Palestine today
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An elderly man moves with a walker past rubble along a broken road as people displaced by conflict from Beit Lahia arrive in Gaza City on 22 March 2025 (AFP)
UN footage shows Gaza first responders retrieved from mass graves in Rafah
Head of the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) in Palestine, Jonathan Whittall, shared a harrowing account of a mass grave uncovered in Gaza's southern city of Rafah, where several emergency responders and paramedics, still in their uniforms and gloves, were killed by Israeli forces. ‘Seven days ago, as Israeli forces advanced on Rafah, 10 PRCS and 6 Civil Defense first responders were dispatched to collect injured,’ Whittall said in a thread on X. ‘All five ambulances and one fire-truck were struck, along with a UN vehicle that arrived later.’
Footage from OCHA shows Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Civil Defence workers carefully retrieving human remains, including 14 bodies recovered on Sunday alone. ‘On the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of 8 PRCS, 6 Civil Defense and 1 UN staff. They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened,’ Whittall added.
International Red Cross 'appalled' by killing of Palestinian medics, rescuers in Gaza
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Sunday expressed outrage after eight paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), five first responders from the Gaza Civil Defense, and a UN staff member were killed while performing emergency duties in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Earlier, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that it retrieved the bodies of 14 people in Rafah following an Israeli strike about a week ago, including eight of its medics, five civil defense workers, and a UN agency employee. “We are deeply saddened and mourn alongside their families, loved ones, and colleagues,” the ICRC statement said.
“These staff and volunteers were risking their own lives to provide support to others,” it added. The medics were targeted on 23 March as they headed to provide first aid to wounded individuals from Israeli shelling in the Al-Hashashin area. The Palestinian Red Crescent said the targeting is a “premeditated crime” and a “flagrant violation” of international humanitarian law, which mandates that Israeli forces respect and facilitate medical teams’ work without threatening their lives. The organization renewed its call for the international community to fulfill its legal duties and take concrete steps to halt Israel’s “grave violations” against medical teams and Palestinian civilians, stressing the need to hold Israel accountable.
Gaza's Eid marred by Israeli massacres of children and expulsion orders
Starving and displaced Palestinians have marked a bloody Eid holiday, with Israeli forces raining down bombs that killed dozens of people, including many children, and issuing new expulsion orders. At least 85 people have been killed in intense Israeli bombardments across the Gaza Strip since the Eid al-Fitr holiday began on Sunday morning, according to Marwan al-Homs, the director of Gaza field hospitals in the Palestinian health ministry. The majority of those killed were children and women, he told Al Jazeera. “Yesterday, I saw the little ones in front of the house, refusing to come eat as they were preparing for Eid al-Fitr,” said Ahmad al-Qahwagi, a relative of Shoroq and Yaqeen al-Qahwagi, two sisters killed on the eve of the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.
“They had been planning for the holiday, eager to wake up early and go out to celebrate. What was the fault of these children to deserve such an end?” Qahwagi told Middle East Eye. The children were bombed in their home at 2am, he said. “The missile that struck the house, obliterated it. It was filled with children and civilians,” he added. The small flat was hit with a missile capable of destroying an entire building, according to Qahwagi. “Instead of taking the children to celebrate Eid, we took them to the hospital's morgue - some of them were brought in as pieces,” he recalled.
“A three-year-old girl was killed. What crime had she committed? Where is the world? Where are the free people?”
Israeli occupation army raids several areas in northern West Bank
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the Israeli occupation army stormed into several homes and vandalised the belongings of the Palestinians in the city of Nablus. the Israeli army raided the Tammun town, south of Tubas city, and deployed in several neighbourhoods in the town. The latest raids on Palestinian areas come amid the ongoing military offensive in the occupied territories, particularly in Jenin and Tulkarm, where the Israeli army has been engaging in aggressive operations since 21 January.
Tension has been running high across the occupied West Bank, where at least 939 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli occupation army and illegal settlers since the start of the onslaught on Gaza on 7 October, 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian territories illegal, calling for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel orders Rafah evacuation as it continues bombardment of Gaza
The latest forced evacuation orders come as Israel ramps up its military operation in Gaza after breaking the ceasefire. Israel has announced new forced evacuation orders for Rafah in southern Gaza, as the military said it plans to expand its renewed assault on the enclave. The military’s Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, announced on X on Monday morning that the army was returning to “fight with great force” in Rafah, one of Gaza’s largest cities, and surrounding areas.
The area has regularly come under Israeli fire during the war in Gaza, despite being designated as a “safe zone”. Shortly after the evacuation order, Al Jazeera Arabic reported that at least two people were killed during an Israeli attack on a tent housing displaced people in the area. Last week, the United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) reported that 142,000 people have been displaced since Israel renewed its war on the enclave on March 18, breaking the fragile January ceasefire.
Meta profits as ads promote illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank
Companies are selling homes in illegal settlements and individuals are fundraising to buy weapons for Israeli soldiers in Gaza. Facebook has platformed more than 100 paid advertisements promoting illegal settlements and far-right settler activity in the occupied West Bank, an Al Jazeera investigation has found, raising concerns that the social media giant is profiting from content that may violate international law. Among the advertisements identified were also calls for the demolition of Palestinian homes, schools, and playgrounds, as well as fundraising appeals for Israeli military units operating in Gaza.
Legal experts told Al Jazeera that Meta could be complicit in violations of international law by approving, accepting payment, and publishing these advertisements. Brian Leishman, an MP in the United Kingdom parliament, described the findings as “extremely concerning”. At least 52 paid advertisements from Israeli real estate companies were found promoting property sales in settlements across the occupied West Bank, targeting buyers from across Israel as well as some users in the UK and the United States. Under international law, all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal. The transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Israel’s genocide continues, and ‘we remain numbers’
The world’s indifference to Palestinian suffering allows Israel to destroy us and our homeland with impunity. After months of genocide, a ceasefire – even one that allowed them to continue depriving Palestinians in Gaza of their most basic rights to food, water, medical care, education and freedom of movement – proved too much for the Israeli forces. So they decided to continue their war on Gaza. Israel casually abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its deadly war that had already destroyed Gaza and killed tens of thousands, because it knew the global community would not do anything to stop it. After all, the world has been largely indifferent to Israel’s many other ceasefire violations and massacres of Palestinians since 1948. Israel has been violating international law without any meaningful consequences since its very inception.
Israel broke the ceasefire to prevent the reconstruction of Gaza. It restarted the war to stop Palestinians from attempting to rebuild even a small part of their destroyed homeland – to make sure no Palestinian in Gaza has any hope for the future.
The end of the temporary ceasefire marked the beginning of yet another period of displacement, loss and fear for the long-suffering people of Gaza. On the first night of the renewed war, Israel bombed all parts of the Gaza Strip just before dawn. More than 400 civilians, who were preparing food for Sahoor in their cold tents when the bombs began raining on them, lost their lives in the most horrific ways and passed on to another world where they would be free of Israel’s abuse and cruelty. Many of the dead were children, who died hungry, scared, cold. The massacre, undoubtedly committed with full approval from the Americans, also wounded hundreds of others, filling up Gaza’s few remaining hospitals. Since that night, the bombs, the threats, the killing did not stop.