UNICEF: "Children dying of infections"; Israel claims to be opening bakeries, allowing more aid in

UNICEF: “Children dying of infections”; Israel is making big promises to the people of Gaza; State of Palestine UN application; “it will happen,” Netanyahu says of Rafah invasion; 400 bodies recovered so far around Al Shifa Hospital; 84 so far in Khan Younis; raid on mourning tent of Walid Daqqa; Germany denies aiding Gaza genocide at ICJ; academics accuse Israel of “scholasticide”…

“Children dying of infections” at overwhelmed hospitals: UNICEF

Tess Duncan, a UNICEF spokesperson, says Gaza’s health facilities remain severely underequipped as they struggle to treat children who are sick, injured and malnourished.

“I visited four hospitals in the last five days, and I can tell you that every medical director has told me about the impact of the lack of resources and the lack of staff,” Duncan told Al Jazeera from outside the Kuwaiti Hospital in Gaza’s Rafah district.

“They’re running at four times capacity. Children are dying due to infections. Children are dying from malnutrition. There’s just not enough staff and resources to go around. … That’s why we have to rush this aid in, and that’s why we need a ceasefire,” she said.

After the Israeli attack on the World Central Kitchen aid convoy on April 1, UNICEF and other UN agencies suspended their operations in Gaza for 48 hours, but it is now back to “full operations”, Duncan tells Al Jazeera.

“We’ve been here in Gaza for decades, and we’re not going anywhere,” she said from Rafah. “We’re going to stay here during the fighting, stay here as the guns fall silent and then help the children of Gaza to rebuild once there finally is peace.”

Andalou Agency reports: Gaza’s government media office has reported more than one million cases of infectious diseases due to mass displacement in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“Some 1,089,000 cases of infectious diseases and 8,000 cases of hepatitis C were recorded in Gaza,” the office said in a statement on Monday.

UN says Israel approved reopening of 20 bakeries, water pipeline in northern Gaza

Deleted: Times of Israel reports: The United Nations on Saturday said Israel had authorized the opening of 20 bakeries in the northern Gaza Strip and and a waterline to supply the area, as part of a list of the country’s “commitments” to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

A statement from the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Gaza and the West Bank, Jamie McGoldrick listed other measures announced earlier this week, including the opening of the Erez Crossing to the northern Strip for the first time since October 7 and increasing the number of trucks entering via Jordan from the Allenby Bridge crossing.

In addition to expanding border crossing operating hours and capacity, the UN official said Israel has approved the activation of 20 bakeries and the reopening of the Nahal Oz waterline in northern Gaza, which was shut off on October 9, with the outbreak of war.

Two other pipelines were reopened in October.

The statement said the number of trucks allowed to pass through from Jordan will be increased from 25 to at least 50 per day, while an additional 100 trucks per day will be scanned via the Kerem Shalom and Nitzana crossings in the south of the Strip.

He noted an additional scanner would be installed at Kerem Shalom “to accelerate the transfer of aid into Gaza.”

Update on aid entry to Gaza

Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office says that 419 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Monday, saying it is “the highest number of aid trucks” that entered Gaza since the start of its assault on the enclave.
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It also said 29 food trucks were “coordinated to northern Gaza”, where famine is looming.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud adds from Rafah: The fact that the Israeli military is allowing this to happen for the first time in six months is proof that food has been used as a weapon. In fact, it’s a weaponization of food and food supplies and aid to collectively punish an entire population.

The decision to reopen 20 bakeries and water pipelines in the northern part and Gaza City is yet more proof that Israel used these essential basic needs to collectively punish the people of Gaza.

The New Arab adds: Israel is blocking far more convoys carrying food aid within Gaza, where famine is looming, than convoys carrying other kinds of aid, the UN said Tuesday.

A spokesman for the United Nations’ humanitarian agency pointed to statistics from March showing that it was much more difficult to get clearance for delivering food than other aid in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

“Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70 percent of people face famine conditions, are … three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian convoys with other kinds of material,” Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.

Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024.

State of Palestine UN membership under review

Al Jazeera reports: The United Nations Security Council president has referred the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) application for Palestine to become a full member of the world body to its membership committee.

The 15-member committee is expected to make a decision about Palestine’s status this month, said Vanessa Frazier, Malta’s UN ambassador, who also proposed that the committee meet on Monday to consider the application.

Malta is president of the Security Council for April.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters in New York that the PA sincerely hoped that after 12 years as an observer state at the UN, the Security Council would “elevate itself to implementing the global consensus on the two-state solution by admitting the state of Palestine for full membership”.

