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Click here for an overview by week in 2024

 

Special reports: TRIBUTES TO MOTHERS AND CHILDREN   a   NEW: September 11, 2024: Nour, A midwife in Gaza Sept. 4, 2024: "He can't move at all": A Gaza mother's agony over baby with polio... and September 3, 2024: 'Tragic childhood': Gaza children vaccinated against polio, war continues...   Shoroughs' family August 12, 2024: 'Part of me is missing': How Israel's war on Gaza tears spouses apart earlier stories: August 7, 2024: 'My children cry all day from the heat': Life in Gaza’s tent camps... and August 5, 2024: Shorough 'We have nothing left in this world, except our daughter': a young mother on life in Gaza...

Alaa al-Nimer and daughterNimah July 28, 2024 "My baby girl was born on the street": A traumatic birth in Gaza   July 22, 2024 Ms. Maram Humaid: "A letter to my son: As you turn one today in Gaza, I feel joy and sorrow"  July 12, 2024 Noor Alyacoubi - "I'm fighting to keep my baby alive" and other stories Mothers and children: Boom-And again Boom   Special reports: UPDATES:   Oct 31 - 27, 2024: Politics and starvation-UNRWA  and UN chief Antonio Guterres - "Plight of Gaza civilians 'unbearable'"  Oct 27, 2024: How American media incited genocide    Overview special reports

November 2 - 1, 2024 Imagine: a 5-year old Gazaian girl is begging for buscuits at a UNRWA-post. The answer of the IDF is she and it gets bombed to as they call her/it 'just garbage to be cleaned out' and more actual and revealing news   October 31 - 29, 2024 "No child gets shot twice by mistake"... US surgeon Mark Perlmutter in Gaza and more actual and revealing news

October 29 - 22, 2024 "The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in north Gaza is unbearable," Guterres's spokesman said... and more actual and revealing news

October 25 - 23, 2024 "Gaza parents' heartbreak as children’s clothes, shoes fall to pieces..." and "While arrest warrants in themselves won't stop crimes, they could have a real effect on the ground and potentially save many lives," said international law professor Adil Haque, a seasoned ICC observer... and more actual and revealing news

June 14, 2024 Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Hiba Abu Taha sentenced to one year in prison

October 23 - 16, 2024: "Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war" --- October 18 - 10, 2024 No justice for journalists targeted by Israel... and other news about how the ink never will dry... Shireen Abu Akleh In commemoration of Shireen Abu Akleh, the 'voice of Al Jazeera' killed while revealing the true face of israel    Click here for earlier stories/news

May 23, 2024 In commemoration of Roshdi Sarraj and tribute to Shrouq Al Aila

 
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali.


