Six months on, Gaza is a "betrayal of humanity"

UN leaders reflect on 6 months of slaughter;

US on high alert for possible attack by Iran; Israel admits to “grave mistake” in targeting of World Central Kitchen vehicles; Israel claims it is opening another crossing into Gaza; childhood in Gaza; UN calls for arms embargo; demands for Germany to halt weapons to Israel…

Reflections on the 6-month mark

Al Jazeera reports: In a speech marking 6 months of the conflict, Guterres called the war in Gaza the deadliest of conflicts in terms of speed, scale and inhumane ferocity for civilians, aid workers, journalists, health workers and UN personnel.

He said some 196 humanitarian aid workers, including more than 175 members of UN, have been killed.

“An information war has added to the trauma – obscuring facts and shifting blame. Denying international journalists entry into Gaza is allowing disinformation and false narratives to flourish,” Guterres added.

The United Nations’ under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, Martin Griffiths, also made a statement on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the war, calling for a “collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity.”

Palestinians surrounded by the rubble of buildings in southern Gaza on Wednesday.

Israel admits to “grave mistake”

Middle East Eye reports: The Israeli military has said that its soldiers made a “grave mistake” in targeting a humanitarian convoy with a series of air strikes that killed seven international aid workers on Monday.

The deaths of workers for the World Central Kitchen, which included three Britons, an Australian, a Pole, a Palestinian and a dual US-Canadian citizen have been widely denounced by governments and organizations.

The aid workers were killed in three consecutive strikes by Israeli drones on the WCK vehicles which were delivering 100 tonnes of food aid to a Deir al-Balah warehouse.

In response to a preliminary investigation into the attack by the Israeli army, the WCK demanded an “independent commission to investigate the killings”, saying the Israeli military “cannot credibly” probe its own failure.

World Central Kitchen aid workers killed by Israeli drone strikes.

Israel promises to increase aid, open another crossing

Al Jazeera reports: With Israel’s promise to increase aid, some 250 trucks will pass through the Karem Abu Salem (Karem Shalom) crossing via southern Israel, while 100 will go through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, reports Israeli Army Radio, quoting Israel’s security cabinet.

This would mark a significant increase in the passage of aid trucks, only 200 of which are currently reaching Gaza per day according to Army Radio.

Israel has also announced it will open the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing into northern Gaza and allow the temporary delivery of aid through the Port of Ashdod.

Middle East Eye adds: An UNRWA spokesperson has said that there have been no reports so far of aid convoys reaching Gaza through the Erez crossing, which Israel agreed to open.

Tamara Alrifai told Al Jazeera that the crossing is not “one of these big logistical hubs that would allow a huge influx or flow of trucks and humanitarian assistance,” noting that previously it had been primarily used for transporting humanitarian personnel and cases coming in and out of Gaza.

“But at this stage, any additional land crossing into Gaza that allows to relieve people through bringing in aid is welcome – provided it’s truly open,” Alrifai said.

She also said in response to Israel’s promise that 350 aid trucks will enter Gaza daily, that “considering that not all of them would be food trucks – because we’re going to have work out a combination of food, blankets, medicine, fuel water – 350 remains way below the required minimum 500 which used to be the number before the war, even before the acute needs that we are witnessing now.”

See video: Israeli fire kills man while collecting aid

Over 14,000 Palestinian children in Gaza are known dead; the number is likely much higher, as an estimated 7,000 bodies lie buried beneath the rubble.

Childhood in Gaza

April 5 was Palestinian Children’s Day. Al Jazeera offers a look at what life is like for children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank:

Eight out of 10 schools in Gaza are damaged or destroyed, UNICEF says.
625,000 students have no access to education, the UN says.
1,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both of their legs, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says.
More than 50,000 children are estimated to be acutely malnourished in Gaza, the UN says.
30 percent of children under two years in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished, the World Food Programme says.
31 children have died from starvation and hunger, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says.
More than 200 Palestinian children are being held in Israeli prisons, the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer says.

A school run by the UNRWA, where people sought refuge from Israeli bombardments, in the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City. — A school run by the UNRWA, where people sought refuge from Israeli bombardments, in the Remal neighborhood of Gaza City.

Education crisis in Gaza

AFP reports: Eight out of 10 schools in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed, the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) says, but it is the psychological damage of Israel’s war on the territory’s nearly 1.2 million children that has experts worried.

“To be able to learn, you need to be in a safe space. Most kids in Gaza at the moment have brains that are functioning under trauma,” said child psychiatrist Audrey McMahon of international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF).

Younger children could develop lifelong cognitive disabilities from malnutrition, while teenagers are likely to feel anger at the injustice they have suffered, she said.

“The challenges they will have to face are immense and will take a long time to heal.”

David Skinner of Save the Children, a United Kingdom-based charity, said rebuilding the “schools is massively complicated … but it’s straightforward compared to the education loss”.

As in Gaza, it's hard to find a safe place in the West Bank. (Pictured: Israeli forces continue to tighten measures at military checkpoints near Nablus in the northern West Bank. — As in Gaza, it’s hard to find a safe place in the West Bank. (Pictured: Israeli forces continue to tighten measures at military checkpoints near Nablus in the northern West Bank.)

UNHRC calls for arms embargo

Middle East Monitor reports: On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council voted in favor of a halt in all arms sales to Israel, highlighting warnings of genocide in its war on Gaza during which it has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians.

Twenty-eight countries voted in favor, 13 abstained and six opposed the resolution, including the United States and Germany. The adoption prompted several representatives to the Council to cheer and clap.