The Palestinians are a non-member observer state at the UN, the same status as the Holy See.

Al Jazeera also reports: We are hearing that Palestine’s application for UN membership is moving forward.

The Security Council president for this month, the ambassador from Malta, said that behind closed doors, the Security Council has decided on a couple of key things, and these are important.

Number one is that they will refer this case, or Palestine’s application, to what’s called the membership committee of the Security Council. That membership committee is made up of the current 15 members, and we’re told the first meeting of the committee could happen as early as this afternoon.

We’re also told that out of that meeting, they also decided that they will expedite this application, meaning that they expect to deal with this entire process in the Security Council in the month of April.

We’ve just heard from the Russian ambassador to the UN. He was asked about this, and he said: “We expect this to be a matter of days, if not just weeks

Australia on Tuesday became the latest country to advocate formal recognition of a Palestinian state, further shattering a long-standing diplomatic taboo in the West.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that recognizing a state of Palestine could restart the moribund Middle East peace process and undermine extremist forces in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem November 13, 2019

Israeli PM vows to carry out Rafah ground offensive

Netanyahu has declared “there is a date” for Israel’s assault on the southern Gaza city, where more than one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel must send ground forces into Rafah, describing it as Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza. But the international community, including the US, opposes the operation, saying the roughly 1.4 million civilians seeking shelter there would be in danger.

In a video statement, Netanyahu said the Rafah operation is essential for victory.

“It will happen. There is a date,” he said without elaborating.

The US has not been briefed on a date for Israel’s invasion of Rafah, US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller says, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a date has been set.

Miller told reporters at a regular news briefing that Washington does not want to see a full-scale invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s last refuge for displaced Palestinians, in any event.

“We have made clear to Israel that we think a full-scale military invasion of Rafah would have an enormously harmful effect on those civilians and that it would ultimately hurt Israel security,” Miller said.

Over 400 bodies recovered so far following Al Shifa Hospital raid

Middle East Eye reports: Palestinians are recovering the bodies of those killed by Israel’s two-week raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but identification is proving difficult because of the state of decomposition.

After Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital on 1 April, teams from several government ministries have been deployed to al-Shifa to remove and identify bodies before burying them in cemeteries.

“We are now digging up all the martyrs that were executed by the [Israeli] army,” Hussein Mahassen, ambulance director in the Gaza Strip, told Middle East Eye. “Our capacities are very limited, as we are working with just one bulldozer.”

While it is unclear how many bodies have been buried in the hospital’s yard, the Civil Defense said that they have recovered 409 bodies from the medical complex since the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Mahassen said his team expects to find between 200 and 300 bodies buried in the ground in al-Shifa, but cannot confirm this number.

Al-Shifa Medical Complex is currently out of service due to the Israeli army bombing and setting fire to every one of its buildings, including the mortuary and all internal and external courtyards and corridors.

84 bodies found in Khan Younis so far after Israeli withdrawal

The number of bodies ambulance workers have recovered from Khan Younis so far now stands at 84, according to our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic.

Civil defense workers have been pulling bodies from under the rubble after Israeli forces withdrew from the southern Gaza City, leaving widespread destruction after months of intense Israeli attacks and fighting.

After the Israeli army’s withdrawal from the southern Gaza city, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says its teams have found “significant damage to the hospital and its medical equipment as well as Hebrew writings on the walls”.

Khan Younis had been subject to months of intense Israeli bombardments and fighting. Israeli troops had raided the hospital several times, killing people, surrounding it with tanks, and forcing doctors, patients and displaced families sheltering there to evacuate.

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Israeli Forces Shoot and Kill Palestinian Woman, Detain Dozens in West Bank Raids

Palestine Chronicle reports:

Israeli forces shot and killed a young Palestinian woman at the Tayasir military checkpoint, east of Tubas, on Monday, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Moreover, Israeli occupation soldiers injured two Palestinians in raids on towns elsewhere in the occupied West Bank. At least 45 Palestinians were reportedly detained during the raids…

More information here

Occupation forces raid funeral tent of slain prisoner Walid Daqqa

WAFA reports: Israeli police Monday raided the funeral tent of the slain Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa and his family’s home in the city of Baqa al-Gharbiya within the 1948 territories.

An Israeli army raided the funeral tent, which was held in the city of Baqa al-Gharbiya, detained two young men along with five members of Daqqas` relatives.

