven thousand Palestinians including over four thousand children and two thousand women.
Several hospitals in Gaza City and northern Gaza are facing Israel’s intensified attacks on hospitals. There are fears for hundreds of patients, including premature babies in al-Shifa Hospital, as electricity fails in multiple hospitals. Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing south on foot with only what they can carry after running out of food and water in the north.
Over 70 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have already fled their homes, but the growing numbers making their way south point to an increasingly desperate situation in and around Gaza’s largest city, which has come under heavy Israeli bombardment.
The war has entered its second month, with an increasingly dire humanitarian situation inside the besieged Palestinian enclave and no end in sight.
About 15,000 people fled northern Gaza triple the number that left earlier, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. They are using Gaza’s main north-south highway during a daily four-hour window announced by Israel.
Those fleeing include children, older people, and people with disabilities, and most walked with minimal belongings, the UN agency said.
Some say they had to cross Israeli checkpoints, where they saw people being arrested, while others held their hands in the air and raised white flags while passing Israeli tanks.
Residents reported loud explosions overnight across Gaza City and in its Shati refugee camp, which houses Palestinian families. The bombings were heavy and close. Residents panicked when they heard the news that Israeli ground forces were fighting deep inside the city.
Israel is focusing its operations on Gaza City, which was home to some 650,000 people before the war and where the military says Hamas has its central command and a vast labyrinth of tunnels.
Hundreds of thousands have heeded Israeli orders to flee the north in recent weeks, even though Israel also routinely strikes what it says are militant targets in the south, often killing civilians.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north, many sheltering at hospitals or UN schools. The north has been without running water for weeks, and the UN agency said the last functioning bakeries shut down for lack of fuel, water, and flour. Hospitals running low on supplies are performing surgeries including amputations without anesthesia, it said.
Majed Haroun, who lives in Gaza City, said women and children go door to door asking for food, while those in shelters rely on local donations. They should allow aid for those children, he said.
Ameer Ghalban, who was pushing an older relative in a wheelchair down Gaza’s main highway alongside others fleeing to the south, said the two of them had each lived off one piece of bread a day for the past three.
The majority of people have left their land because the siege has become absolute in Gaza. We have no water, no electricity, and no flour,” he said.
The situation is little better in the south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are packed into UN-run schools and other facilities. At one packed shelter, 600 people must share a single toilet, according to the UN office.
Tens of thousands of people walked southward from Gaza City and other northern towns this week, following evacuation orders from Israeli military officials, who have agreed to a four-hour daily window during which they claim civilians will be guaranteed safe passage. However, people have reported being fired at by Israeli tanks as they try to reach southern Gaza on foot.
The charity organization Save the Children says that Israeli airstrikes and its restriction of clean water, medicine, and food over the last three weeks have killed more children in the Gaza Strip than in every other armed conflict annually since 2019.
With full support and assistance of the Western governments like the US, and the EU thousands of human beings have literally been starved to death, deprived of water, and bombed incessantly at this moment. Read the statistic over a few times if it did not cause you to tremble in horror. This is not a natural disaster; it is a human-made catastrophe. Moreover, while others may shy away from calling it out for what it obviously is, I will not. This is really a genocide.
Mainstream media or politicians have said little to nothing concerning the scores of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel. Few to none of them discuss the violent pogroms routinely carried out by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinians. On the other hand, the daily persecution and dehumanization Palestinians suffer from the IDF via checkpoints and night raids.
Israel exerts almost full control over the borders and air space of the besieged enclave. Moreover, it subjects its captive population to routine drone surveillance and indiscriminate bombings. In addition, Gaza was already becoming virtually unlivable long before October 7, due to successive Israeli bombings of water treatment and other essential infrastructure.
Life in the occupied West Bank was not much better. Effectively a Bantustan, the West Bank is a place where the illegal Israeli settlers and IDF raids routinely terrorize the Palestinian population and subject them to home demolitions, checkpoints, and military rule.
For decades, there has been much word about the two-state solution. But one look at a map and how much land the Palestinians have lost over the past 75 years puts this ridiculous pipedream to rest. There are at least 700,000 Jewish settlers in the Occupied West Bank. Moreover, they enjoy full protection from the IDF, as well as full rights as Israeli citizens. Their Palestinian counterparts do not. They have been deprived of all rights.
So, when the idea of a one-state solution is belittled it becomes easy to show that there already is one state: Israel. It is an apartheid regime that has afforded one group of people rights, privileges, and respect, while another set of people i.e. the Palestinians have been treated, at best, as second-class citizens.
Israel is the only side that possesses an army, navy, air force, and nuclear weapons. It is the only side with unequivocal support from the US, EU, and the UK. It is the only side exempt from disparaging descriptors like a terrorist, despite scores of instances of Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinians with IDF military complicity.
Most news sites seldom show the yearly ritual of extremist Israelis in Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs” as they march through Palestinian neighborhoods attacking anyone they suspect of being Arab. How often do they talk about Israeli settlers burning a Palestinian family to death in their home? Alternatively, chanting ‘Ali is on the grill’ in reference to a Palestinian baby burned to death by settlers.
None of this is new. Israel was founded on the racist precepts of settler colonialism. Moreover, today we see how this has evolved into apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Israeli textbooks for children often depict Palestinians as primitive, backward, or terrorists.
It is time to call out Israel for its intent. Because that machine has already started grinding. Additionally, while diplomats and journalists argue over terms, the entire generation of Palestinians will be erased from the earth within weeks by a state hell-bent on genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has rightly said the collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians fits the definition of war crimes.
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