Palestine today
Don’t say you didn't know
Israeli army systematically targets medical teams in effort to destroy Palestinian life in northern Gaza
13 Dec 2024
Palestinian Territory - As part of its genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Israel routinely targets medical teams in the north in an effort to destroy the health system and impose intolerable living conditions on civilians while denying them access to life-saving care.
The Israeli occupation army targeted Dr Saeed Joda today, on the afternoon of Thursday 12 December, as he was travelling from Kamal Adwan Hospital to Al-Awda Hospital to treat patients. He was killed when a Quadcopter fired at him, striking him in the head and demonstrating that his killing was premeditated and deliberate, especially given that he was the only orthopaedic physician in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel has attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital, located in the Beit Lahia project, more than 20 times in the past 10 days, injuring several patients, medical personnel, and their companions. An Israeli drone targeted and killed Ali Al-Qar’a, a paramedic working in the Kamal Adwan area, on Sunday night (8 December).
The few medical teams that have remained in northern Gaza are being targeted by the Israeli occupation army in a methodical, obvious, and recurring pattern. This makes it extremely difficult to provide medical care to the 10s of thousands of residents who have been under siege for 69 days and continues to prevent ambulance and civil defence crews from working for 51 days now.
In addition to the cycle of killing that has affected 10s of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the northern section of the Strip, Euro-Med Monitor’s review of the Israeli military’s targeting records and victim lists reveals a systematic, widespread policy of killing and assassinating Palestinian elites and those with competencies in various sectors.
The number of Palestinian medical personnel who have been killed since 7 October 2023 is 1,057, and more than 135 scientists and academics have also been killed. Professor Abdel Salam Abu Zaida is the latest of these victims, having been killed along with six other Palestinians in an Israeli raid on Gaza City’s Al-Malash building yesterday evening (Wednesday, 11 December).
The lists of targeted elites also include journalists, 193 of whom have been killed since 7 October 2023, as well as people with knowledge of computer engineering, programming, and information technology, plus other influential people in these crucial spheres of society.
Israel’s crimes, which include the targeted and intentional killing of Palestinian intellectual elites and talents as well as the widespread and intentional destruction of businesses and infrastructure, are likely to impede the advancement of Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip overall; threaten its scientific, educational, and economic system; and deprive its vital sectors of prestigious and specialised cadres that will be difficult to replace in the near future. The killings are also bound to instill fear among the remaining talents.
These crimes occur in the context of overt Israeli policies that seek to render the Gaza Strip uninhabitable by eradicating basic life structures and individuals with valuable competencies. Given the magnitude and breadth of Israel’s efforts, its crimes could immoblise Palestinian society in the Strip by preventing it from developing, building, or recovering from this genocide.
The United Nations and all nations must, therefore carry out their international legal duties to prevent the continuation of Israel’s crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip; impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel; hold it responsible and punish it for all of its crimes; take all necessary steps to protect Palestinian civilians in the Strip; defend medical personnel and health facilities in the enclave from any further targeting; and act swiftly, without hindrance, and in a way that satisfies the needs of all residents of the Gaza Strip, especially those in the northern areas. The complete withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army from the entire Gaza Strip must be ensured.
The aftermath of the shooting in the village of Beit Awa, southwest of Hebron (Mosab Shawer)
Israeli soldiers kill disabled man during West Bank raid
Israeli forces shot dead a disabled man in the occupied West Bank on Friday, during a raid south of Hebron. Special forces stormed the village of Beit Awa, southwest of Hebron, and surrounded a paint shop. During the raid, Muhammad Ahmad Masalma, a 23-year-old with learning difficulties, was hit by a bullet while the Israelis arrested his cousin Thabet Masalma inside the shop.
An witness reported that Masalma tried to flee in fear at the moment of the raid, but the force opened fire on him, which led to his injury and his delivery to a Palestinian ambulance. He was then transferred to Dura Governmental Hospital, where the Ministry of Health announced his death.
Since the war on Gaza erupted in October 2023, land seizures and violent attacks aimed at forcing Palestinians to abandon their homes have greatly increased. The attacks have coincided with sweeping restrictions on movement that have denied Palestinians access to cities, towns and villages. At least 792 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry. Several countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Canada and Australia, have recently imposed sanctions on a number of settlers and their organisations.
Palestinians decry ‘barbaric’ Israel strike on Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp
Palestinian authorities have said that at least 36 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, as Israel continues to conduct devastating attacks across the strip. The Government Media Office in Gaza called the Thursday attack a “barbaric and heinous massacre”, noting that most of those killed hailed from the al-Sheikh Ali family. “The [Israeli] occupation army knew that this is a residential block with many apartment buildings housing dozens of civilians, children, women and displaced people,” the office said. Medics told the news agency Reuters that Israeli fire struck a postal office in Nuseirat sheltering displaced Palestinian families, as well as nearby houses.
Photographs from the scene show young children coated with dust and blood in the rubble of a collapsed building. As of October 2024, the one-year anniversary of the war, Israeli strikes had completely wiped out at least 902 entire families in the Strip, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza. Health facilities, journalists, and humanitarian workers have also reported being persistently targeted by Israeli forces since the fighting began in October 2023, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,100 people, most of them civilians.
In the time since, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,800 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children.
