The official full text of South Africa's application instituting proceedings against Israel's Genocide" -Genocidal Acts
A. Genocidal Acts Committed against the Palestinian People
(3) expulsions from homes and mass displacement, alongside the
large-scale destruction of homes and residential areas; (4) deprivation of
access to adequate food and water; (4) deprivation of access to adequate
medical care; (5) deprivation of access to adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene
and sanitation; and (6) the destruction
of the life of the Palestinian people in Gaza; and (7) imposing measures
intended to prevent Palestinian births.
2. United Nations chiefs and the International Committee of the Red Cross (‘ICRC’) — no strangers to conflict situations — have called what is unfolding in Gaza a “crisis of humanity”.176 “Humanitarian veterans who have served in war zones and disasters around the world — people who have seen everything — [say] they have seen nothing like what they see today in Gaza” (United Nations
173 There is a long-standing practice of Israel restricting access to the
oPt, alongside expelling and/or denying visas to UN staff, Special
Rapporteurs and fact-finding teams, including UN commissions of inquiry: see, e.g., United Nations,
General Assembly, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel,
A/78/198 (5 September 2023), para. 4, https://documents-dds- ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N23/260/71/PDF/N2326071.pdf?OpenElement; UN OCHA, Bachelet deplores
Israel’s failure to grant
visas for UN Human Rights staff in the occupied Palestinian territory (30
August 2022), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/08/bachelet-deplores-israels-failure-grant-visas-un-human-rights-staff- occupied; UN OHCHR, Occupied Palestinian Territory: UN human rights expert says Israel
bent on further annexation (12 July 2019), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/07/occupied-palestinian-territory-un-human-rights-expert-says- israel-bent; United
Nations, General Assembly,
Report of the independent commission of
inquiry established pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-21/,
A/HRC/29/52 (24 June 2015), para. 3, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-i-gaza-conflict/report-co-i-gaza#report.; United Nations
Human Rights Council, Report of the independent
international commission of inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory, A/HRC/40/74 (27 February 2019), para. 3, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIOPT/A_HRC_40_74.pdf; Rebekah
Yeager- Malkin, Israel will not renew visa of one UN employee,
denies visa for another citing
UN response to Hamas attacks”, Jurist (26 December
2023), https://www.jurist.org/news/2023/12/israel-will-not-renew-the-visa-of-one-un-employee-denies-the- visa-of-another/.
174 To date, only correspondents embedded with and subject to the censorship of the Israeli
army have been permitted entry; see, e.g., “Foreign correspondents petition Israel Supreme Court for
Gaza access”, Reuters (19 December
2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/foreign-correspondents-petition-israel-supreme-court-gaza-access-2023-12-19/. 175 IFJ, Ninety-four journalists killed in 2023, says
IFJ (8 December 2023), https://www.ifj.org/media- centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/ninety-four-journalists-killed-in-2023-says-ifj; “How
deadly is the Israel-
Gaza war for journalists?”, AlJazeera (9
November 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/9/how-deadly-is-the- israel-gaza-war-for-journalists.
176 United
Nations, Press Conference by
Secretary-General António Guterres at United Nations Headquarters (6
November
2023), https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm22021.doc.htm; “UN chief
says Gaza ‘crisis of humanity’ demands immediate ceasefire”, The Times
of Israel (6
November 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/un-chief-says-gaza-crisis- of-humanity-demands-immediate-ceasefire/.
Secretary-General).177 This
is “a moral failure” causing “intolerable suffering” (ICRC President).178 “This is an apocalyptic
situation now, because these are the remnants of a
nation being driven into a pocket in the south” (Under-Secretary-General
for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United
Nations).179 They
describe Palestinians in Gaza as “living in utter, deepening horror” as they
“continue to be relentlessly bombarded by Israel…
suffering death, siege, destruction and deprivation of the most essential human
needs such as food, water, lifesaving medical supplies and other essentials on
a massive scale”; it is “apocalyptic” (United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights).180 “An
entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials
for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship”
(Principals of the United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee).181 Gaza is “the most
dangerous place in the world to be a
child” (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF)
Executive Director).182 “It
is a “living hell”, it is “a war of all the superlative, everything is
unprecedented” and “[w]e are out of words to describe what is going on” (UNRWA Commissioner-General).183
1. Killing Palestinians in Gaza
3.
Over 21,110 Palestinians are reported to have been
killed since Israel began its military assault on Gaza, according to the
Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 70 per cent of whom are believed to be women
and children.184 An
additional estimated 7,780 people, including at least 4,700 women and
177 UN, Press Conference by Secretary-General António
Guterres at United
Nations Headquarters (22
December 2023), https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm22095.doc.htm.
178 ICRC, Gaza: ICRC president calls for the
protection of civilians in the face of “moral failure“ (4 December 2023),
https://www.icrcnewsroom.org/story/en/2075/gaza-icrc-president-calls-for-the-protection-of-civilians-in-the-face-of-moral- failure; ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories: President of the ICRC arrives
in Gaza, calls for the protection of civilians
(4 December 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-president-icrc-arrives-gaza.
179 Julian Borger, "‘Apocalyptic’ conditions in southern Gaza blocking
aid, top UN official says", The
Guardian (5 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/05/un-martin-griffiths-idf-campaign-southern-gaza- apocalyptic-conditions; Interview with UN Relief Chief Martin
Griffiths on CNN, 22 November 2023, at Christiane Amanpour, @amanpour, Tweet (3:08 pm,
November 22, 2023),
https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1727343309486542926. 180 UN OHCHR,
Opening statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Volker Türk at press conference ahead of Human Rights
Day (6 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2023/12/opening-statement-un- high-commissioner-human-rights-volker-turk.
181 UN IASC, Statement
by Principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, “We need
an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” (5 November 2023), https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/about-inter-agency-standing-committee/statement-principals-inter-agency-
standing-committee-situation-israel-and-occupied-palestinian.
182 UNICEF, Statement by UNICEF Executive Director
Catherine Russell on the Resumption of Fighting in Gaza (1
December
2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/statement-by-unicef-executive-director-catherine-russell-on-the- resumption-of-fighting-in-gaza/.
183 UNRWA, Remarks of UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe
Lazzarini at the Global Refugee
Forum (13 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini-
global-refugee;
UNRWA, @UNRWA, Tweet (2:46 pm, December 12, 2023),
https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1734585541591486755.
184 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel - reported impact
| Day 82 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82.
For a list of
those killed before 27 October 2023, see: Ministry of Health, Palestine, Detailed report for the victims of the
Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip during the period (7-26 October 2023) (26
October 2023), https://web.archive.org/web/20231026174513/https:/www.moh.gov.ps/portal/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/-ﺑﺎﺳﻤﺎء-ﻧﮭﺎﺋﻲ-ﺗﻘﺮﯾﺮ
1-اﻟﺸﮭﺪاء.pdf. Due to the ongoing
bombardment, the UN is currently
relying on numbers
provided by the Gaza Ministry
of Health. UN officials
see no reason to doubt
the figures, which have not been inflated
in the past, and which recent studies demonstrate are not now being
inflated, see e.g., Adam Tayor, “More than 20,000 dead in Gaza, a
historic human toll”, Washington Post (22 December 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/22/gaza-israel-war-20000-dead/;
and Benjamin Q Hunyh, Elizabeth T Chin, Paul
B Spiegel, “No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry
of Health”, The Lancet (6 December
2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140- 6736(23)02713-7/fulltext.
There may in fact be underreporting, as those whose bodies are not brought to a
hospital or morgue are not routinely included
in the casualty numbers. In circumstances where
so many hospitals have ceased
children, are reported missing, presumed dead under the rubble of
destroyed buildings — dying slow deaths — or decomposing in the streets where
they were killed.185 Israel’s
blockage of adequate fuel imports, its destruction of infrastructure and the
communication blackouts it imposes severely hamper rescue attempts. As of 8
December 2023, only one rescue vehicle was reportedly operational in the whole
of Gaza, with survivors forced to try to dig for survivors with their bare
hands.186 The level of Israel’s killing is so extensive that bodies
are being buried in mass graves, often unidentified.187
4.
“Nowhere is safe in Gaza”, as the United Nations
Secretary-General — and many other United Nations experts — have now made clear
to the international community.188 Palestinians
in Gaza have been killed in their homes, in places where they sought shelter,
in hospitals, in UNWRA schools, in churches, in mosques, and as they tried to
find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to
evacuate, in the places to which they fled, and even while they attempted to
flee along Israeli declared “safe routes”.189 Reports are multiplying of Israeli soldiers performing
summary executions, including of multiple members of the same family — men,
women and older people.190 One such
account is the reported execution in Gaza City of at least 11 male members of
the Annan family and their relatives — boys and men, said to have been
separated out by Israeli soldiers and shot in front of their family — before
the women and children were then attacked.191 There are also reports of unarmed people — including
Israeli hostages — being shot dead on sight, despite posing no threat,
including while waving white flags.192 Attacks on Palestinian homes and residential blocks account for
functioning, where Palestinians are unable to reach them — and indeed, as there are repeated reports
of people having to
resort to burying bodies on the street where they find them, the underreporting
could be significant. At present, approximately 7,780 people are missing, presumed
dead, but not yet included
in the official statistics, Zeina Jamaluddine,
Francesco Checchi, Oona M R Campbell, “Excess mortality in Gaza: 7-26, 2023”, The Lancet (26 November 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02640-5/fulltext.
185 Red Crescent
Society, Palestine Red Crescent
Society Response Report
As of Saturday, October 7th 2023, 6:00 PM Until Sunday, December 24th 2023, 24:00 AM (24 December 2023), p.1, https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/latestresponse23012023/en%20220%202023.pdf.
186 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #63 (8 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-63; and Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy, “Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families
dig to retrieve them, often by hand”,
AP (17 November 2023), https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-buried-rubble-airstrikes-89c0e8d0934d573d94d2fbfeba44d933.
187 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #48 (23 November 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-48- enarhe.
188 Letter by the Secretary-General to the President of Security Council
invoking Article 99 of the United Nations
Charter, (6 December 2023),
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sg_letter_of_6_december_gaza.pdf; UNICEF, A dystopic scene that seemed to stretch on endlessly (November 2023),
https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/emergencies/no-safety-for- children-in- gaza/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CUnless%20those%20conditions%20are%20met,need%20a%20humanitarian%20ceasefire%20 now.%E2%80%9D; ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories:
Deescalate now to prevent further human suffering (28 October 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-deescalate-now-prevent-further-human- suffering.
189 UN OHCHR, UN Human Rights has
“grave fears” about toll on civilians in Gaza (17 October 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/10/un-human-rights-has-grave-fears-about-toll-civilians-gaza; “Gaza civilians afraid to leave home after bombing of ‘safe routes’”, The Guardian (15 October 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/14/gaza-civilians-afraid-to-leave-home-after-bombing-of-safe-routes; ICRC, The ICRC urges protection for Gaza
civilians evacuating and staying behind (13 November 2023), https://blogs.icrc.org/ir/en/2023/11/the-icrc-urges-protection-for-gaza-civilians-evacuating-and-staying-behind/.
190 UN, The Question of Palestine, Unlawful
Killings in Gaza (20 December 2023), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaza-city-ohchr-press-release/. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Euro-Med
Monitor sends UN rapporteurs, ICC Prosecutor primary
report documenting dozens
of field execution cases in Gaza (25 December
2023), https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6058.
191 UN, The
Question of Palestine, Unlawful Killings
in Gaza (20 December 2023),
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaza-city-ohchr-press-release/.