Al Jazeera - Oct 31, 2024 - By Mat Nashed
<<Israel's outlawing of UNRWA will make life 'unbearable' for Palestinians
Israel banned the UN aid agency as part of broader attempt to expel Palestinians from their land, say analysts.
Beirut, Lebanon - Israel's much-criticised banning of the United Nations Palestinian aid agency (UNRWA) is part of a broader attempt to undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees and expel them from the occupied territories, analysts have told Al Jazeera. The ban on the agency takes effect in three months and will exacerbate an already catastrophic situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem. "The latest legislation is part of a campaign [by Israel] to kill any aid infrastructure," said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel and Palestine for International Crisis Group, a non-profit dedicated to conflict resolution. "But it is also part of a broader objective to permanently remove Palestinians from their land," she told Al Jazeera. As the largest aid provider to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has played an instrumental role in keeping people alive in Gaza, where civilians face a risk of genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. Over the last year, Israel has uprooted almost the entire population of 2.3 million people and killed some 43,000 in Gaza. The war started after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, during which 1,139 people were killed, and about 250 were taken captive. Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an Israeli-imposed land, sea and air blockade since 2007, leading rights groups to refer to the enclave as an "open-air prison". Israel now appears to be trying to depopulate Gaza by terminating UNRWA's services, an irreplaceable lifeline for the population, according to analysts. "It seems very clear from the way Israel is carrying out this war...that Israel is trying to make life so difficult in Gaza that people leave," said Khaled Elgindy, an expert on Israel and Palestine and a senior fellow for the Middle East Institute.
Erasing evidence of the Nakba?
In 1948, Zionist militias expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their land to create the state of Israel - an event referred to as the 'Nakba' or catastrophe. Many Palestinians ended up stateless, languishing in the occupied territories and refugee camps in neighbouring states, while Israel was recognised as a full member of the United Nations. During the same year, the UN General Assembly also established UNRWA to aid Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria until they could return to their homes as stipulated in UN Resolution 194. Israeli and US leaders traditionally saw UNRWA as a way to pacify Palestinians by providing them vital provisions without granting them political rights, explained Elgindy. However, he added that Israel and the United States have increasingly tried to sabotage the relief agency over the past decade. Former US President Donald Trump went so far as to suspend his country's support for UNRWA in 2018, triggering a funding crisis. Palestinian refugees saw Trump's move as an attack on their right to return to their homeland, which UNRWA enshrines. Elgindy believes that Israel is now explicitly trying to undermine that right by erasing any legitimate reference to the Nakba or Palestinian refugees. "[UNRWA is a reminder] that Israel's creation came at the expense - the dispossession - of the Palestinian people, and that's what [Israel] wants to erase from history."
"UNRWA is a constant reminder of the Nakba in 1948."
Irreplaceable
Israel's attack on UNRWA is part of a wider attempt at cutting off a vital lifeline for Palestinians, argues Zaid Amali, a UNRWA cardholder and a civil society activist in the West Bank. He noted that millions of Palestinians rely on UNRWA for employment, housing reconstruction, sanitation, healthcare and education. The loss of these vital services, coupled with Israel's daily raids and destruction of Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, is designed to uproot the population, Amali told Al Jazeera. "UNRWA is irreplaceable with all of its experience and staff. The mandate alone is so large that it makes it irreplaceable, so I don't see any organisation - international or local - able to fill this void," he told Al Jazeera. Diana Buttu, an expert on Israel and Palestine and a former legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), added that the Palestinian Authority [PA], which governs some territory in the occupied West Bank, won't be able to fill the vacuum. The PA was born out of the Oslo Accords, which saw then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shake hands with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993. The agreement aimed at laying the foundation for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Since 2006, the PA's presence has been limited to the West Bank after Hamas forced it out of Gaza after a brief conflict. The PA could now face the impossible task of replacing UNRWA, said Buttu. "Palestinians will either leave [the West Bank and Gaza] or they will melt into the PA's structures," she added. "That is hugely problematic because the PA does not have the resources to afford all of those schools and medical clinics. "[The PA] just can't do it. There is not even a PA in Gaza to distribute food."
A cause at risk?
The Palestinian cause is at risk if the global community allows Israel to unilaterally destroy structures and institutions that recognise Palestinians as a people with rights, warns Amali. He noted that Israel had killed hundreds of UN workers in Gaza, barred the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country, and the UN Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan even tore up the UN charter in front of the General Assembly. Israel's provocative gesture at the UN came in reaction to a non-binding General Assembly vote that effectively recognised Palestine as a state in May 2024.
"All of Israel's behaviour [towards the UN] are indicators that Palestine’s presence in the international forum is threatening to Israel because it means [global] recognition of Palestinian rights," he told Al Jazeera. Tahani, the expert from Crisis Group, believes that Israel may step up its assault on the PA next, a body that de-facto represents Palestinians at the UN and in the global community. She noted that Israel is already withholding $188m in tax revenue, which it collects on behalf of the PA - part of the agreement in the Oslo Accords. UNRWA, in her view, is only the main target right at this moment. "This is not just an arbitrary decision of Israel doing whatever it feels like. There is a clear objective around this, which, as I said, is to make life so completely unbearable for Palestinians on the ground," she told Al Jazeera. "That way, they are either forcibly expelled or "voluntarily" going to leave." >>
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA>> https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/31/israel-outlaws-un-aid-agency-to-make-life-unbearable-for-palestinians

