LAST UPDATE | 18 Dec 2023
ISRAEL HAS KEPT up heavy bombing of Gaza today as it faces accusations from a human rights group that it is deliberately starving Palestinians in its campaign sparked by the 7 October Hamas attacks.
Fighting raged on in the third month of the bloodiest ever Gaza conflict, with the Gaza health ministry reporting another 110 people killed in strikes on Jabalia since Sunday.
The UN Security Council in New York is set to vote later in the day on another call for a ceasefire in the besieged territory, after previous bids were vetoed by the United States – a key ally of Israel.
And Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin is expected back in Israel today as part of a Middle East tour aimed at stopping the conflict from spreading further.
The conflict broke out when Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on 7 October, killing around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also abducted 250 hostages, some of whom are still being held in Gaza.
Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s military response has killed more than 18,800 people, mostly women and children, while vast areas of the enclave have been reduced to rubble.
International alarm has mounted over the plight of 2.4 million Gazans now enduring bombardment, food and water shortages, mass displacement and plummeting winter temperatures.
The New York-based campaign group Human Rights Watch claims that Israel “is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip, which is a war crime”.
“Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel, while wilfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival,” it wrote in a report.
The Israeli government hit back, accusing HRW of being an “anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli organisation”.
“Human Rights Watch [...] did not condemn the attack on Israeli citizens and the massacre of October 7 and has no moral basis to talk about what’s going on in Gaza if they turn a blind eye to the suffering and the human rights of Israelis,” foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told the AFP news agency.
The Human Rights Watch report says: “The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7 killed at least 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, with more than 200 people taken hostage, acts amounting to war crimes.”
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, earlier said that he “would not be surprised if people start dying of hunger, or a combination of hunger, disease, weak immunity”.
Israel has approved aid deliveries into Gaza via its Kerem Shalom crossing, aside from the Rafah crossing with Egypt, and a first truck convoy passed through Kerem yesterday, an Egyptian Red Crescent official who asked not to be named told AFP.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday vowed that Israel will “fight until the end” and eliminate Hamas, free the remaining captured hostages and ensure that Gaza will never again become “a centre for terrorism”.
The Israeli army has reported 127 deaths in Gaza since it launched ground operations in late October.
Israel has accused Hamas of hiding among civilians and in tunnels underneath hospitals, schools, mosques and other civilian infrastructure.
It released a report yesterday of part of a vast Hamas tunnel network, big enough to drive vehicles through, featuring rails, power lines, drainage systems and a communications network.
In an interview with RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, the emergencies director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Mike Ryan, spoke of the claims that Hamas is using healthcare facilities.
“The claims from the Israeli government and IDF have been around the use of tunnels and they explained that there’s a tunnel network all over Gaza, it’s everywhere,” Ryan said.
“The reality is that what’s above the ground are doctors, nurses, sheltering internally displaced persons and thousands of patients.
“That’s what we know. The doctors and nurses are there trying to save lives, our job is to supply them, our job is to assist them in saving lives.
“Even if a facility is used, I’m not saying that they are being used, but even if the facility is being misused and we condemn the misuse of health facilities across the board, even if it is the opposing forces must show precaution and they must show proportionality and we’re not seeing that right now.
“What we’re seeing is health systems being targeted. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Israel has faced mounting global pressure to either slow, suspend or stop hostilities – including from families of the remaining 129 hostages believed held in Gaza.
The families’ anger and fear intensified after Israeli forces mistakenly shot dead three hostages who had escaped their captors inside Gaza.
The trio had waved white flags and had used food leftovers to write a Hebrew-language message on a white sheet before they were shot, reports said.
Army chief of staff Herzi Halevi, in a message to troops, stressed that if enemy fighters “lay down their arms and raise their hands, we capture them, we don’t shoot them”.
“We extract a lot of intelligence from the captives we have, we already have over 1,000.”
Qatar helped mediate a week-long truce last month that saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 jailed Palestinians.
The Gulf country said there are “ongoing diplomatic efforts to renew the humanitarian pause”. News reports said Mossad chief David Barnea met Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in a European city.
As the Gaza conflict rages on, special concern has focused on hospitals, most of which no longer function, and several of which have been the scenes of major fighting.
The UN Security Council is due to vote on a new resolution calling for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities” in Gaza.
Washington previously blocked similar UNSC resolutions, while the wider General Assembly has voted for an end to fighting, with 153 out of 193 members in favour.
Fears have grown that the conflict could escalate with more of Israel’s enemies, a grouping of Iran-backed armed forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Yemen’s Huthi rebels have targeted Israel with missiles and fired at passing ships in the Red Sea in a show of solidarity with Hamas.
The series of attacks has led a number of major shipping companies to avoid the maritime chokepoint and redirect their vessels around Africa, a longer and far more costly route.
Includes reporting by Hayley Halpin, Stephen McDermott and - © AFP 2023
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