192 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #70 (15 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-70; “Israeli soldiers kill
hostages waving white flag after mistaking
them for Hamas fighters”, Financial Times
(17 December 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/2e299603-2fed-4855-9694-9801008c48dc.
a significant
number of the dead,193 with
Israel reportedly using Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) to generate up to 100
bombing targets per day.194
5. Israel is said to be dropping ‘dumb’ (i.e., unguided) bombs on Gaza,195 as well as heavy bombs weighing up to 2,000 lbs (900 kgs),196 which have a predicted lethal radius “of up to 360m”, and are “expected to cause severe injury and damage as far as 800 metres from the point of impact”.197 This weaponry is being deployed in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, where approximately one in every 100 people has now been killed. Some Israeli strikes on Palestinian homes and refugee camps have killed upwards of 110 Palestinians.198 An estimated 1,779 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members, and hundreds of multigenerational families have been killed in their entirety, with no remaining survivors — mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins — often all killed together.199 By 7 November 2023, 312 Palestinian families in Gaza had lost over 10 members each.200 Numerous Palestinian families have lost upwards of 70 members each.201 The level of mortality in Palestinian families is such that medics in Gaza have had to coin a new acronym: ‘WCNSF’, meaning ‘wounded child, no surviving family’.202
193 UN OCHA Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#72 (18 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-72.
194 Yuval
Abraham, “A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of
Gaza”, +972 Magazine (30
November
2023), https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/; and Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh,
“‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing
targets in Gaza”,
The Guardian (1 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-to-select-bombing- targets..
195 Office of
the Director of National Intelligence assessment, reported by Natasha Bertrand
and Kattie Bo Lillis, “Exclusive:
Nearly half of the Israeli
munitions dropped on Gaza are imprecise ‘dumb bombs,’ US intelligence assessment finds”, CNN (13 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-
gaza/index.html; and John Paul Rathbone, “Military briefing: the Israeli
bombs raining on Gaza”, Financial Times (6
December 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/7b407c2e-8149-4d83-be01-72dcae8aee7b.
196 Amnesty
International, Israel/OPT: US-made
munitions killed 43 civilians in two documented Israeli air strikes in Gaza
–
new investigation (5 December
2023), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/israel-opt-us-made-munitions-
killed-43-civilians-in-two-documented-israeli-air-strikes-in-gaza-new-investigation/.
197 Action on
Armed Violence (AOAV), Explosive weapons
with large destructive radius: air-dropped bombs (the Mark 80
series and Paveway attachments) (1 March 2016), https://aoav.org.uk/2016/large-destructive-radius-air-dropped-bombs-the-
mark-80-series-and-paveway-attachments/; see also: Robin Stein, Haley
Willis, Ishaan Jhaveri,
Danielle Miller, Aaron
Byrd and Natalie Reneau, “A Times Investigation Tracked Israel’s Use of
One of Its Most Destructive Bombs in South Gaza”, New York Times (21
December 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bomb- investigation.html.
198 David Gritten,
“Gaza health ministry
says Israeli strikes
kill 110 in Jabalia”, BBC News (18 December
2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67749557.
199 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel -
reported impact | Day 78 (27 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-78; Amnesty International, Damning evidence
of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza, (20 October 2023), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire- families-in-gaza/; Child Rights Connect, Child Rights Connect deplores the grave violations of children’s rights
in Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territory (23
October 2023), https://childrightsconnect.org/child-rights-connect-deplores-the-
grave-violations-of-childrens-rights-in-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/.
200 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel - reported impact
| Day 32 (7 November
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-32.
201 See e.g., UNDP, Statement on the killing of UNDP staff
member & family in Gaza (22 December 2023), https://www.undp.org/speeches/statement-killing-undp-staff-member-family-gaza; “Palestinian-Americans speak
out about family, friends killed in
Israel-Hamas war”, ABC Eyewitness News (19
December 2023), https://abc7ny.com/palestinian- american-gaza-war-victims/14202160/.
202 Save the Children, Children’s Mental
Health in Gaza Pushed Beyond
Breaking Point After
Nearly a Month Of Siege
and Bombardment (7 November
2023), https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/childrens-mental- health-in-gaza-deteriorates-one-month-on-.
6.
For Palestinian children, in particular, “[d]eath is
everywhere” and “nowhere is safe”.203 A total of over 7,729 Palestinian children have been
killed in Gaza to date — over 115 Palestinian children in Gaza are killed every
day.204 It is
estimated that more Palestinian children were killed in the first three weeks in Gaza alone (a total of 3,195) than the
total number of children killed each year across the world’s conflict zones
since 2019.205 The scale of Palestinian child killings in Gaza is
such that United Nations chiefs have described it as “a graveyard for
children”.206 Indeed, the
unprecedented rate of Palestinian
child casualties has prompted UNICEF’s spokesperson to call Israel’s attacks on
Gaza a “war on children”. He explained:
“Most crises, they impact children terribly because children are the most
vulnerable, but most have about a casualty rate of children of around 20 per cent. This is 40. This is
twice as lethal to children as many
conflicts we’ve seen in the last 15 or 20
years, and unfortunately that is because of
the sheer density of population, the indiscriminate nature, and when we
see that there’s been not even lip service to safe zones having water and
sanitation for children and young girls. That same disregard for children is
being shown in the bombardments. That’s why we see 40 per cent of casualties
are children. That’s why it’s a war on children.”207
7.
Doctors, journalists, teachers, academics and other
professionals are also being killed at wholly unprecedented rates. To date,
Israel has killed: over 311 doctors, nurses and other health workers, including
doctors and ambulance drivers killed on duty;208 103 journalists, amounting to over one per day,209
and more than 73 per cent of the total number of journalists
and media workers killed globally in
2023;210 40 civil
defence workers — responsible for helping to dig victims out of the rubble —
killed while on duty; and over 209 teachers and educational staff.211 144 United Nations employees
have also been killed, the “highest number
of aid workers killed in UN history
in such a short time”.212 It is
203 UNICEF, Press Release: The war on
children resumes: Geneva Palais briefing note (1 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/war-children-resumes-geneva-palais-briefing-note; James Elder (UNICEF Spokesperson), “Bearing witness: No safety for
children in Gaza”, UNICEF (15
December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/blog/bearing-witness-no-safety-children-gaza.
204 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel - reported impact | Day 73 (19 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-73; UN, United Nations Türkiye, Gaza crisis: Aid agencies warn of
‘tragic, avoidable surge’ in child deaths (22 November 2023), https://turkiye.un.org/en/253479-gaza-crisis-aid-agencies-warn-%E2%80%98tragic-avoidable-surge%E2%80%99-child- deaths.
205 Save the Children, Press Release:
GAZA: 3,195 children
killed in three weeks surpasses
annual number of children killed in conflict zones since 2019 (29
October 2023), https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-3195-children-killed-three- weeks-surpasses-annual-number-children-killed-conflict-zones.
206 UNICEF, Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children (31 October
2023), https://www.unicef.org/press- releases/gaza-has-become-graveyard-thousands-children.
207 Interview
with James Elder, UNICEF Spokesperson by CNN, “CNN speaks to UNICEF about dire
situation in Gaza”,
CNN (15 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/15/exp-unicef-gaza-james-elder-live-121402pseg1-
cnni-world.cnn.
208 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel - reported impact | Day 82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82; International Federation of Journalists, Ninety-four
journalists killed in 2023, says IFJ (8 December 2023), https://www.ifj.org/media- centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/ninety-four-journalists-killed-in-2023-says-ifj.
209 Ibid.
210 UN OHCHR,
Killings of journalists and their family
members in Gaza – OHCHR press release
(14 December 2023), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/killings-of-journalists-and-their-family-members-in-gaza-dec14-2023/.
211 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023),
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update- 78#:~:text=According%20to%20Ministry%20of%20Education,teachers%20were%20injured%20in%20Gaza. 212 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel - reported impact | Day 82 (27
December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82; UN News, UN honours 101 staff killed in Gaza
conflict (13 November 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143512.
estimated that “it will take years to recover the remains of people from
beneath the rubble” and that “the
costly, technical process will not result in the identification of each body”.213
8.
In addition to being killed by Israeli weaponry,
Palestinians in Gaza are also at immediate risk of death by starvation,
dehydration and disease as a result of the ongoing siege by Israel, the
insufficient aid being allowed through to the Palestinian population, and the
extreme difficulties in distributing such limited aid that is permitted to
enter the territory due to the
decimation of Gaza’s infrastructure in Israel’s military attacks.214
2. Causing Serious Bodily and
Mental Harm to Palestinians in Gaza
9.
Over 55,243 Palestinians have been wounded in Israel’s
military attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the majority of them women and
children.215 Burns and
amputations are typical injuries,216 with an estimated 1,000 children having lost one or
both legs.217 There are
reports of Israeli forces using white phosphorus in densely populated areas in
Gaza: as the World Health Organization describes, even small amounts of white
phosphorus can cause deep and severe burns, penetrating even through bone, and
capable of reigniting after initial treatment.218 There are no functioning hospitals in the North of
Gaza, in particular, such that injured persons are reduced to “waiting to die”,
unable to seek surgery or medical
treatment beyond first aid, dying slow, agonising deaths from their injuries or from resultant infections.219
10.
The extreme levels of bombardment and lack of any safe areas are also causing severe
mental trauma in the Palestinian population in Gaza.220 Even before the latest
onslaught, Palestinians in Gaza suffered severe trauma from prior attacks: 80
per cent of Palestinian children experienced higher levels of emotional
distress, demonstrating bedwetting (79 per cent) and reactive mutism (59 per cent), and engaging in self-harm (59 per
cent), and suicidal thoughts (55 per cent).221 Eleven weeks of relentless bombardment, displacement
and loss will necessarily have led to a further increase in those figures,
particularly for the estimated tens of thousands of Palestinian children who have lost at least one parent, and those who are the sole surviving
members of their families.222
For the families
who remain intact
213 Bassam Massou
and Maggie Fick, “Gaza death toll: why counting the dead has become a daily struggle”, Reuters (21 December 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/.
214 UN News, Gaza humanitarian disaster
heralds ‘breakdown’ of society (8 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144547; UN News, Gaza: Aid access to north entirely
blocked as war escalates in the
south (4 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144302.
215 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#78 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
216 WHO, WHO leads very high-risk joint
humanitarian mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (18 November 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/18-11-2023-who-leads-very-high-risk-joint-humanitarian-mission-to-al-shifa-hospital-in- gaza.
217 UN News,
‘Ten weeks of hell’ for children
in Gaza: UNICEF
(19 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144927.
218 Amnesty International, Israel/OPT identifying the Israeli army’s use of white phosphorus in Gaza (13
October 2023), https://amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/israel-opt-identifying-the-israeli-armys-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-gaza/; WHO, White Phosphorus (20 October
2023), https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/white-phosphorus.
219 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients
‘waiting to die’ in northern
Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
220 WHO, Escalation of Violence in
Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (13 November 2023), https://apps.who.int/gb/COVID-19/pdf_files/2023/13_11/Item1.pdf; UN United Nations
Office at Geneva,
'Nowhere and no one is safe'
in Gaza, WHO chief tells Security Council (10 November 2023), https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news- media/news/2023/11/87337/nowhere-and-no-one-safe-gaza-who-chief-tells-security-council.
221 Save the
Children, Trapped: The impact of 15 years
of blockade on the mental health of Gaza’s children (2022),
https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/gaza_blockade_mental_health_palestinian_children_2022.pdf.
222 Save the Children, Children’s Mental Health in Gaza Pushed Beyond Breaking Point After
Nearly a Month of Siege and
Bombardment
(7 November 2023), https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/childrens-mental-
or partially
intact, “it’s about doing everything you can so your child doesn’t realise that
you’ve lost control”.223
11.
