Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near an aid distribution centre in central Gaza on Tuesday.DAWOUD ABU ALKAS/Reuters
Palestinians desperately trying to access aid in Gaza came under fire again on Tuesday, killing 36 people and wounding 207, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
Experts and humanitarian aid workers say Israel’s blockade and 20-month military campaign have pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.
At least 163 people have been killed and 1,495 wounded in a number of shootings near aid sites run by the Israeli and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which are in military zones that are off-limits to independent media. The Israeli military has acknowledged firing warning shots on previous occasions at people who it says approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
The foundation says there has been no violence in or around the distribution points themselves. But it has warned people to stay on designated access routes and it paused delivery last week while it held talks with the military on improving safety.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday there is “meaningful progress” on a possible ceasefire deal that would also return some of the 55 hostages still being held in Gaza, but said it was “too early to hope.” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar also mentioned Tuesday that there was progress in ceasefire negotiations.
Netanyahu was meeting with the Israeli negotiating team and the defence minister Tuesday evening to discuss next steps.
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In southern Gaza, at least eight people were killed while trying to obtain aid around Rafah, according to Nasser Hospital.
In northern Gaza, two men and a child were killed and at least 130 were wounded on Tuesday, according to Nader Garghoun, a spokesperson for the al-Awda Hospital, which received the casualties. He said most were being treated for gunshot wounds.
Witnesses told the Associated Press that Israeli forces opened fire at around 2 a.m., several hundred metres from the aid site in central Gaza. Crowds of Palestinians seeking desperately needed food often head to the sites hours before dawn, hoping to beat the crowds.
The Israeli military said it fired warning shots at people it referred to as suspects. It said they had advanced toward its troops hundreds of metres from the aid site prior to its opening hours.
Mohammed Abu Hussein, a resident of the nearby built-up Bureij refugee camp, said Israeli drones and tanks opened fire, and that he saw five people wounded by gunshots.
Abed Haniyah, another witness, said Israeli forces opened fire “indiscriminately” as thousands of people were attempting to reach the food site.
“What happens every day is humiliation,” he said. “Every day, people are killed just trying to get food for their children.”
Additionally, three Palestinian medics were killed in an Israeli strike Tuesday in Gaza City, according to the Health Ministry.
The medics from the Health Ministry’s emergency service were responding to an Israeli attack on a house in Jaffa street in Gaza City when a second strike hit the building, the ministry said. The Israeli military did not comment on the strike, but said over the past day the air force has hit dozens of targets belonging to Hamas’s military infrastructure, including rocket launchers.
Palestinians receive donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City on Tuesday.Jehad Alshrafi/The Associated Press
Israel and the United States say they set up the new food distribution system to prevent Hamas from stealing humanitarian aid and using it to finance militant activities.
The United Nations, which runs a long-standing system capable of delivering aid to all parts of Gaza, says there is no evidence of any systematic diversion.
UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to co-operate with the new system, saying it violates humanitarian principles by allowing Israel to decide who receives aid and by forcing Palestinians to relocate to just three currently operational sites.
The other two distribution sites are in the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah, which Israel has transformed into a military zone. Israeli forces maintain an outer perimeter around all three hubs, and Palestinians must pass close to them to reach the distribution points.
Netanyahu has spoken of creating a “sterile zone” in Rafah free of Hamas and of moving the territory’s entire population there. He has also said Israel will facilitate what he refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of Gaza’s two million Palestinians to other countries – plans rejected by much of the international community, including the Palestinians, who view it as forcible expulsion.
Palestinians inspect the damage at a school sheltering displaced people after an Israeli strike, in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip on May 12.Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
Israel commits ‘extermination’ in Gaza by killing civilians sheltering in schools, UN experts say
UN experts said in a report on Tuesday that Israel committed the crime against humanity of “extermination” by killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites in Gaza, part of a “concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life.”
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was due to present the report to Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on June 17.
“We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza,” former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who chairs the commission, said in a statement.
“Israel’s targeting of the educational, cultural and religious life of the Palestinian people will harm the present generations and generations to come, hindering their right to self-determination,” she added.
The commission examined attacks on educational facilities and religious and cultural sites to assess if international law was breached.
Israel disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February, alleging it was biased.
When the commission’s last report in March found Israel carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s health care facilities during the conflict in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the findings were biased and antisemitic.
In its latest report, the commission said Israel had destroyed more than 90 per cent of the school and university buildings and more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza.
“Israeli forces committed war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and willful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities ... In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination,” it said.
Harm done to the Palestinian education system was not confined to Gaza, the report found, citing increased Israeli military operations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as harassment of students and settler attacks there.
“Israeli authorities have also targeted Israeli and Palestinian educational personnel and students inside Israel who expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza, resulting in their harassment, dismissal or suspension and in some cases humiliating arrests and detention,” it said.
“Israeli authorities have particularly targeted female educators and students, intending to deter women and girls from activism in public places,” the commission added.
With reports from Reuters