The text called on countries to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel… to prevent further violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights.”

It stressed that the International Court of Justice ruled in January “that there is a plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza.

Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, said before the vote, “According to the resolution before you today, Israel has no right to protect its people, while Hamas has every right to murder and torture innocent Israelis,” she said ahead of the vote. “A vote ‘Yes’ is a vote for Hamas.”

After the vote demanding Israel be held accountable for possible war crimes, she accused the council of having “long abandoned the Israeli people and long defended Hamas.”

Middle East Eye: Is a global arms embargo on Israel possible?

Al Jazeera: The legal case for imposing embargoes on Israel

Palestinians line up for food in Rafah, Gaza Strip, in December.

Smoke rises after what the Iranian media said was an Israeli strike on a building close to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria April 1, 2024.

US and Israel on alert for Iranian attack

Reuters reports: The United States is on high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Israel’s strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria, a U.S. official said on Friday.

“We’re definitely at a high state of vigilance,” the official said in confirming a CNN report that said an attack could come in the next week.

Suspected Israeli warplanes bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus on Monday in a strike that killed an Iranian military commander and marked a major escalation in Israel’s war with its regional adversaries.

Former Pentagon senior advisor Col. Douglas McGregor tells Judge Andrew Napolitano, previously of Fox News, that the Israeli attack was likely calculated to provoke an Iranian response that would eventually bring the US into war against Iran on the side of Israel [Israel has long pushed for this]:

Appeal to German gov’t to halt arms to Israel

Reuters reports: Human rights lawyers said on Friday they had filed an urgent appeal against Germany’s government to stop exports of war weapons to Israel, citing reasons to believe they were being used in ways violating international humanitarian law in Gaza.

The Berlin case, brought by several organizations including the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), Law for Palestine and the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, was filed in an administrative court on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza.

In a statement, the lawyers said the arms deliveries and support Germany has provided to Israel violated the country’s obligations under the War Weapons Control Act.

They cited a January order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, which it has subjected to siege and invasion since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Israel denies genocide allegations.

A Dutch court has ordered the Netherlands to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns they were being used for attacks on civilian targets in the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands have been killed.

McDonald’s boycott

Al Jazeera reports: McDonald’s has announced that it will buy all of its franchise restaurants in Israel amid the fallout of the war in Gaza.

The fast food giant said on Thursday it had reached an agreement with Israeli franchisee Alonyal to buy 225 outlets across the country.

McDonald’s sales slumped in the Middle East after Alonyal donated thousands of meals to Israeli soldiers.

The brand has faced boycott calls across the region and in Muslim-majority countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

In January, the company announced that it had missed its first quarterly sales target in nearly four years.

Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes buried in mass grave in Rafah, Gaza

AI database creates kill lists” for Israeli military

The Israeli military’s reported use of an untested and undisclosed artificial intelligence-powered database to identify targets for its bombing campaign in Gaza has alarmed human rights and technology experts who said it could amount to “war crimes”.

The Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language media outlet Local Call reported recently that the Israeli army was isolating and identifying thousands of Palestinians as potential bombing targets using an AI-assisted targeting system called Lavender.

“That database is responsible for drawing up kill lists of as many as 37,000 targets,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said on Thursday.

The unnamed Israeli intelligence officials who spoke to the media outlets said Lavender had an error rate of about 10 percent. “But that didn’t stop the Israelis from using it to fast-track the identification of often low-level Hamas operatives in Gaza and bombing them,” Challands said.

More news:

Mondoweiss: Netanyahu’s endgame and the Israeli far-right’s regional ambitions

Electronic Intifada: Rafah on a razor edge

Palestine Chronicle: Israel’s Irremediable Defeat: On Tel Aviv’s Other Unwinnable War

Al Jazeera: ‘Mission impossible’ – Families slam Canada’s Gaza visa scheme as a failure

Middle East Monitor: Israel army evacuation orders in Gaza contain errors, BBC finds

Al Jazeera: Trump says Israel ‘losing PR war’ in Gaza, should finish war ‘fast’

IMEMC News Reports

PRESS RELEASE: Last night, Columbia University suspended six students, including a Palestinian student & two jewish students with NO due process as part of an investigation into a campus event about Palestine. These students were evicted & given 24 hours to leave their homes. pic.twitter.com/t4EI247kaa

— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) April 4, 2024

BREAKING: The UK halted UNRWA funding based on information reportedly obtained through torture.

This would be a betrayal of the UK’s torture prevention duties

We wrote to the Prime Minister demanding URGENT action including review of the decision to suspend funding for UNRWA👇 pic.twitter.com/xoJcn7vgUE

— Freedom from Torture🧡 (@FreefromTorture) April 5, 2024

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A post shared by Middle East Monitor (@middleeastmonitor)

Israel is burning and bulldozing tree crops at historic rates. These trees would take years to grow back – and that's without factoring in the time it would take to detoxify the soil. (2/13) pic.twitter.com/pDOplGrMwC

— Climate Defiance (@ClimateDefiance) April 5, 2024

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – APRIL 5:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – April 5: at least 33,713* (33,249 in Gaza* (14,280 children, 9,340 women), and at least 464 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 41 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 5: at least 80,577 (including at least 75,577 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 5: ~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); 255 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza;, 16 in the West Bank) and~8,730 injured.

NBC reports: “According to the latest available IDF data… nearly 1 in 5, or 17%, of all Israel’s losses have come not at the hands of Hamas but from mishaps on its own side.”

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

Six months on, Gaza is a “betrayal of humanity”