It is already known that “[r]epeated exposure to
conflict and violence, including witnessing and experiencing housing
demolition, combined with Israel’s siege of Gaza since 2007” is “associated
with high levels of psychological distress among Palestinians”.224 Indeed, the United Nations
Security Council in Resolution 2712 (2023) expressed its “deep concern
that the disruption of access to education
has a dramatic impact on children, and that conflict has lifelong effects on
their physical and mental health”.225 That disruption and its “dramatic impact” on children
must be considered, in particular, in
the context of the number of Palestinian students and educators who have
been killed (4,037 and 209 respectively), and wounded (estimated at 7,259),226 and the number of
Palestinian schools having been damaged or destroyed
(352, or 74 per cent of the schools in the whole of Gaza).227 Medical professionals assess
that “[t]he health effects on all Palestinian children, women, men, older
people, people with disabilities, and people of marginalised identities are
immense”.228 An
Emergency Coordinator for Médecins sans Frontières interviewed on her return
from five weeks in Gaza described:
“[I]t's even worse in reality than it looks. It's - the amount of
suffering is just something… incomparable. It's really unbearable. I'm
speechless when I try and think of the future of this children. It's
generations of children who will be handicapped, who will be traumatized. The
very children in our mental health program are telling us that they would
rather die than continue living in Gaza now.”229
12. Alongside its military campaign, Israel has engaged in the dehumanisation, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of members Palestinians in Gaza. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, have reportedly been arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress and remain outside in the cold weather, before being forced on to trucks and taken to unknown locations.230 Medics and first responders, in particular, have been repeatedly detained by Israeli forces, with many being detained incommunicado at unknown locations.231 Videos published by Israeli media on Christmas Day appeared
health-in-gaza-deteriorates-one-month-on-; Maram Humaid, “‘War is stupid and I want it to end’: Injured
Palestinian children speak”, Al Jazeera
(15 December 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/war-is-stupid-and-i-want-it- to-end-injured-palestinian-children-
say#:~:text=At%20least%2024%2C000%20children%20have,with%20some%20in%20critical%20condition..
223 UNICEF
spokesperson, quoted in: Nedal Samir Hamdouna, Aseel Mousa and Julian Borger,
“The plight of ‘WCNSFs’ –
wounded child, no surviving family”, The
Guardian (22 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/22/the-plight-of-gazas-wcnsfs-wounded-child-no-surviving-family.
224 Alix Faddoul,
Geordan Shannon, Khudejha
Ashgar, Yamina Boukari,
James Smith and Amy Neilson,
“The health dimensions of
violence in Palestine: a call to prevent genocide”, The Lancet (18 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02751-4/fulltext.
225 Security Council
resolution 2712, The situation in the Middle East, including
the Palestinian Question,
S/RES/2712 (15 November 2023), https://undocs.org/S/RES/2712(2023).
226 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#78 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
227 Ibid.
228 Alix Faddoul,
Geordan Shannon, Khudejha
Ashgar, Yamina Boukari,
James Smith and Amy Neilson,
“The health dimensions of
violence in Palestine: a call to prevent genocide”, The Lancet (18 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02751-4/fulltext.
229 Aya Batrawy,
“An aid worker
describes the 'unbearable' suffering of wounded
children in Gaza”,
NPR (26 December
2023), https://www.npr.org/2023/12/26/1221743518/an-aid-worker-describes-the-unbearable-suffering-of-wounded- children-in-gaza#:~:text=Palestinian%20health%20officials%20say%20in,trying%20to%20care%20for%20children.
230 UN OHCHR,
OHCHR is alarmed at Israeli strikes
on or in the vicinities of schools and hospitals in the north of Gaza (9
December
2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/un-human-rights-office-ohchr-alarmed-israeli-
strikes-or-vicinities-schools-and-hospitals-north-gaza.
231 WHO, WHO calls for protection of
humanitarian space in Gaza following serious incidents in high-risk mission to
transfer patients, deliver
health supplies (12
December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/12-12-2023-who-calls-for-
to show hundreds of Palestinians, rounded up inside Al Yarmouk football
stadium in Gaza City, “including children, older people and persons with
disabilities, being forced to strip to their underwear in degrading
conditions”.232 Many
Palestinian detainees who have been released report having been subjected to
torture and ill-treatment, including the deprivation of food, water, shelter
and access to toilets;233 the
United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (‘OCHA’) reports “video footage showing bruises and burns on the … bodies” of detainees.234 Images of mutilated and
burned corpses — alongside videos of armed attacks by Israeli soldiers — billed
as ‘exclusive content from the Gaza Strip’, are reportedly circulated in Israel
via a social media ‘Telegram’ channel called
‘72 Virgins - Uncensored’.235
3. Mass expulsion from homes and displacement of Palestinians
in Gaza
13.
It is estimated that over 1.9
million Palestinians out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people
—
approximately 85 per cent of the population — have
been forced from their homes.236 There is
nowhere safe for them to flee to, those who cannot leave or refuse to be
displaced have been killed or are at extreme risk of being killed in their homes.
14.
Israel is repeatedly issuing ‘evacuation orders’
demanding that Palestinian civilians in certain areas of Gaza leave their homes
for other areas. The first such order, issued on 13 October 2023 demanded that
the 1.1 million Palestinians living or otherwise present in the North of Gaza,
including Gaza City, move to the South of Gaza within a 24-hour window.237 The International Committee
of the Red Cross warned that the evacuation
directive, impacting approximately 36 per cent of Gaza’s territory
—
combined with the complete siege of Gaza — was not
compatible with international humanitarian law.238 The World Health Organization warned that it “could be
tantamount to a death sentence” for hospital patients.239 The evacuation was, however,
maintained and has been reissued on a number of occasions, including on 28 October 2023,240 ahead of the Israeli announcement of ground operations in
protection-of-humanitarian-space-in-gaza-following-serious-incidents-in-high-risk-mission-to-transfer-patients--deliver- health-supplies; “Gaza healthcare workers ‘taken’
by Israeli forces,
says doctor, amid ‘horrendous conditions’ at hospitals”, CNN (13 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/middleeast/gaza-kamal-adwan-hospital-doctors-idf-
intl/index.html.
232 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #77 (26 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-77; Quds News Network, @QudsNen,
Tweet (4:02 pm, December 25, 2023), https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1739315746163859606.
233 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #69 (14 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-69; UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#77 (26 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-77.
234 Ibid.
235 See e.g., Yaniv
Kubovich, “Graphic Videos
and Incitement: How the IDF Is Misleading Israelis on Telegram”, Haaretz, (12 December
2023), https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-12-12/ty-article/.premium/graphic- videos-and-incitement-how-the-idf-is-misleading-israelis-on-telegram/0000018c-5ab5-df2f-adac-febd01c30000.
236 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact
| Day #82 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82.
237 Israeli Defence
Forces, @IDF, Tweet (6:50am, October
13, 2023), https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1712707301369434398;
UN OHCHR, Israel must rescind evacuation
order for northern Gaza and comply with international law: UN expert (13
October 2023) https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/israel-must-rescind-evacuation-order-northern-gaza-and- comply-international.
238 ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories:
Evacuation order of Gaza triggers catastrophic humanitarian consequences
(13 October
2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-evacuation-order-of-gaza-triggers- catastrophic-humanitarian-consequences.
239 WHO, Evacuation orders by Israel to
hospitals in northern Gaza are a death sentence for the sick and injured (14
October
2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/14-10-2023-evacuation-orders-by-israel-to-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-are-a- death-sentence-for-the-sick-and-injured.
240 Israeli Defence Forces, @IDF, Tweet (2:16 pm, October 28, 2023), https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1718240244129059167.
northern Gaza, and again thereafter. Israel has also issued more specific
evacuation notices, ordering people in certain parts of Gaza City to evacuate
to other parts.241 Many
of those who are unwilling or unable to evacuate are then bombed in their
homes.242
15.
Palestinians fleeing the North pursuant to Israel’s
evacuation orders were urged to move south along Gaza’s main traffic artery,
Salah Al Din Road, on certain days, during certain designated hours. However,
there were numerous reported instances of shelling along the routes and of
other violence by Israeli forces against evacuating Palestinian civilians,
including inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests, unlawful
detention, and killings.243 Israel has
also continued bombing south of Wadi
Gaza throughout this time, killing many Palestinians who evacuated,244 initially prompting many
Palestinian families to seek to return north to at least risk being bombed in the familiar surrounding of their homes.245 Some of those attempting to
return north during the temporary pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas
were shot at by Israeli forces, who killed at least two people, and injured
others.246
16.
On 1 December 2023 — the end of the eight-day temporary
truce between Israel and Hamas
—
Israel began dropping leaflets, urging Palestinians to
leave areas in the South to which they had previously been told to flee — an
area constituting approximately 30 per cent of Gaza.247 As stated by the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on the human
rights of internally displaced persons, “Israel
has reneged on promises of safety made to those who complied
with its order to evacuate
northern Gaza two months ago. Now, they have been forcibly displaced again, alongside the population of
southern Gaza”.248 Israel also published a
detailed map online, dividing the Gaza
Strip into hundreds of small areas.249 The map was ostensibly
intended to provide notice of Israeli
orders to evacuate individual areas ahead of
planned air strikes. However, as noted by OCHA, “the publication does
not specify where people should evacuate to”. Moreover, after months of
bombardment — amidst the ongoing electricity blackout imposed by Israel since
11 October 2023 and regular telecommunications blackouts250
— most Palestinians in Gaza have little access
to electricity to charge phones
or other
241 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#57 (2 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-57.
242 Ibid.
243 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #40 (15 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40; UN OCHA, Today's top news: Occupied Palestinian Territory, South Sudan, Somalia,
Ukraine (9 November
2023), https://www.unocha.org/news/todays-top-news- occupied-palestinian-territory-south-sudan-somalia-ukraine.
244 See e.g. UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #9 (15 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-9; UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #10 (16
October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-10; UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #24 (30 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-24; UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #25 (31
October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-25.
245 According to UNRWA, approximately 30,000 Palestinians returned
North due the lack of any safe zone, see UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #19 (25
October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities- gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-19.
246 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#53 (28 November
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-53.
247 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #61 (6 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-61.
248 UN OHCHR, Israel working to expel
civilian population of Gaza, UN expert warns (22 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/israel-working-expel-civilian-population-gaza-un-expert-warns .
249
IDF, “Based on the ethics and values
of our military institution, the IDF publishes a list of block numbers
to guide Gaza residents in evacuating the targeted areas”
(1 December 2023),
https://www.idf.il/ar/-اﻟﺪﻓﺎع-ﺟﯿﺶ/اﻹﺳﺮاﺋﯿﻠﻲ-اﻟﺪﻓﺎع-ﺟﯿﺶ
اﻹﺳﺮاﺋﯿﻠﻲ/swordsofiron-011223-150/.
250 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#77 (26 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-77.
devices and no reliable way of accessing the map.251 The United Nations Secretary-General has
remarked that “the people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs –
ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of
the south, without any of the basics for survival.”252
17.
Palestinians are not safe, even in those “small …
slivers”: as United Nations chiefs keep reiterating. “No place is safe”,253 there is “nowhere safe to
go”.254 The
Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza
has pleaded that “[p]eople in Gaza are people … they are not pieces on a
checkerboard - many have already been displaced several times. The Israeli Army
just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes”.255 This is creating terror.256 The increased population
density as a result of the
evacuation ‘orders’ is also rendering Israeli strikes ever more lethal. On
Christmas Eve itself, the Israeli army bombed Al Maghazi Refugee Camp in the
Middle Area — an area to which tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled from the North — killing an estimated 86
people, including many women and children, and injuring many others.257 A spokesperson for the OHCHR
stated that they were
“gravely concerned” that “this latest intense bombardment comes after
Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to Middle Gaza”.258
18. For many Palestinians, the forced evacuation from their homes is necessarily permanent. Israel has now damaged or destroyed an estimated 355,000 Palestinian homes — amounting to 60 per cent of the entire housing stock in Gaza. The extent of the destruction in the North of Gaza, in particular, has rendered it largely unliveable, with the destruction in the South reaching a similar level. As noted by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, “Gaza’s housing and civilian infrastructure have been razed to the ground, frustrating any realistic prospects for displaced Gazans to return home, repeating a long history of mass forced displacement of Palestinians by Israel”.259 The forced displacements in Gaza are genocidal, in that they are taking place in circumstances calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.260
251 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#56 (1 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-56.