Al Jazeera - Oct 30, 2024 - By Simon Speakman Cordall
<<Politics and starvation: Gaza learns of Israel's decision to ban UNRWA
Refugees and the displaced are grappling with the Israeli decision to cut an essential lifeline. Until this morning, 38-year-old Hussam Abu Ghaban had not heard of the Israeli Knesset's decision to ban the UN agency responsible for his family's welfare. Now, with the Israeli Knesset passing two bills banning the agency from Israel and choking off its ability to work in Gaza, the family does not know what to do. Someone in the nearby camp operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had mentioned it, but Abu Ghaban had not known about what turned out to be an overwhelming Knesset vote in favour of the ban despite international outrage.
'People would go hungry'
The concern on Abu Ghaban’s face was unavoidable as he weighed the news. He, his wife Ola and their eight children had fled Shati refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip in early November to the relatively safe vicinity of a camp at Deir el-Balah maintained by UNRWA. Without UNRWA "Refugees would struggle to survive," Hussam told Al Jazeera. Overcrowded and painfully under-resourced as the camp is, it represents some small support to the 1.9 million displaced people in Gaza. "UNRWA's support has been crucial," Abu Ghaban told a translator. "They provide essential services such as health, education and food, as well as managing the camp," he said, outlining how the family of 10, reduced to living in a tent, relied upon the UN agency for the dwindling number of essentials that make it through the Israeli checkpoints. Abu Ghaban did not know how the family would survive without the support the UN agency has given generations of them since they were uprooted from their village of Hiribya to make way for the new state of Israel in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe). Since then, barred by Israel from returning, their displacement has become generational. Abu Ghaban struggled to imagine life under Israel's brutal assaults on Gaza without the support of the UN. "Refugees would struggle to survive," he said. "People would go hungry, and that could lead to increased violence," he said of an enclave he described as already gripped by hunger, fear and instability. Life is already difficult, he said. There had not been space in the official camp when they arrived. Now they exist on its periphery, though still under the care of the UN. Abu Ghaban pointed to the plastic sheet UNRWA had provided to cover their tent. He still had nothing to make the rough dirt floor safe for his children, the youngest just six. Life in Deir el-Balah is hard enough for the young, Abu Ghaban explained. "They're now forced to focus just on survival, but I can see they still remember their previous life. UNRWA's recreational activities help ease some of the strain. The children still express their hopes through drawing," he said, pointing to the rough childlike sketch on the tent's wall of a family going home.
The impotence of aid
The legislation that may well stop much of the aid provided to the Abu Ghaban family will become law 90 days after Israel's foreign minister informs the UN. Moreover, with no alternative humanitarian agency earmarked in the legislation to replace the UNRWA, the consequences for those trapped in Gaza stand to be catastrophic. Within the enclave, UNRWA acts as what its spokesperson Jonathan Fowler described as the "backbone" of the international humanitarian operation in Gaza. Without UNRWA, that aid operation in Gaza would unravel, he said. In Gaza, the situation has never been more desperate. In the northern reaches, with access strictly controlled by the Israeli military, famine looms over everyone as international concerns over a siege of the area, denied by the Israeli government, continue to grow. Should UNRWA’s ability to operate within the territory be halted, the delivery of the limited assistance that still penetrates parts of Gaza would also grind to a halt, Fowler told Al Jazeera. "Such a move by a UN member state against a UN General Assembly-mandated organisation is unprecedented and dangerous," Fowler said. "It ... violates the State of Israel's obligations under international law... [and it] would be a setback to sustainable peace efforts and to reaching a diplomatic solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he added. "Failing to push back against attempts to intimidate and undermine the United Nations in the occupied Palestinian territory will eventually compromise humanitarian and human rights work worldwide."
The politics of hunger
Israel's longstanding campaign against UNRWA has escalated during Israel's war on Gaza and includes a list of as yet unevidenced accusations of supporting Hamas's fighters. Throughout, UNWRA has strained to work on the ground in Gaza to help mitigate the effects of an Israeli military campaign deemed by the International Court of Justice in its January ruling a potential case of genocide. Nevertheless, in the face of international pressure, unparallelled during the 13 months of total war on Gaza, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly to ban the agency, potentially collapsing the entire fragile network of aid that has so far managed to sustain what remains of Gaza's population. Even Israel's closest ally the United States has recognised the seriousness of the situation. Speaking earlier this week, a State Department official acknowledged both the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, especially its north, and UNRWA's role in mitigating it. One of the drafters of Israel's legislation banning UNRWA, Yulia Malinovsky, dismissed the concerns of the US, which has provided Israel with unflinching diplomatic cover and weaponry throughout its war on Gaza, as representing unacceptable interference in Israel's internal affairs. <I congratulate and thank the members of the Knesset from across the political spectrum for passing the laws that tonight put an end to the ongoing disgrace of cooperation with UNRWA,> far-right provocateur and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said. <Whoever harms the security of the State of Israel, the State of Israel will harm him,> he added. <This law wasn't just popular within Israel - that it would pass was regarded as a simple fact,> Tel Aviv-based analyst Ori Goldberg told Al Jazeera. "It was obvious. This unites official and unofficial Israel in their complete indifference to the plight of Palestinians." Goldberg continued, describing the motivations underlying the legislation as more sinister than what he termed the "hatred" of Israel's settler movement that sought to dispossess and even kill Palestinians.
"This is far worse," he said, "This is indifference. Israel simply doesn't care about Palestinians."
Speaking of the Knesset's defiance in the face of international calls for restraint, Goldberg said: "We've taken a step closer to Israel's ultimate aim, to achieve complete impunity for whatever it wants to do, whenever it wants to do it, free from the international community."
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA>> https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/30/the-politics-of-starvation-gaza-learns-of-israels-decision-to-ban-unrwa