Sixty-two-year-old ill freedom fighter Walid Daqqa, who completed 39 years behind bars for his resistance to the Israeli occupation, died yesterday in the Israeli Assaf Harofeh Hospital after years of deliberate medical negligence by the Israeli prison administration,

Last November, the Occupation Supreme Court refused to release Daqqa, despite the deterioration of his health due to cancer.

Amnesty International says the death in custody of Walid Daqqah, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who had terminal cancer, is a “cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life”.

The 62-year-old Palestinian writer was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails after being imprisoned for 38 years.

He died in Israeli custody despite calls for his urgent release on humanitarian grounds following his 2022 diagnosis with bone marrow cancer and the fact that he had already completed his original sentence.

Israeli authorities continue to hold his body.

“Sanaa Salameh, Daqqah’s wife, could not embrace her dying husband one last time before he passed. Israeli authorities must now return [his] body to his family without delay so they could give him a peaceful and dignified burial and allow them to mourn his death without intimidation,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

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Germany denies aiding Gaza genocide at ICJ

Middle East Eye reports: Germany has denied that it was aiding genocide in Gaza by selling arms to Israel, in response to a case filed by Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Germany is one of Israel’s biggest arms suppliers, sending 326.5m euros ($353.70m) in military equipment and weapons in 2023, according to its economy ministry data.

Tania von Uslar-Gleichen, legal adviser for the German foreign ministry, told ICJ judges that arms exports were scrutinized to ensure compliance with international law.

“Germany is doing its utmost to live up to its responsibility vis-a-vis both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” she said, stating that Germany was the largest individual donor of humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

Von Uslar-Gleichen said Israel’s security was a priority for Berlin due to the history of Nazi crimes against Jews in the Holocaust. “Germany has learned from its past, a past that includes the responsibility for one of the most horrific crimes in human history,” she said.

On Monday, lawyers for Nicaragua asked the ICJ to order Germany to suspend arms sales to Israel and resume funding of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, as emergency measures.

Israel committing “scholasticide”

More than 1,700 academics across over 270 higher education institutions in North America have signed a letter condemning Israel’s attacks on education facilities and academics.

The academics’ letter opposes Israel’s war in Gaza, and accuses the country of committing “scholasticide” in the enclave.

“Denying access to education through the widespread and systematic destruction of educational infrastructure, along with deliberate and indiscriminate killing of educators and students, is an essential attribute of the collective punishment Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” the letter said.

More news:

Al Jazeera: Israel’s message: ‘Don’t feed the Palestinians’

Al Jazeera: In Italy, a Palestinian lawyer who fled Gaza builds Israel genocide case

+972 Magazine: Netanyahu isn’t the only one interested in prolonging the war

Middle East Eye: ‘Columbia is making us homeless’: Students evicted for hosting Palestinian event

IMEMC News Reports

Foreign Press Association presses again for immediate access to Gaza raising “questions about what Israel does not want international journalists to see”. The US administration has also pressed Netanyahu directly on the issue, still no change. pic.twitter.com/aSukADdL2d

— Tom Bateman (@tombateman) April 8, 2024

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An information war has added to the trauma of the war in Gaza – obscuring facts and shifting blame.

Denying international journalists entry into Gaza is allowing disinformation and false narratives to flourish.

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) April 8, 2024

Statement from Warren spokesperson sent this morning to @GBHNews: pic.twitter.com/rp1PYagnkz

— Tori Bedford (@Tori_Bedford) April 8, 2024

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – APRIL 8:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – April 8: at least 34,113* (33,644 in Gaza* (14,500 children, 9,560 women), and at least 469 in the West Bank (117 children). This does not include an estimated 7,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 40,042 Palestinian deaths.

At least 42 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 14 from West Bank)

At least 31 Palestinian children and several adults have died due to malnutrition**

About 1.7 million, or 75% of Gaza’s population are currently displaced.

About 2.2 million (out of total population of 2.3 million) are facing Crisis, Emergency, or Catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Palestinian injuries from October 7 – April 8: at least 80,577 (including at least 75,750 in Gaza and 5,000 in the West Bank).

It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – April 8: ~1,407 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~574 were civilians, 373 or 337 were security and/or military forces, ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 259 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza;, 16 in the West Bank) and~8,730 injured.

Times of Israel reports: The IDF also listed 41 soldiers killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents – nearly 16%.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

For more news, go here and here. Broadcast news from the region is here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

UNICEF: “Children dying of infections”; Israel claims to be opening bakeries, allowing more aid in