252 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#63 (8 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-63 .
253 UNRWA, Gaza: UNRWA school sheltering displaced
families is hit (17 October 2023),
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/gaza-unrwa-school-sheltering-displaced-families-hit
254 UN Secretary-General, Statement
attributable to the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General – on the Middle East
(4 December 2023), https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2023-12-04/statement-attributable-the-spokesperson-for- the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-the-middle-east%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0.
255 Thomas White, @TomWhiteGaza, Tweet (9:22 AM, December 23, 2023), https://twitter.com/TomWhiteGaza/status/1738475273522205155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw.
256 See, e.g., Israeli strikes on Deir Al Balah on 4 December, preceding
civilians being told to flee to these areas, UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #60 (5
December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities- gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-60; and on the 12th of December 2023 the City of Rafah, after evacuation orders to Rafah, UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #67 (12 December 2023), , following civilians being told to flee to these areas; Ben van der Merwe,
Michelle Inez Simon Olive Enokido-Lineham, and Data & Forensics Unit
“Israel said Gazans could flee to this neighbourhood - then it was hit”, Sky News (22 December 2023), https://news.sky.com/story/israel-said-gazans-could-flee-to-this-neighbourhood-then-it-was-hit-13034936.
; Ben van der Merwe, Michelle Inez Simon Olive Enokido-Lineham, and Data &
Forensics Unit “Israel said Gazans could flee to this neighbourhood - then it was hit”, Sky News (22
December 2023), https://news.sky.com/story/israel-said-gazans-could-flee-
to-this-neighbourhood-then-it-was-hit-13034936.
257 UN OHCHR,
Comment by UN Human Rights Office
spokesperson Seif Magango on continued bombardment of Middle
Gaza (26 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/12/comment-un-human-rights-office-spokesperson- seif-magango-continued-bombardment.
258 Ibid.
259 UN OHCHR, Israel working to expel
civilian population of Gaza, UN expert warns (22 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/israel-working-expel-civilian-population-gaza-un-expert-warns
. 260 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(Croatia v. Serbia), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2015, p.71-72, para. 163.
4. Deprivation of access to
adequate food and water to Palestinians in Gaza
19.
On 9 October 2023, Israel declared a “complete siege”
on Gaza, allowing no electricity, no food, no water and no fuel to enter the
strip.261 Although
the siege has been partially alleviated since then, with some aid trucks being
permitted in since 21 October 2023, this remains wholly insufficient, and well
below the pre-October 2023 average of approximately
500 trucks per day.262 Moreover,
fuel imports — permitted since 21 November 2023 — are “well below the minimum
requirements for essential humanitarian operations”,263 meaning that such
limited humanitarian aid as is being allowed in cannot easily be
moved around Gaza away from entry points.264 As the Secretary-General has starkly assessed, the
level of destruction in Gaza is now so catastrophic that:
“[t]he conditions for the effective delivery of
humanitarian aid no longer exist . . . But even if sufficient supplies were
permitted into Gaza, intense bombardment and hostilities, Israeli restrictions
on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications, make it impossible
for UN agencies and their partners to reach most of the people in need.”265
20. In light of that, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2720 of 22 December 2023 is widely slated to be ineffectual, despite demanding that “the parties to the conflict allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings” and requesting “that the Coordinator expeditiously establish a United Nations mechanism for accelerating the provision of humanitarian relief consignments”.266 That is because the watered-down resolution fails properly to address the “four elements” identified by the United Nations Secretary-General as necessary for allowing effective aid, capable of assisting Palestinians in Gaza: (1) security (“We are providing aid in a war zone. The intense Israeli bombardment and active combat in densely populated urban areas throughout Gaza threaten the lives of civilians and humanitarian aid workers alike”); (2) staff (“The humanitarian operation requires staff who can live and work in safety. 136 of our colleagues in Gaza have been killed in 75 days — something we have never seen in the history of the United Nations . . . In these appalling conditions, they can only meet a fraction of the needs”); (3) logistics (“Many of our vehicles and trucks were destroyed or left behind following our forced, hurried evacuation from the north, but the Israeli authorities have not allowed any additional trucks to operate in Gaza. This is massively hampering the aid operation. Delivering in the north is extremely dangerous due to active conflict, unexploded ordnance, and heavily damaged roads. Everywhere, frequent communications blackouts make it virtually impossible to coordinate the distribution of aid, and to let people know how to access it”); (4) and the resumption of commercial activities (“Shelves are empty; wallets are empty; stomachs are empty. Just one bakery is operating in the whole of Gaza. I urge the Israeli authorities to
261 Statement by Yoav Gallant, 9 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nxvS9VY-t0. Translation by Emmanuel Fabian,
“Defense minister announces
‘complete siege’ of Gaza: No power, food or fuel”, The Times of Israel (9 October 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no- power-food-or-fuel/. Gaza’s
only power plant is no longer operational, Israel having reportedly threatened to target
the plant if it resumes
operation: UN OCHA, Hostilities in the
Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #6 (12 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-6.
262 World Health
Organization, WHO Director-General’s remarks
at the Emergency Meeting of the United
Nations Security Council – 10
November 2023 (10 November 2023), https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director- general-s-remarks-at-the-emergency-meeting-of-the-united-nations-security-council----------------------------------------------- 10-november-2023.
263 UN Palestine, War and health crisis
in Gaza a ‘recipe for epidemics’ warns WHO (21 November 2023), https://palestine.un.org/en/253317-war-and-health-crisis-gaza-%E2%80%98recipe-epidemics%E2%80%99-warns-who.
264 MSF, Inside Gaza: Staying alive is only a matter
of luck (18 December 2023), https://www.msf.org/inside-gaza-staying-
alive-only-matter-luck.
265 United Nations
Secretary-General, People of Gaza ‘Being Told to Move like Human
Pinballs’, but Nowhere
Is Safe, Secretary-General
Tells Security Council, Pleading for Humanitarian Ceasefire (8 December
2023), https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm22076.doc.htm (emphasis added).
266 Security
Council Resolution 2720, S/RES/2720, (22 December 2023), https://undocs.org/S/RES/2720(2023).
lift restrictions on commercial activity immediately. We are ready to
scale up our cash grant support to vulnerable families — the most effective
form of humanitarian aid. But in Gaza, there is very little to buy”).267 Having regard to those
factors, the Secretary-General was clear to advise that focusing on the number
of trucks permitted into Gaza daily was misleading:
“Many
people are measuring the effectiveness of the humanitarian operation in Gaza based on the number of trucks from the
Egyptian Red Crescent, the UN and our partners that are allowed to unload aid
across the border. This is a mistake.
The real problem is that the way Israel
is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution
of humanitarian aid inside Gaza.”268
21.
It is for that reason that United Nations Security
Council Resolution 2720 — which fails properly to address the situation on the
ground, including by failing to call for a ceasefire — has been described by a
former senior UNRWA official as “a greenlight for
continued genocide”, marked by
“the wholesale and industrial ignoring of
international humanitarian law”.269 Oxfam has called the
“failure to call for a ceasefire” in the resolution “incomprehensible
and utterly callous” as well as a “profound dereliction of duty” on the part of
the United Nations Security Council,270 having regard to the extreme seriousness of the situation in Gaza.
22. Israel has now pushed the Palestinian population in Gaza to the brink of famine, with international agencies warning that “the risk of famine is real” (World Food Programme or ‘WFP’) and that it is “increasing each day” (IPC).271 Most of the Palestinian people in Gaza are now starving, with levels of starvation rising daily.272 The World Health Organization warns that “[h]unger is ravaging Gaza”.273 As the United Nations Secretary-General has stated, “[f]our out of five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza”,274 with Palestinians in Gaza facing the highest levels of acute food insecurity ever classified by the IPC.275 UNRWA’s Commissioner-General describes “[d]esperate, hungry and terrified” people, who are now “stopping aid trucks, taking the food, and eating it right away.”276 The World Health Organization has stated that “[a]n unprecedented 93% of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food and high levels of malnutrition”. They say that “[a]t least 1 in 4 households are facing ‘catastrophic conditions’: experiencing an extreme lack of
267 UN OCHA, Remarks to the media by the Secretary-General (22 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/remarks-media-secretary-general.
268 Ibid (emphasis
added).
269 “UNSC resolution ‘greenlighting genocide’: Former
UNRWA official”, Al Jazeera
English (22 December
2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT0yW6kS3Uo.
270 Oxfam, Oxfam: UNSC’s failure to call for a
ceasefire “utterly callous” (19 December 2023),
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/oxfam-unscs-failure-call-ceasefire-utterly-callous.
271 WFP Media, @WFP_Media, Tweet (10:35 pm, December 9, 2023), https://twitter.com/WFP_Media/status/1733616413636530607; and Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification, Gaza Strip: Acute Food Insecurity Situation
for 24 November - 7 December 2023 and Projection for 8 December 2023 - 7
February 2024 (21
December 2023), https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1156749/?iso3=PSE . 272 UN Web
TV, Press conference by Carl Skau (World Food Program), 14 December 2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k13/k139z8z7t5; and Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Gaza Strip:
Acute Food Insecurity Situation
for 24 November - 7 December 2023 and Projection for 8 December
2023 - 7 February 2024 (21
December 2023), https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1156749/?iso3=PSE.
273 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger
and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza. 274 UN OCHA, Remarks to the media by the
Secretary-General (22 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/remarks-media-secretary-general.
275 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#75 (21 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-75.
276 UNRWA, Remarks by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe
Lazzarini at Geneva Press Conference (14 December
2023), https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/remarks-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini- geneva-press.
food and starvation and having resorted to selling off their possessions
and other extreme measures to afford a simple meal”. They caution that
“[s]tarvation, destitution and death are evident”,277 calling Israel’s actions in cutting off Gaza
“from water, food, anything which is necessary for any sort of life” “a cruel
campaign”, brought “against the whole
population of Gaza”.278 Their
Emergency Medical Teams Coordinator explained that “every single person” he
speaks to is hungry: “Everywhere we go, people are asking us for food even in
the hospital, I walked around in the emergency department, somebody with an
open bleeding wound, an open fracture; they asked for food. If that's not an
indicator of the desperation, I don't know what is”.279 The situation is such that the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights has felt the need to caution that
“[s]tarvation must never be a means or
result of warfare”.280 Oxfam
and Human Rights Watch have gone even further in expressly accusing Israel of
using starvation “as a weapon of war”
against the Palestinian people in Gaza.281
23. The conditions created by the siege are exacerbated by Israel’s continuing strikes on Gaza, including on its bakeries, water facilities and last remaining operating mill, and its razing of agricultural lands, crops, orchards and greenhouses.282 By 16 November 2023, the food infrastructure in Gaza was already considered “no longer functional”, given shop and market closures, the lack of essential food items, and the inflated price of the scarce food available.283 Bread is scarce or non-existent,284 with food scarcity leading to significant price hikes, and the price of flour increasing by 65 per cent at one stage.285 Livestock that has not been killed is facing starvation, and crops are damaged or destroyed.286 Many Palestinians are resorting to foraging due to hunger, collecting spilled flour from aid distributions from the road, or other unsafe food practices.287
277 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger
and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza. 278 Statement of Christian Lindmeier (World Health
Organization spokesperson), 8 December 2023: UN Web TV, Geneva Press Briefing: WHO, FAO, UNHCR, ICRC, 8 December
2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1eez0ym7c (emphasis added).
