A delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross at Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis (Picture: Twitter/ @PalestineRCS)
Israel launched a deliberate assault on Gaza’s remaining hospitals last week, murdering patients, workers and people sheltering in medical compounds. Zionist forces hit the areas around four hospitals—Al-Shifa and Al-Nasr in Gaza City, and Al-Amal and Nasser in Khan Younis.
Al-Jazeera Arabic reported that Israeli tanks ran over the bodies of Palestinians who were killed after Israel told them to evacuate Al-Shifa. Jamila al-Hissi, a Palestinian woman who survived the Israeli storming of Al-Shifa, said, “Palestinian women have been subjected to rape, torture and execution by Israeli forces.” As they stormed Al-Shifa, troops killed Faiq al‑Mab‑ houh, a Gaza Police officer.
He was responsible for the deliveries of food to inhabitants of northern Gaza. Hamas accused Israel of attempting to spread chaos by killing officials who coordinate with clans, the United Nations and international groups to prevent famine. A young Palestinian man who fled from Khan Younis in southern Gaza said Israeli tanks have laid siege to the city’s Nasser Hospital.
“Since 2.30am we have been carpet bombed by Israeli warplanes. The entire area near Nasser Hospital was shaking as if it were an earthquake. “We took shelter in our building’s stairwell until the morning. We assumed the Israeli soldiers would lay siege to the area, so we ran for our lives. Some took shelter in the hospital and others remain stranded,” he said.
“Israeli snipers are shooting at all those moving on the road. Many dead bodies are lying on the street. Both Nasser and the Jordanian Hospitals are besieged by Israeli tanks.” Israeli forces also shelled and bombed the vicinity of Al-Amal Hospital.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the medical team inside the facility are “in extreme danger and are completely immobilised”. The World Health Organisation said last week that up to 12 March, Israeli assaults have killed 685 health workers and injured 902 others. It said Israel’s attacks have damaged 99 healthcare facilities.
“This is outrageous and makes it intentional to obstruct lifesaving assistance during a man-made famine.” Troops open fire on bread and aid queues
Last Tuesday, 23 Palestinians were killed and several others were injured by Israeli bombing that targeted Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip. On 29 February Israeli forces opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians as they gathered south of Gaza City waiting to receive humanitarian aid. The “flour massacre” left 118 dead and 760 wounded, according to the Health Ministry in the enclave.
Israeli-engineered famine is causing more deaths. “The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it,” said James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). “I’ve not seen that level of devastation in 20 years with the UN. People’s coping capacity in the north has been smashed and in the south it is hanging by a thread,” Elder said on Friday of last week.
Elder said that he saw a dozen “skeletal” children at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza. “We are seeing severe malnutrition cases. Children who are on the brink of death, just skin and bones—and these are the ones who have managed to get to hospital,” Elder said. “This is man-made and preventable.” At the border with Egypt, 7,000 aid trucks were waiting for Israeli approval to enter Gaza at the beginning of this week. But their progress was delayed or refused.
“Israel has destroyed Gaza.” This is how the United Nations rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, began her report—Anatomy of a Genocide—that was released on Monday.
It concludes that “the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met”. Albanese writes, “The assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life Israel has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group.”
She argues that Israel’s actions are “driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler colonial project in Palestine”. “In Palestine, displacing and erasing the Indigenous Arab presence has been an inevitable part of the forming of Israel as a ‘Jewish State’.”
The report describes Israel as advancing “its settler colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination.”
“Israel’s settler movements and leaders have framed Gaza as a territory to be ‘re-colonised’ and its population as invaders to be expelled,” it added. Israel has transformed an “entire national group and its inhabited space into a destroyable target, revealing an eliminationist conduct of hostilities”.
“For seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group. The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all,” the report says. “The savagery of Israel’s latest assault is best illustrated by the torment inflicted upon children of all ages, killed or rescued from under the rubble, maimed, orphaned, many without surviving family.”
The report also details how Israel has distorted concepts used in international humanitarian law—such as “collateral damage”, “safe zones” and “evacuations”—to conceal genocidal intent.
Albanese’s report is powerful. But such denunciations are produced by an organisation that is dominated by the imperialist world powers. The UN can’t stop Israel’s genocide. We need mass revolt from below.
‘Looking at Gaza, it almost appears that the four horsemen of war, famine, conquest and death are galloping across it’
Antonio Guterres, United Nations secretary general
‘London is the most antisemitic city because of the atmosphere created by pro-Hamas supporters’ Israeli minister for diaspora affairs
Amichai Chikli
‘It is because of a “red and green” alliance—the combination of the radical left and the radical Islam groups that work together’
Chikli again
‘I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the US, but if we have to—we will do it alone’
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu after speaking to Joe Biden
Strikers are demanding an unallocated €1.6 billion go towards workers' pay rise
London march on 27 October
Another day of mass resistance
Plus: 500 on Leeds unity march
