Today, Tuesday April 23rd, 2024, marks 200 days of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Over 15,000 children have been killed – they are among the more than 34,000 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7th. Every university has been destroyed, as well as thousand year old churches and mosques, libraries, museums and hundreds of thousands of family homes. One and a half million displaced Palestinians have fled from the north and central Gaza to the southernmost tip of the imprisoned coastal enclave, the city of Rafah. There, tent camps have been set up with makeshift materials, and Israeli forces continue nightly bombardment with US-made F16 and F35 aircraft, as well as unmanned drones.
At least 7,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israeli forces since October 7th, adding to the over 4,000 already in Israeli detention. They are being held in horrific conditions, not allowed access to lawyers or a court system, and over forty have died from being tortured to death in prison camps. Others who have managed to be released have shown before and after pictures from their months in captivity – and all look like they have aged ten years in the prison camps. Some Palestinians in the prison camps have had limbs amputated after being held in isolation with plastic wrist and ankle cuffs on 24-7, for weeks and months on end.
Israeli authorities say this brutal invasion and decimation of the Gaza Strip is a response to the horrific attack on October 7th, in which 1100 Israelis, including over 700 civilians, were killed in a single day. But Israeli journalists have pointed out that the terrorist attack of October 7th was the pretext for the Israeli government to carry out a long-standing plan to invade the Gaza Strip expel the Palestinian population, construct a seaport and Israeli colonial settlement, and exploit the natural gas reserves off the Gaza Coast. In the past several months, in fact, the Israeli government has issued three exploratory permits for Israeli companies to begin exploiting the natural gas reserves off the Gaza Coast.
There were an estimated 240 Israelis taken hostage by Palestinian groups on October 7th. Over a hundred were released in a well-publicized prisoner swap in the beginning of December, which many had hoped would lead to a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli bombardment continued unabated.
On April 10th, negotiations for a ceasefire seemed close to reaching an agreement, with Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh, of the political wing of the Hamas party, talking through a third party in Qatar to negotiate a prisoner swap. But then Israeli planes bombed Haniyeh’s family in Gaza, killing his 3 sons, Hazem, Amir and Mohammad, and four granchildren – three girls and a boy. Since then, negotiations have been stalled.
This past week, student activism in the US really stepped up – following the decision by Columbia University in New York to bring in police to arrest a hundred students holding an encampment for peace in Palestine. Thousands more students and supporters came to support the arrested students, setting up a new encampment, and other universities also organizing encampments in support of a permanent ceasefire, and an end to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, and the divestment of their schools from the Israeli military. These include New York University, Harvard University, the University of California at Berkely, Sydney University in Australia and Buenos Aires University in Argentina, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has contracts with the Israeli military for weapon production.
Today, in a rally organized by @BirzeitU admin, staff, and students to condemn 200 days of genocide in Gaza, participants held our signs in support of SJP.
Words cannot describe how honored we are to have this recognition and support from people back home ❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/gI72WyTsfw
— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) April 23, 2024
Tents sheltering the displaced people as far as the eye could see in Deir Al-Balah in the center of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/UkTqpNbEGE
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) April 23, 2024
200 days into the war, destruction is everywhere in #Gaza. Damage to critical infrastructure is immense. Over a million people have lost their homes and 75% of the population has been displaced. It will take years to remove the debris.
A #ceasefire is the only remaining hope. pic.twitter.com/ltpAAvqkXC
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) April 23, 2024