279 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’
in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’
hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
280 UN News, Gaza crisis: Starvation must never be allowed to happen, says UN rights
chief (22 December
2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145047.
281 Oxfam, Starvation as weapon of war
being used against Gaza civilians (25 October 2023), https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/starvation-as-weapon-of-war-being-used-against-gaza-civilians/; and HRW, Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of
War in Gaza (18 December 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel- starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza.
282 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #35 (10 November 2023),
https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-35- enarhe;
and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #40 (15 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40; and HRW, Israel: Starvation Used as
Weapon of War in Gaza (18 December 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war- gaza.
283 WFP, Gaza faces
widespread hunger as food systems
collapse, warns WFP (16 November
2023), https://www.wfp.org/news/gaza-faces-widespread-hunger-food-systems-collapse-warns-wfp.
284 Ibid.
285 Action Against Hunger, Action
Against Hunger calls for permanent ceasefire in Gaza (1 December 2023), https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/press-releases/action-against-hunger-calls-for-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza/. 286 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #51 (26 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-51.
287 WFP, Food Security Update for internally displaced populations in Southern
Gaza Strip (14 December 2023), https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000155014/download/; and “Children collect
flour from the ground in Gaza”,
Middle East Eye (23 December 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYpZ_aU_Ho.
24.
Water is also severely depleted. Israel continues to
cut off piped water for the North of Gaza,288 and the
North’s water desalination plant is non-functioning.289 From 15 October 2023, Israel
began piping a small amount of water to the South, in part to “push the
civilian population to the southern
[part of the] Strip”.290 The damage
from Israeli airstrikes and shelling has also rendered most of the water system inoperable.291 The World Food Programme has
reported that there is only 1.5 to 1.8 litres of clean water available per
person per day, for all uses (drinking, washing, food preparation, sanitation
and hygiene).292 This is far
below the ‘emergency threshold’ of 15 litres per day for “war or famine-like conditions”, or the
‘survival threshold’ of 3 litres per day.293 The World Health Organization Emergency Medical Teams
Coordinator described the scene at Al Ahli Arab Hospital, where medical staff
were struggling to cope with “no food, no fuel, no water”, stating that “it
looks more like a hospice now than a hospital. But a hospice implies a level of
care that the doctors and nurses are unable to provide . . . It’s pretty unbearable to see somebody with
casts on multiple limbs, external fixator on multiple limbs, without drinking
water and almost no IV fluids available”. He said that “patients were crying
out in pain, but they were also crying out for us to give them water”. He urged
that “[t]he time is now. We are dealing with starving people now, adults,
children, it’s unbearable”.294
25.
The lack of water is severely impacting lactating
women, in particular, who, even if
undertaking only a moderate amount of exercise, require a supply of 7.5 litres
of water a day for drinking, sanitation and hygiene to keep themselves and
their babies healthy.295 Young
mothers — unable to breastfeed for lack of proper nutrition arising from the
food scarcity — have been forced to use
contaminated water to prepare formula —
where it is available — risking disease in vulnerable babies. In parallel, the chronic unavailability of formula is
also risking the lives of newborn babies, who are already reportedly dying from
avoidable causes due to the absence of medical care, food, water and adequate
sanitation.296 The impacts of malnourishment on
older children may also be particularly grave and long-lasting, preventing them from reaching
their full potential
in terms of physical growth,
cognitive capacity,
288 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact
| Day #82 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82.
289 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#66 (11 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-66.
290 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #9 (15 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-9; and Amy Spiro, Jacob
Magid and Agencies, “Israel
says it is restarting water supply to southern Gaza Strip”, The Times of Israel (15 October
2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-is-restarting-water-supply-to-southern-gaza-strip/.
291 UN News, Barely a drop of safe water to drink in
Gaza, UN aid agency warns (20 December 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144972; and Anera, Gaza Ceasefire: A Welcome Pause,
But Far From Enough (23 November 2023), https://www.anera.org/blog/pause-in-gaza-war-not-enough/.
292 WFP, Gaza Food Security Assessment (6
December 2023), https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-
0000154766/download/.
293 UNICEF, Gaza’s Children running out
of time: water shortages spark
disease alarm (21 November 2023), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/gazas-children-running-out-time-water-shortages-spark-disease-alarm; and UNICEF, ‘Barely a
drop to drink’: children in the Gaza Strip do not access 90 per cent of their
normal water use (20 December
2023), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/barely-drop-drink-children-gaza-strip-do-not-access-90-cent-their-normal- water-use.
294 UN Web TV, Geneva
Press Briefing: WHO, FAO, UNHCR,
ICRC, 8 December
2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1eez0ym7c.
school
performance and productivity later in life.297 Many health workers also lack sufficient food
and water to continue working, which will also necessarily further impact on
health and mortality rates.298
26.
This is all happening to a population that was already
extremely vulnerable as a result
of Israel’s prior actions
against Gaza. Israel has long hindered the creation and repair of water
installation and desalinisation plants in Gaza, such that 95 per cent of water
from Gaza’s sole aquifer was already unsuitable for consumption prior to 7
October 2023.299 Through its
16-year blockade, Israel also severely impacted water supply.300 Its repeated
attacks on Gaza and its restrictions on repairing the degraded wastewater
infrastructure damaged the soil, rendering agriculture challenging.301 Israel also restricted
access by Palestinians in Gaza to up to 35 per cent of agricultural land and up
to 85 per cent of Gaza’s fishing waters.302 Consequently, over 68 per
cent of households (around 1.3 million people) were severely or moderately food
insecure prior to 7 October 2023, with 58 per cent of the population dependent
on humanitarian aid.303 7,685
children under five years of age in Gaza were suffering from life-threatening
‘wasting’, the deadliest form of child malnutrition.304 The impact on
Palestinian children of Israel’s forced
starvation of Gaza will necessarily be serious and long-lasting.
27. Recent reports of Israeli plans to flood tunnels in Gaza with seawater is of extreme concern, given the risks it would pose of further degradation and collapse of Gaza’s water and sewage infrastructure, and of long-lasting contamination of Gaza’s aquifer and soil.305 Environmental experts have warned that the strategy “risks causing an ecological catastrophe” that would leave Gaza with no drinkable water, devastate what little agriculture is possible and “ruin the conditions of life of everyone in Gaza”.306 The United Nations Special Rapporteur for the right to water is reported to have compared
297 Global Nutrition
Cluster - State of Palestine, Call for Immediate Action:
Child deaths in the Gaza Strip due to disease and malnutrition can and must be
prevented (3 December 2023), https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2023- 11/SoP%20Nutrtion%20Cluster%20advocacy_final.pdf
298 UN Web TV, Geneva
Press Briefing: WHO, FAO, UNHCR,
ICRC, 8 December
2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1eez0ym7c.
299 United
Nations, Human Rights Council, The
allocation of water resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including East Jerusalem A/HRC/48/43 (15 October 2021),
https://undocs.org/A/HRC/48/43;
Amnesty, The Occupation of Water (29 November 2017), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/; EWASH, Israel's control of water in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (26
September 2012), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-
palestinian-territory/israels-control-water-occupied-palestinian-territories.
300 United Nations,
Human Rights Council,
The allocation of water resources in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory,
including East Jerusalem A/HRC/48/43 (15 October 2021), https://undocs.org/A/HRC/48/43.
301 UN FAO, Farming without Land, Fishing without Water:
Gaza Agriculture Sector Struggles to Survive (25 May 2010),
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-205890/.
302 UN Palestine, United Nations Common
Country Analysis for the Occupied Palestinian Territory (16 August 2022), https://palestine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-
09/United%20Nations%20Common%20Country%20Analysis%20for%20the%20Occupied%20Palestinian%20Territory_16
_August_2022.pdf.
303 UN OCHA,
Food insecurity in the oPt: 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza strip are food insecure
(14 December 2018), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/food-insecurity-opt-13-million-palestinians-gaza-strip-are-food-insecure; UN OCHA, Humanitarian Response
Plan OPT (January 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/HRP_2023.pdf.
304 Global Nutrition Cluster - State of Palestine, Call for Immediate Action:
Child deaths in the Gaza Strip due to disease
and malnutrition can and must be prevented (3 December 2023), https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/ files/2023-11/SoP%20Nutrtion%20Cluster%20advocacy_final.pdf.
305 UN OCHA, Humanitarian Coordinator
Lynn Hastings briefs the press in Geneva (13 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-coordinator-lynn-hastings-briefs-press-geneva; Emmanuel Fabian, “IDF trial of flooding Hamas tunnels with seawater proves
successful, ToI told”, The Times of
Israel (15 December 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-trial-of-flooding-hamas-tunnels-with-seawater-proves-successful-toi-told.
306 Damien Gayle
and Nina Lakhani,
“Flooding Hamas tunnels
the seawater risks
‘ruining basic life in Gaza’,
says expert”, The Guardian (23 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/23/israel-flooding-hamas-tunnels- seawater-risks-ruining-basic-life-gaza-expert.
the plan to the mythical Roman
‘salting’ of the fields of Carthage to prevent crop growth and render the
territory uninhabitable.307
28.
Experts are now predicting that more Palestinians in
Gaza may die from starvation and disease than airstrikes,308 and yet Israel is
intensifying its bombing campaign, precluding the effective delivery of
humanitarian assistance to Palestinians. It is clear that Israel is through its
actions and policies in Gaza, deliberately inflicting on Palestinians
conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.309
5. Deprivation of access to adequate
shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza
29.
The majority of the 1.9 million displaced Palestinians
in Gaza are seeking shelter in UNRWA facilities, which primarily consist of
schools and tents.310 These
locations are themselves not safe: to date — and despite Israel having been provided with the coordinates of all United Nations facilities311
—
Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children seeking shelter in UNRWA
facilities, and injured over a thousand.312
30.
The situation in UNRWA shelters was described as
follows by the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in his 7 December 2023 letter of
which the United Nations General Assembly took note in its Resolution ES-10/22
of 12 December 2023:
“Today,
as a result of Israel’s military operation, nearly 1.2 million civilians are
sheltering in UNRWA premises. The Agency has become the primary platform for humanitarian assistance to
over 2.2 million people in Gaza — a platform on the verge of collapse.
UNRWA is, as of today, still operational in Gaza, though
just barely. Our staff are still operating health centers, managing
shelters, and supporting traumatized people, some arriving carrying their dead
children. We are still distributing food, even though the corridors and
courtyards of our premises are too
crowded to walk through. Our staff take their children to work so they know
they are safe or can die together. More than 130 UNRWA staff are confirmed
killed in bombardments, most with their families; the number might rise by
the time you read this. At least 70% of UNRWA staff are displaced, and lack
food, water and adequate shelter. We are hanging on by our fingertips. If UNRWA
collapses, humanitarian assistance in Gaza will also collapse.
The humanitarian situation is now untenable. Conditions in Gaza were already appalling when I stayed overnight two weeks ago. I witnessed constant explosive munitions from sky, land and sea, and the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure.
307 Ibid.
308 Save the Children, Press Release:
Deaths by starvation and disease may top deaths
by bombs as families squeezed
into deadly “safe zones”, two months into Gaza crisis (9 December
2023), https://www.savethechildren.net/news/deaths- starvation-and-disease-may-top-deaths-bombs-families-squeezed-deadly-safe-zones-two.
309 Ibid.
310 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel - reported impact | Day 82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82; UNRWA Situation Report #56 On the Situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem (22
December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-56-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east- Jerusalem.