At least 34 Palestinians killed in unabated Israeli attacks in Gaza
At least 34 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured in Israeli attacks targeting a school housing displaced families, homes, and tents in displacement camps across the Gaza Strip, medical sources said on Sunday, Anadolu reports. Fifteen people were killed when Israeli forces raided a school housing displaced families in Izbat Abd Rabbo, a neighborhood in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, a medical source said. Witnesses said Israeli forces raided the Khalil Oweida School after an hours-long siege amid heavy gunfire and artillery shelling. Israeli fighter jets hit a house in al-Nafaq neighborhood in northern Gaza, leaving five people dead and injuring several others, the medical source said.
Three more people were killed and several injured in another strike on a Palestinian home in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, he added. The bodies of four people were recovered after an Israeli strike on another house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, taking the death toll in the attack to seven, another source said. In northern Gaza, a husband, wife, and two daughters were killed in Israeli artillery shelling in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, he added. Eight people were also injured in an Israeli strike on a tent sheltering displaced civilians in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, the source said.
Israel arrested 12,100 Palestinians in West Bank since Oct 2023
Israeli occupation forces have arrested 12,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since they launched the war on Gaza on 7 October 2023, a prisoners’ rights group said. The Palestinian Prisoners Club pointed out that the figure does not include Palestinians detained in Gaza, which are estimated in the thousands. According to the rights group, the detainees included more than 440 women and 795 children, noting a majority of the arrests took place in the governorates of Jerusalem and Hebron. Occupation forces have also arrested 141 journalists, of whom 59 remain in detention, including five women and 33 journalists from Gaza.
More than 10,000 administrative detention orders were issued during that period. The ongoing arrest campaigns are accompanied by escalating abuse and severe beatings, and verbal and physical threats against detainees and their families, sabotage and destruction of citizens’ homes, as well as the confiscation of personal vehicles, cash and jewellery, the organisation added. Detainees were also used as human shields, while their families were held as hostages for periods. In addition to the arrest campaigns, the Prisoners Club said occupation forces carried out field executions, including against family members of the prisoners. Israel continues to withhold the bodies of 47 Palestinian prisoners who died in its jails since the start of the war on Gaza.
Israel to deploy automated weapons in occupied West Bank, report says
The Israeli military is preparing to deploy remotely controlled automated weapons across occupied West Bank checkpoints to target Palestinians, according to a report by the Israeli Army Radio on Sunday. The system, named "Roeh-Yoreh" ("See-Fires"), is an advanced weaponry structure developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It includes a tower with sophisticated surveillance equipment and a remote-controlled lethal fire mechanism. Since its introduction into the Israeli military arsenal in 2008, the system has been exclusively used in Gaza, where it was deployed along the security fence to target Palestinians approaching the barrier.
Israel occupies 3 new villages in southern Syria
Israel has occupied three new villages in southern Syria as Tel Aviv deepened its military incursion into the country following the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime, Anadolu reports. Israeli army forces seized Jamlah in Daraa province and the villages of Mazraat Beit Jinn and Maghar al-Mir in the Damascus countryside, according to Anadolu reporters Taking advantage of Assad’s fall, Israel has intensified its airstrikes against military sites across Syria, in blatant violation of the country’s sovereignty. Israel also declared the collapse of a 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria and deployed its forces within the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights – a territory Israel has occupied since 1967. This move has been widely condemned by the United Nations and several Arab nations. According to the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), the buffer zone “extends over 75 kilometers in length and ranges in width from approximately 10 kilometers in the center to 200 meters in the far south.”
Israel approves plan to surge settler population in occupied Golan Heights
Israel’s government has approved a plan to increase the number of settlers in the illegally occupied Golan Heights, days after seizing more Syrian territory following the toppling of Syria’s longtime leader Bashar al-Assad. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the government had “unanimously approved” the “demographic development” of the occupied territory, which would seek to double the Israeli population there. The new plan is only for the portion of the Golan Heights that Israel has occupied since 1967. In 1981, Israel’s Knesset moved to impose Israeli law over the territory, in an effective annexation.
The plan does not relate to the portion of Syrian land seized by Israel in the wake of al-Assad’s toppling a week ago. The seized area, which had been demilitarised as part of an agreement reached after the 1973 war, also includes Mount Hermon overlooking the Syrian capital Damascus. In a statement, Netanyahu praised the plan, which provides more than 40 million shekels ($11m) to increase the settler population. There are about 31,000 Israeli settlers spread across dozens of illegal settlements in the Golan Heights already. They live alongside minority groups, including the Druze, who predominantly identify as Syrian.
Steinbock is Jewish, the research director of an international think tank, but those who would disparage any settler-colonialism analysis will find little comfort here. At the book’s start he states categorically: ‘Until recently, many attributed the fall of Israel mainly to the occupation of the Palestinian territories in the 1967 War and the subsequent expansion of Jewish settlements. Even though colonisation and the settlements have played a central role in the conflict, they are its proximate effect. It is the ethnic expulsions of the Palestinian Arabs that is the modus operandi of the conflict – from the late 1940s to contemporary Gaza and the West Bank.’
Many of the players come out looking badly. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, is one; Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency another; the American Rabbi Meir Kahane, father of the far-right illegal settlements yet another. There’s Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, Biden, even Tony Blair – the list goes on. The latter was involved in a murky deal to deliver gas from Gaza’s off-shore fields to Israel. As Steinbock writes, their ‘ploys killed the prospects for a limited Palestinian budget autonomy and the Oslo Accords, while a path was paved for new wars, which would then be blamed on the Palestinians.’
If anyone still believed that political Zionism’s objective was anything less than ethnic cleansing The Fall of Israel would surely disabuse them of that delusion. As for Israel’s prospects, for all the seeming success of its forever wars, the author has this to say: ‘Unfortunately, time is running out … What has happened in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza. Perhaps it won’t even stay in the region.”