And

Al Jazeera - Oct 27, 2024 - By Mosab Shawer
<<Plight of Gaza civilians ‘unbearable’ as Israel kills over 50 in a day
UN chief Antonio Guterres says the levels of death and injury in north Gaza are ‘harrowing’ and calls plight of Palestinians 'unbearable'.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in less than a day, most of them in the north of the enclave which has been the scene of renewed Israeli ground offensive for the past three weeks, leading the chief of the United Nations to call the plight of civilians there "unbearable". At least 11 Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded after a school in northern Gaza was hit on Sunday. Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary said the school is in the middle of the Shati refugee camp, a densely populated camp in northern Gaza. "The Israeli strike killed at least eight Palestinians, including three journalists and an eight-year-old girl called Zayn al-Ghoul, who was waiting in a queue to receive biscuits from the school," she said, adding that the death toll could climb as the number of injured was high. The Israeli military has said it was looking into the report about the strike on the school. The military added that it had killed more than 40 Hamas fighters in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantled infrastructure and located large quantities of military equipment.
Hamas has not yet commented on the Jabalia strikes.
Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed about 800 people in the three-week offensive, Gaza's Ministry of Health said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he is "shocked by harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction" in north Gaza. "The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in North Gaza is unbearable," Guterres's spokesman said. As the death toll from Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza approaches 43,000 since the start of the war on October 7, with the densely populated enclave in ruins, new ceasefire talks have begun in Doha. On Sunday, the directors of the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency travelled to Qatar to meet Qatar's prime minister to discuss a ceasefire agreement. Egyptian officials are also participating in the talks. Separately, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has proposed a two-day ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for Israeli captives with some Palestinian prisoners. Meanwhile, in Lebanon on Sunday, Israeli forces continued their air raids on the capital Beirut's southern suburbs after warning residents of several neighbourhoods to leave their homes. Israeli forces also targeted southern Lebanon. At least eight people were killed and 25 injured in an Israeli air strike on the coastal city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. Lebanese officials said at least 21 people were in Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon. In retaliation, Hezbollah has been launching attacks across the border into northern Israel. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in London but stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. Washington provides weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel, which has been condemned for violating the rules of war.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES>>
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/27/plight-of-gaza-civilians-unbearable-as-israel-kills-over-50-in-a-day  

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