311 UNRWA, Gaza: UNRWA school
sheltering displaced families hit (17 October 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/gaza-unrwa-school-sheltering-displaced-families-hit.
312 UNRWA Situation Report #56 On the
Situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (22
December
2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-56-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank- including-east-Jerusalem.
This week, the Israeli military forces have instructed people to move
further South, forcing Gaza’s population into an ever-shrinking space. Shelters
are shockingly overcrowded, with high risk of epidemic illness. In these
overfull and unsanitary spaces, more than 700 people use a single toilet, women
give birth (an average of 25 per day), and people nurse open wounds. Tens of
thousands sleep in courtyards and streets. People burn plastic to stay warm.
Nearly 90 UNRWA premises, including schools, have been hit or impacted by
munitions, killing over 270 internally displaced people, many this week. In
Gaza as a whole, over 16,000 people, two thirds of whom are women and children,
are reported killed during bombardments. Large swathes of Gaza are destroyed and
uninhabitable.
The premise of UNRWA’s mandate — to provide services to Palestine Refugees
until there is a political solution — is
at great risk: without safe shelter and aid, civilians in Gaza risk death
or will be forced to Egypt and beyond. Forced displacement out of Gaza may end
prospects for the political solution
that is intrinsic to UNRWA’s mandate, with grave risks for regional peace and
security. A forced displacement beyond Palestinian land, reminiscent of the
1948 Nakba, must be prevented.
In my 35 years working in complex emergencies, I have never written such a letter —
predicting the killing of my
staff and the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfil.”313
31.
Those Palestinians with a place in UNRWA shelters are
“the lucky ones”, according to UNRWA’s Commissioner-General.314 Others attempt to find
shelter in the homes of relatives or strangers, in government facilities,
hospital courtyards, or makeshift camps, without any access to food, water or
sanitary facilities, or simply live and sleep in the streets, exposed to the elements.
UNRWA’s shelters now have on average 486 people using a single toilet,315 while other locations where
people are seeking to shelter often have no toilets at all.316 Palestinians are unable to
maintain personal hygiene, with menstruating girls and women being particularly
impacted.317 The World
Health Organization estimates that there is on average “only one shower for
every 4500 people”.318 Newborns in
shelters are reportedly dying from avoidable causes due to the absence of adequate sanitation, food, water and
medical care.319
32. Since the Commissioner-General of UNRWA wrote to the President of the United Nations General Assembly on 7 December 2023, advising that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was already “untenable”,320 over one million Palestinians have continued to be forced by Israeli military ‘orders’ into the Rafah Governorate near the Egyptian border. The area has become the “epicentre of displacement”, with an estimated “fourfold” increase in its population density, thought to now exceed
313 UNRWA, Letter from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe
Lazzarini to the UN General
Assembly President Mr. Dennis Francis (7 December 2023),
https://www.unrwa.org/resources/un-unrwa/letter-unrwa-commissioner-general- philippe-lazzarini-un-general-assembly
(emphasis added).
314 UN News,
‘Desperate, hungry, terrified': Gazans
stopping aid trucks
in search of food (14
December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144807.
315 UNRWA, UNRWA Situation Report #54 on the situation
in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
(18 December
2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-54-situation-gaza-strip-and-west- bank-including-east-Jerusalem.
316 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #69 (14 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-69 .
317 United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA), UNFPA Palestine Situation
Report Issue 4 (11 December
2023), https://palestine.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/unfpa_situation_report_4_december_11.pdf.
318 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger
and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza. 319 Oxfam, Press Release: Babies dying from preventable
causes in besieged Gaza - Oxfam (23 November 2023), https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/babies-dying-preventable-causes-besieged-gaza-oxfam.
320 UNRWA, Letter from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe
Lazzarini to the UN General
Assembly President Mr. Dennis Francis (7 December 2023),
https://www.unrwa.org/resources/un-unrwa/letter-unrwa-commissioner-general- philippe-lazzarini-un-general-assembly.
12,000 people per square kilometre.321 OCHA is warning there is “no empty space left
for people to shelter, not even in the streets and other open areas”.322 Al-Mawasi — a sandy,
barren strip of approximately 14 square kilometres along the Mediterranean Sea,
without aid provisions, water, food or
sanitation — the so-called ‘safe zone’ to which Israel has told Palestinians in Gaza to flee, is anything but safe. As
UNRWA has underscored “unilaterally-declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all.
Nowhere in Gaza is safe”.323 The Head of Humanitarian Policy at Save the
Children International has warned: “People
are in overcrowded shelters in makeshift tents. There is no access to clean
water, there are crumbling sanitation facilities. We’ve heard of children starving in the so-called
‘safe zone’ of Al- Mawasi.”324
33.
Throughout Gaza, there are acute shortages in warm
clothes, bedding, blankets and critical non- food items, with people heavily
dependent on salvaged wood and waste for cooking and warmth, raising the risk
of respiratory diseases.325 There is
also an acute shortage of clean water, severely impacting not just the ability
to hydrate, but to wash, clean and cook.326 The siege and infrastructure damage from bombing
continue to prevent adequate water treatment and distribution, and sewage
management, with flooding exponentially increasing the risks of the spread of
infectious diseases amongst displaced Palestinians.327 On 20 December
2023, the Director General of the World Health Organization warned that “Gaza
is already experiencing soaring rates of infectious disease outbreaks.
Diarrhoea cases among children aged under 5 are 25 times what they were before
the conflict. Such illnesses can be lethal for malnourished children, more so
in the absence of functioning health services”.328 Sewage is flowing into the streets where Palestinians
are living, as it can no longer be managed.329 “Everywhere you look, is congested with makeshift
shelters. Everywhere you go, people are desperate, hungry and terrified.”330 These conditions — deliberately
inflicted by Israel — are calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinian group in Gaza.
6. Deprivation of adequate
medical assistance to Palestinians in Gaza
321 UNRWA Situation Report #56 On the Situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (22 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-56-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank- including-east-Jerusalem; and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#75 (21 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-75.
322 UN News, Gaza humanitarian disaster
heralds ‘breakdown’ of society (8 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144547.
323 Julian Borger and Ruth Michaelson, “IDF instructions on Gaza refuge zones
cruel ‘mirage’, say aid agencies”, The Guardian (7 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/07/idf-israel-gaza-refuge-zones-cruel-mirage- say-aid-agencies .
324 Ibid.
325 ICRC, Israel and the occupied
territories: The ICRC urges protection for Gaza civilians evacuating and
staying behind (12 November 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-icrc-urges-protection-gaza-civilians- evacuating-and-staying; and UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #71 (16 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-71 .
326 WFP, Gaza Food Security Assessment (6 December 2023),
https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP- 0000154766/download/.
327 UN News, Barely a drop of safe
water to drink in Gaza, UN aid agency warns (20 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144972; and UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #76
(22 December 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and- israel-flash-update-76-enarhe.
328 Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization,
@DrTedros, Tweet (7:05 pm,
December 20, 2023), https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1737549701728092481.
329 UN News, Gaza: Lack of fuel threatening to shut down entire humanitarian operation (16 November
2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143672.
330 UN News,
Barely a drop of safe water
to drink in Gaza, UN aid agency
warns (20 December
2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144972.
34.
Almost above all else, Israel’s military assault on
Gaza has been an attack on Gaza’s medical healthcare system, indispensable to
the life and survival of the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel “has declared
an ‘unrelenting war’ on the health system in Gaza”,
as observed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the
enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. In a statement issued on 7 December
2023, the United Nations expert noted
that “[t]he healthcare infrastructure in the Gaza strip has been
completely obliterated” and that “[w]e bear witness to a shameful war on
healthcare workers”. She warned that “[w]e are in the darkest time for the
right to health in our lifetimes” and that “[w]e have descended into depths
from which we must quickly emerge”.331
35.
In a letter to the
United Nations Security Council on 4 December 2023, the International
President of Médecins Sans Frontières wrote:332
“Israel has shown a blatant and total
disregard for the protection of Gaza’s medical facilities. We are watching
as hospitals are turned into morgues and
ruins. These supposedly protected facilities are being bombed, are being
shot at by tanks and guns, encircled and raided, killing patients and medical
staff. The World Health Organization has documented 203 attacks on health care
that have led to at least 22 fatalities and 59 injuries of health workers on
duty. Medical staff, including our own, are utterly exhausted and in despair.
They have had to amputate limbs from
children suffering from severe burns without anaesthesia or sterilised
surgical tools. Due to forcible evacuations by Israeli soldiers, some doctors
have had to leave patients behind after facing the unimaginable choice between
their lives or those of their patients. There is no justification for the
atrocious attacks on healthcare…
Four of our MSF staff have been killed; many more have lost family
members. Numerous other colleagues have been injured. Other humanitarian
organisations have reported dozens of their staff have been killed…
Northern Gaza is being erased
from the map. The health system
has collapsed… Our emergency
team in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, has reported massive influxes of wounded
after intense bombing. Last Saturday, 60 dead and 213 injured people arrived at
the emergency room of Al- Aqsa
hospital. These strikes are also hitting overcrowded, squalid refugee camps,
where people are barely surviving on the sparse humanitarian aid available. If
the bombs do not get them, infectious diseases and starvation will…
“We did what we could. Remember us.” These are the words our Dr Mahmoud
Abu Nujaila, who has since been killed in a hospital strike, wrote on a Gaza
hospital whiteboard normally used for planning surgeries. When the guns fall
silent and the true scale of devastation is revealed, will the Council and its
members be able to say the same?”
36. Since early December 2023, Israeli army attacks on Palestinian hospitals have only increased. The Israeli army has continued to attack and besiege hospitals and healthcare centres; to deprive them of electricity and fuel crucial to maintain effective functioning and equipment; to obstruct them from receiving medical supplies, food and water; to force their evacuations and closure; and effectively to destroy them. The North of Gaza, without any functioning hospital for a week, has only four severely challenged partially functioning hospitals available now.333 Israel has transformed Palestinian hospitals
331 UN OHCHR, Gaza: UN expert condemns
‘unrelenting war’ on health system amid airstrikes on hospitals and health workers (7 December 2023) https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/gaza-un-expert-condemns-unrelenting-war- health-system-amid-airstrikes.
332 Médecins Sans Frontières ('MSF'), Gaza:
“It must all stop now”, Letter to UN Security Council (4 December 2023), https://www.msf.org/letter-gaza-un-security-council.
333 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#78 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
in Gaza from places of healing into “death zone[s]”,334 and scenes of “bloodbath”,335 “death, devastation and
despair”.336 Many
hospitals have now become mere “place[s] where people are waiting to die”.337 The World Health
Organisation describes the situation as “unconscionable” and “beyond belief”.338
37.
There have now been more than 238 attacks on
‘healthcare’ in Gaza, in which over 61 hospitals and other healthcare
facilities have been damaged or destroyed.339 Only 13 out of 36 hospitals and 18 out of 72 healthcare centres are still even
functioning — some of them barely — despite the
overwhelming number of people injured in Israeli attacks.340 The Israeli army has
targeted hospital generators, hospital solar panels,341 and other life-saving
equipment, such as oxygen stations and water tanks.342 It has also targeted
ambulances, medical convoys and first responders.343 311 health workers have been killed (on average four
killed per day),344 including
at least 22 health workers killed on duty.345 Those killed include some of
Gaza’s most experienced and skilled doctors including Dr Hani Al Haitham, Head of the Emergency Section at
Al Shifa hospital, killed with his wife, Dr Sameera Ghirafi, and their children;346 Dr Mohammad Dabbour, Head of
Pathology at Al Shifa Hospital, reportedly killed with his son and father while
attempting to flee Gaza City;347 Dr Medhat
Saidam, plastic reconstructive burn surgeon at Al Shifa Hospital and Dr Hammam
Alloh, nephrologist at Al Shifa Hospital were killed in attacks on their family
homes.348 Interviewed
shortly before his death, Dr Alloh responded as follows when asked why he was
not fleeing the North to the South: “If I go who would treat my patients? We
are not animals, we have the right to receive proper health care. You think I
went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years
so I think only about my life and not my patients?”.349
The systematic destruction of Palestinian hospitals
and the killing of
334 WHO, WHO leads very high-risk joint
humanitarian mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (18 November 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/18-11-2023-who-leads-very-high-risk-joint-humanitarian-mission-to-al-shifa-hospital-in- gaza.
