As of October 27, the Israeli forces have cut off all landline, cellular, and internet communications in the Gaza Strip. “We are deeply concerned about the ability of our teams to continue providing their emergency medical services, especially since this disruption affects the central emergency number ‘101’ and hinders the arrival of ambulance vehicles to the wounded and injured,” writes the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed at least 2,913 children, at an average rate of more than 145 a day over 20 consecutive days. 1,700 women have also been killed in the bombardment as of Thursday, October 26.
Together, women and children amount to more than 65% of the 7,028 Palestinians Israel has killed since October 7, when it began the ongoing bombardment of this 365 sq. km strip of land where it has held 2.3 million Palestinians under siege for nearly 17 years.
“The situation in the Gaza Strip is a growing stain on our collective conscience,” said Adele Khodr, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “The rate of death and injuries of children [is] simply staggering.”
Those with serious injuries face a grim situation as the healthcare system has all but collapsed. Israel has killed health workers and bombed multiple healthcare facilities, including the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on October 17, causing global outrage by killing nearly 500 in one strike. Several other main hospitals have been forced to evacuate.
15 of the 35 hospitals in Gaza and about two-thirds of the 72 primary health care clinics have shut down, either due to damage caused by the bombardment or due to lack of fuel, whose supply has been cut off in the total blockade Israel has imposed since October 7.
The only power station in Gaza stopped producing electricity after running out of fuel on October 11, and a blackout continues to this day. Unable to fuel the water pumps, wastewater treatment plants and desalination tanks, which have also suffered damage in the bombing, the water production capacity in Gaza has reduced to five percent of the usual output, according to UNICEF.
“Vulnerable population groups are resorting to non-potable water sources, including high-salinity and brackish-quality water from agricultural wells,” added its statement.
Amid the increasing likelihood of outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases, hospitals are forced to stop treating patients except in emergency cases as the last liters of stocked fuel to power generators near exhaustion.
“Neonatal intensive care units house over 100 newborns, some of whom are in incubators and rely on mechanical ventilation, making an uninterrupted power supply a matter of life and death,” Khodr has warned.
“We have no fuel to run the standby generators, and those… affected first are the operation rooms, the intensive care units and emergency rooms,” said Gaza health ministry’s director general, Medhat Abbass.
“We are operating on some patients in the corridors of the hospitals. We are operating on them on the ground by the light of the mobile phones, and some of them were operated on without anesthesia.”
The few dozen trucks of medicines and food Israel has allowed through the Egyptian border are of a quantity the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described as “a drop of aid in an ocean of need.” Israel has refused to permit fuel in this aid convoy.
“If fuel is not received into Gaza”, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that it “will be forced to significantly reduce and in some cases bring its humanitarian operations across the Gaza Strip to a halt.”
Over 613,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) are sheltering in 150 facilities of this agency, 38 of whose staff members have also been killed in the bombardment.
Israel maintains that this bombardment is an exercise of its right to self-defense against Hamas, whose fighters broke out of the besieged Gaza strip on October 7 and launched an unprecedented attack, reportedly killing 1,400 Israelis, of those, hundreds of soldiers.
‘Clear violations of international humanitarian law’
“It is important to… recognize that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said in his remarks to the UN Security Council earlier on October 24.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Labeling Guteress’ remarks as “a pure blood libel”, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called for his resignation. Although Guterres had unequivocally stated that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” he had gone on to add that “those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
He referred to the “relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods” as “clear violations of international humanitarian law.”
The obligation to protect civilians during armed conflict “does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself,” he said.
“I fully support the principled position and leadership of Antonio Guterres,” African Union (AU) Chairperson Moussa Mahamat said on Thursday. “It is in line with International law and with the African Union position and relevant United Nations Resolutions.”
Foreign Ministers of nine Arab league countries in the region have also said in a joint statement on Thursday: “We emphasize that the right to self-defense… does not justify flagrant violations of international law and international humanitarian law, or the deliberate neglect of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”
Signed by UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco, the statement called for the establishment of “an independent, sovereign, contiguous and viable Palestinian state on the pre-June 4, 1967, lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