335 UN News,
UN workers delivering aid to Gaza hospital describe
‘bloodbath’ in overflowing emergency department (16 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144877.
336 WHO, WHO appalled by latest attack
on Indonesian Hospital in Gaza (20 November 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/media/news/who-appalled-by-latest-attack-on-indonesian-hospital-in-gaza.html.
337 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’
in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
'catastrophic' hunger
levels (21 December 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017. 338 UN News, ‘Ten weeks of hell’ for
children in Gaza: UNICEF (19 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144927.
339 WHO, oPt
Emergency Situation Update Issue 17 (14 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-
_issue_17_for_review.pdf?ua=1.
340 Ibid.
341 The organisation Forensic Architecture has compiled an analysis of the various
attacks on Gaza’s hospitals: Forensic Architecture, Destruction of Medical Infrastructure in
Gaza (20 December 2023), https://forensic- architecture.org/investigation/destruction-of-medical-infrastructure-in-gaza.
342 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#37 (12 November
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-37.
343 MSF, MSF convoy attack in Gaza: All
elements point to Israeli army responsibility (1 December 2023), https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/msf-convoy-attack-gaza-all-elements-point-israeli-army-responsibility ; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip
and Israel | Flash Update #28 (3 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-28.
344 UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – Reported Impact
| Day #70 (15 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-70.
345 WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update, issue 14 (23
November 2023),
https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/oPt_Emergency_Situation_Update_-_NOV24.pdf?ua=1.
346 Asmahan Qarjouli,
“Israel ‘brutally murdered’
Al-Shifa emergency dept chief in Gaza”, Doha News (19 December
2023), https://dohanews.co/israel-brutally-murdered-al-shifa-emergency-dept-chief-in-gaza/.
347 Weronika Strzyżyńska and Harriet Sherwood, “Doctors, poets, families,
babies: victims of Israel’s war on Gaza”,
The Guardian (23 October 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/doctors-poets-families-babies-victims-of- israels-war-on-gaza.
348 Vanessa Romo, “Doctors are among the many dead in Gaza. These are their stories”,
NPR (16 November 2023), https://www.npr.org/2023/11/16/1213307710/gaza-doctors-al-shifa-hospital.
349 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#72 (18 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-72.
specialist Palestinian doctors is not only impacting the care of
Palestinians in Gaza at present, it is also undermining the prospect of a
future Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, destroying its capacity to
rebuild and to care effectively for the Palestinian people in Gaza.
38.
At least 570 Palestinians have been killed at
hospitals and healthcare centres in Gaza and a further 746 have been injured.350 They include patients and
internally displaced Palestinians, who vainly sought sanctuary on or near hospital grounds, killed by
Israeli strikes or snipers.351 Palestinian
mothers have been killed in maternity hospitals, and Palestinian children in
children’s hospitals.352 Even those
tending to and counting the dead –– like Saeed Al Shorbaji, Director of Nasser
Hospital’s mortuary –– have themselves been killed.353 Some have been victims of
Israeli attacks multiple times over, like 12- year old Dina Abu Mohsen ––
interviewed by UNICEF after losing her parents, two siblings and her leg in an Israeli strike on her home –– she was then killed herself when the
Israeli army shelled the hospital
where she was being treated.354
350 WHO, oPt Emergency
Situation Update Issue 17 (14
December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-
_issue_17_for_review.pdf?ua=1.
351 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #38 (13 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-38; and UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #72 (18 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel- flash-update-72.
352 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #55 (30 November 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-55.; UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel
| Flash Update
#66 (11 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-66.
353 Bassam Massou
and Maggie Fick, “Gaza death toll: why counting the dead has become a daily struggle”, Reuters (21 December 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/.
354 UNICEF, @UNICEF, Tweet (10:28 pm, December 17,
2023),
https://twitter.com/UNICEF/status/1736876099890565478.
355 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #42 (17 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-42.; UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel
| Flash Update #44 (19
November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-44.
356 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #55 (30 November 2023) https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-55; Human Rights Watch (HRW),
“Birth and Death Intertwined in Gaza Strip: Maternity Care Facilities
Gravely Affected by Strikes, Blockade (1 December 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/01/birth-and-death-intertwined-gaza-strip.
357 See e.g., the
Al Yaman Al Saeed Hospital
in Jabalia refugee
camp: UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash
Update #65 (10
December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-65. 358 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #40 (15
November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40.
359 Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center
for Human Rights,
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (‘PCHR’), Palestinian Human Rights
Organisations Condemn the Serious Israeli Violations at Kamal Adwan Hospital in
Northern Gaza (21 December 2023), https://alhaq.org/advocacy/22388.html.
Hospital,
stated, “[t]he soldiers dug up the graves this morning and dragged the bodies
with bulldozers, then crushed the bodies with the bulldozers … I have never
seen such a thing before”.360
40.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES10/21 of
27 October 2023 –– calling for the “respect
and protection … of all civilian and humanitarian facilities, including
hospitals and other medical facilities … as well as all of humanitarian and
medical personnel”361 –– has been
resolutely ignored. Doctors and medics have continued not only to be killed but
also to be rounded up and disappeared by the Israeli authorities.362 They include the General
Director of Al Shifa and his staff, seized and held incommunicado since 23
November 2023.363
41.
Those wounded by Israel in Gaza are being deprived of
life-saving medical care:364 Gaza’s
healthcare system –– already crippled by years of blockade and prior attacks by Israel –– is unable to cope
with the sheer scale of the injuries, now at 55,243 injured including at least
8,663 children.365 There are reports of severely
injured patients walking for miles trying to find help. UNICEF highlighted the
case of a boy from the North “whose leg had been blown off in the violence”, who “had spent ‘three or
four days’ trying to reach the south, delayed by checkpoints … The smell [of
decomposition] was clear … and that boy had shrapnel all over. Potentially, he
was blind and had burns to 50 per cent of his body”.366 OCHA identified the case of
a woman with shrapnel injuries in her abdomen, who had walked from the North to
the South pressing a towel against her wounds.367 Palestinians have had to evacuate their sick, disabled
and wounded in a forced march from the North to the South –– and then again
from the South onwards –– dragging hospital beds behind cars, pushing
wheelchairs, raising them on makeshift stretchers, or simply carrying them in
their arms.368
42.
Those hospitals which are still functioning are described as scenes
from a “horror movie”.369
The critical shortages of staff
and supplies –– including anaesthetics, analgesics, medicine and
360 Abeer Salman and Kareem Khadder, “Doctors accuse Israeli troops of
desecrating bodies and shooting civilians at hospital Israel says was Hamas
‘command center’”, CNN (23 December
2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/23/middleeast/kamal-adwan-hospital-gaza-israel-abuse-allegations-intl-
cmd/index.html.
362 WHO, WHO calls for protection of
humanitarian space in Gaza following serious incidents in high-risk mission to
transfer patients, deliver
health supplies (12
December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/12-12-2023-who-calls-for- protection-of-humanitarian-space-in-gaza-following-serious-incidents-in-high-risk-mission-to-transfer-patients--deliver- health-supplies.
363 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #48 (23 November 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-48.
364 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’
in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
'catastrophic'
hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
365 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel – Reported Impact | Day #70 (15 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-70; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel
– reported impact
| Day #82 (27 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza- strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82 .
366 UN News, Gaza doctors ‘terrified’ of deadly disease
outbreak as aid teams race to deliver (28 November 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1144032.
367 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#45 (20 November
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-45.
368 “Panic as
Gaza’s al-Shifa evacuates, Israel army denies ordering it to do so”, Al Jazeera (18 November 2023),
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/18/israel-gives-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-one-hour-to-evacuate.
369 UN Web TV, UNICEF, WHO, OHCHR, UNHCR - Press Briefing: Rob Holand, Emergency
Coordinator WHO (1 December 2023), https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1r/k1ro1d247a
(at 22:15).
disinfectants370 ––
have led not only to otherwise unnecessary amputations of limbs,371 but also to amputations without anaesthesia, often undertaken by
flashlight.372 Pregnant
women are also being subjected to caesareans without anaesthetic.373 Patients are being treated
on dirty floors covered with blood, with family members having to stand holding
saline bags, where saline is even available.374 There are insufficient staff and resources for
adequate wound or post-operative wound care:375 unclean
wounds –– often infested with worms and flies –– rapidly become infected,
necrotic or gangrenous.376 Patients
plead for food and water.377 Even
basic pain-management treatment is often unavailable, and patients are at risk
of dying from treatable conditions.378 One
doctor described having to do procedures without anaesthetic, he said:
“I was forced to do dressing changes on massive wounds, excruciatingly
painful wounds. There was a girl with just her whole body covered in shrapnel.
She was nine. I ended up having to change and clean these wounds with no
anaesthetic and no analgesic. I managed to find some intravenous paracetamol to
give her … her Dad was crying, I was crying, and the poor child was screaming…”.379
43.
In addition to the war wounded, there are hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who still need routine medical care for
conditions such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease or diabetes.380 Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are also in need of urgent care for kidney disease and
cancer, and an estimated 130 premature babies are dependent on incubators for
survival at any given time.381 Many of
them are now unable to receive medical assistance. UNICEF warns that “[w]omen,
children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden of the escalation of hostilities
370 Jason Burke, “‘We are
overwhelmed: southern Gaza’s exhausted
doctors forced to leave children die”, The
Guardian (24 November 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/we-are-overwhelmed-southern-gazas-exhausted-doctors- forced-to-leave-children-to-die.
371 Claire Gillbody-Dickerson, “Doctors
in Gaza forced to amputate
limbs because they lack means
to treat injuries”, iNews (30
October 2023), https://inews.co.uk/news/world/doctors-gaza-forced-amputate-limbs-hospitals-israel-evacuate-2720777.
372 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #32 (7 November 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-32. 373 UN News, Interview: 5,500 women in Gaza set to give
birth ‘in race against death’ (7 November 2023), https://news.un.org/en/interview/2023/11/1143327.
374 UN News, UN workers delivering aid
to Gaza hospital describe ‘bloodbath’ in overflowing emergency department (16
December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144877.; Rajini
Vaidyanathan, “WHO says
Al-Shifa ‘looked almost like a battlefield hospital’”, BBC (17
December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67732895.
375 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients
‘waiting to die’ in northern
Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
376 Lilia
Sebouai, “‘Bodies scratched, bleeding and full of flies’: Infections plague
Gaza’s hospitals”, The Telegraph (6
November 2023),
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/hospital-infections-gaza-medical-supplies-clean-water/; Dr. Hafez Abukhoussa, “The Horrors
I’ve Seen Treating
Patients at Gaza’s Remaining
Hospitals”, Time Magazine
(12 December 2023), https://time.com/6358269/horrors-treating-patients-khan-younis-gaza/.
377 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’
in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
'catastrophic'
hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
378 WHO, WHO delivers
health supplies to Al-Shifa Hospital,
appeals for continued access to address
urgent needs in north
Gaza (17 December
2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/17-12-2023-who-delivers-health-supplies-to-al-shifa-hospital-- appeals-for-continued-access-to-address-urgent-needs-in-north-gaza; WHO, WHO
Director-General's remarks at the Informal Plenary Meeting of the United
Nations General Assembly (17 November 2023), https://www.who.int/director- general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-remarks-at-the-informal-plenary-meeting-of-the-united-nations-general-
assembly 17-november-2023.
379 Interview with Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Channel 4 News, 27 November 2023:
“‘We were having to do procedures without anaesthetic’, says Gaza war surgeon”, Channel 4 (27 November
2023), https://www.channel4.com/news/we-were- having-to-do-procedures-without-anaesthetic-says-gaza-war-surgeon.
380 WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update
Issue 16 (7 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/oPt_Emergency_Situation_Update_-_DEC7b.pdf. 381 Ibid.
in the occupied Palestinian territory, both as casualties and in reduced
access to health services”.382 Older
persons and persons with disabilities lack essential medication, and are at
higher risk of communicable diseases, malnutrition and death.383
Pregnant women are also particularly vulnerable.384
44.
Experts are beginning to warn that the numbers of
Palestinians dying as a result of disease and hunger, could already be outstripping violent deaths
caused by Israeli army assaults.385 There have
already been over 360,000 documented cases of
communicable diseases reported in UNRWA shelters alone, brought on or
exacerbated by unsanitary conditions, hunger and lack of clean water, with the
actual numbers believed to be considerably higher.386 As stated by the World
Health Organization:
“Gaza is already experiencing soaring rates of infectious diseases. Over
100 000 cases of diarrhoea have been reported since mid-October. Half of these
are among young children under the age of 5 years, case numbers that are 25
times what was reported before the conflict.
Over 150 000 cases of upper respiratory infection, and numerous cases of
meningitis, skin rashes, scabies, lice and chickenpox have been reported.
Hepatitis is also suspected as many people present with the tell-tale signs of
jaundice.
While a
healthy body can more easily fight off these diseases, a wasted and weakened
body
will struggle.
Hunger weakens the body’s defences and opens the door to disease.
Malnutrition increases the risk of children dying from illnesses like
diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles, especially in a setting where they lack
access to life-saving health services.
Even if the
child survives, wasting can have life-long impacts as it stunts growth and
impairs
cognitive
development…
The
people of Gaza, who have already suffered enough, now face death from
starvation and diseases that could be
easily treated with a functioning health system. This must stop. Food and
other aid must flow in far greater amounts. WHO reiterates its call for an
immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”387
45. Experts assess that the death toll from disease and hunger “could be multiples of that from fighting and air strikes”.388 Israeli is through its relentless attacks on the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza is deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.389 Writing in the British medical journal, The Lancet, a group of medics “highlight the
382 UNICEF, Joint Statement by UNICEF, UNDP,
UNFPA, WFP and WHO on Humanitarian Supplies
Crossing into Gaza (4 November 2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/joint-statement-by-unicef-undp-unfpa-wfp-and-who-on- humanitarian-supplies-crossing-into-gaza/.
383 HRW, Gaza: Israeli Attacks,
Blockade Devastating for People with Disabilities (1 November 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/01/gaza-israeli-attacks-blockade-devastating-people-disabilities; UN OHCHR, Occupied Palestinian
territory and Israel: UN experts call for permanent ceasefire to protect rights
and futures of women and girls (14 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/occupied-palestinian-territory-and-israel-un-experts- call-permanent.
384 See
further Section 8 infra.
385 See e.g., Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, @DrTedros, Tweet
(6:26 am, November
29, 2023), https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1729748696890245146; UN News, ‘Ten weeks
of hell’ for children in Gaza:
UNICEF (19 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144927.
386 UNICEF, State of Palestine
Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report Issue No. 10, 7-13 December (14
December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/media/150141/file/SoP-Humanitarian-SitRep-14-December-2023.pdf.; WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update Issue
16 (7 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/oPt_Emergency_Situation_Update_-_DEC7b.pdf.
387 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger
and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza.
388 Henry Mance, “UN aid chief Martin
Griffiths: ‘the war in Gaza isn’t halfway
through’”, Financial
Times (18 December 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/01b592be-47c7-4a20-9bbd-621aa40f7640.
389 Ibid.
health dimensions of violence
resulting from the ongoing siege and attacks against Palestinians” rightly
warning of a “grave risk of
genocide against the Palestinian people”.390
7. Destruction of
Palestinian life in Gaza
46.
On 16 November 2023, 15 United Nations Special
Rapporteurs and 21 members of United Nations Working Groups, warning of a
“genocide in the making” in Gaza, observed that the level of destruction
that had by then taken place of “housing units, as well as hospitals, schools,
mosques, bakeries, water pipes, sewage and electricity networks . . . threatens
to make the continuation of Palestinian life in Gaza impossible”.391 As they note, Israel has in
its bombing campaign against Gaza used “powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal
death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.”392 Israel
has destroyed not only individual
homes, houses, and whole apartment blocks; it has destroyed entire
streets, and entire neighbourhoods:
Shuja'iyya, a suburb of Gaza City, once home to approximately 110,000
Palestinians, appears to
now be a vast wasteland, entirely flattened
as far as the eye can see.393 Its shops, schools, vibrant market
place, family homes, doctors clinics, historic
streets and Ibn Uthman Mosque,
and everything that once sustained Palestinian life there has been damaged
or destroyed, along with so many of its people.394 Other areas in Gaza appear to have
experienced a similar level
of destruction, including Beit Hanoun,395 Beit Lahia,396 Gaza Old City,397
Al Rimal,398
and Nuseirat refugee camp in the South.399
47.
Across Gaza, Israel has targeted
the infrastructure and foundations
of Palestinian life, deliberately creating conditions of
life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinian
people. In addition to the attacks previously
cited on homes, neighbourhoods, hospitals, water systems, agricultural lands, bakeries and mills, Israel has also targeted the foundational civil
390 Alix Faddoul,
Geordan Shannon, Khudejha
Ashgar, Yamina Boukari,
James Smith and Amy Neilson,
“The health dimensions of
violence in Palestine: a call to prevent genocide”, The Lancet (18 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02751-4/fulltext.
391 UN OHCHR,
Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent
genocide against the Palestinian people
(16 November 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent- genocide-against.
392 UN OHCHR,
Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent
genocide against the Palestinian people
(16 November 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent- genocide-against (emphasis added).
393 “The documentation that dropped Gazans'
jaws: the Shuja'iyya neighbourhood was completely wiped out: Watch”,
JDN (20 December 2023), https://www.jdn.co.il/video/2103783/; Israeli
soldier reports “Shujaiya neighbourhood gone”: Bazz News, @1717Bazz, Tweet (2:50 pm,
December 20, 2023), https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1737485648158748674,
(translation by Middle East Eye, @MiddleEastEye (8:00am, December 21, 2023), https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1737744722649546979).
394 UN OCHA, Hostilities
in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#74 (20 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-74.
395 UN OCHA, Before and after:
satellite images of Gaza showing
damage caused in hostilities (9
November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/and-after-satellite-images-gaza-showing-damage-caused-hostilities.
396 Dominic Bailey,
Erwan Rivault, Daniele
Palumbo, “Nearly 100,000
Gaza buildings may be damaged,
satellite images show”, BBC News (1 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872.
397 UN OCHA, Before and after:
satellite images of Gaza showing
damage caused in hostilities (9
November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/and-after-satellite-images-gaza-showing-damage-caused-hostilities.
398 Al-Haq,
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Destruction of al-Rimal
Neighborhood in Gaza City, an
Attack on the Economic Existence of a National Group (19 October 2023), https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/21943.html; “How Israeli Airstrikes Destroyed
a Busy Neighbourhood in Gaza”,
The Financial Times (24
October 2023), https://ig.ft.com/gaza-damage/.
399 Dominic Bailey,
Erwan Rivault, Daniele
Palumbo, “Nearly 100,000
Gaza buildings may be damaged,
satellite images show”, BBC News (1 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872.
system in Gaza. Israel
has targeted the Palace of
Justice,400 — the main
Palestinian court building in Gaza — housing the Palestinian Supreme Court, the
Constitutional Court, the Court of Appeal, the Court of First Instance, the
Administrative Court and the Magistrates’ Court, as well as an archive of court records and other historical
files. Israel has also significantly damaged the
Palestinian Legislative Council complex.401 It has targeted
Gaza City’s Central Archive building, containing
thousands of historical documents and
national records dating back over
100 years, and forming an essential archive of Palestinian
history, as well as more
modern records for Gaza City’s urban development.402
48.
Israel has left Gaza City’s main public library in
ruins.403 It has also
damaged or destroyed countless bookshops, publishing houses, libraries,404 and hundreds of educational
facilities.405 Israel has
targeted every one of Gaza’s four universities — including the Islamic
University of Gaza, the oldest higher education institution in the territory,
which has trained generations of doctors and engineers, amongst others,406 — destroying campuses for
the education of future generations of Palestinians in Gaza. Alongside so many
others, Israel has killed leading Palestinian academics, including: Professor
Sufian Tayeh, the President of the Islamic University — an award-winning
physicist and UNESCO Chair of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Sciences in
Palestine — who died, alongside his family,
in an airstrike; Dr Ahmed Hamdi Abo Absa, Dean of the Software Engineering Department at the University of Palestine, reportedly shot dead by Israeli soldiers
as he walked away, having
been released from three days
of enforced disappearance; and Professor Muhammad Eid Shabir, Professor of Immunology and Virology, and former
President of the Islamic University of Gaza, and Professor Refaat Alareer, poet
and Professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at the Islamic
University of Gaza, were both killed by Israel with members of their families.
Professor Alareer was a co-founder of ‘We are Not Numbers’, a Palestinian youth
project seeking to tell the stories behind otherwise impersonal accounts of
Palestinians — and Palestinian deaths — in the
news.407
49.
Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centres of
Palestinian learning and culture, including: the Al Zafar Dmari Mosque and
Center for Manuscripts and Ancient Documents;408 the Orthodox Cultural Centre; the Al Qarara Cultural
Museum; the Gaza Centre for Culture and Arts; the Arab Social Cultural Centre;
the Hakawi Society
for Culture and Arts; and the Rafah Museum
— Gaza's newly opened museum
of Palestinian heritage, housing hundreds of cultural and archaeological
artefacts. Israel’s attacks have destroyed Gaza’s ancient history: eight sites
have been damaged or
400 ,Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre,
2023 Hostilities And Escalating Violence In The OPT | Account of Events (13 December 2023), https://www.diakonia.se/ihl/news/2023-hostilities-in-gaza-and-israel-factual-account-of- events/.
401 Josh Holder, “Gaza After Nine Weeks of War”, The New York Times (12 December 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/12/world/middleeast/gaza-strip-satellite-images-israel-invasion.html.
402 International
Council on Archives, Statement of the
International Council on Archives on the Destruction of the Central
Archives of the Municipality of Gaza (13 December
2023), https://www.ica.org/en/statement-of-the-international-council-on- archives-on-the-destruction-of-the-central-archives-of-the.
403 Mohamad El Chamaa, “Gazans
mourn loss of their libraries: Cultural beacons and communal spaces”
The Washington Post (1 December
2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/30/gaza-library-palestinian-culture/.
404 Laila
Hussein Moustafa, “Opinion: When libraries like Gaza’s are destroyed, what’s
lost is far more than books”, Los
Angeles Times (12
December 2023), https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-12/gaza-library-bombing.
405 UNICEF, UNICEF in the State
of Palestine Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report
No. 10 (14 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/media/150141/file/SoP-Humanitarian-SitRep-14-December-2023.pdf.
406 Brendan O’Malley, Wagdy Sawahel, “Israel bombs Gaza
university, alleging use by military”, University
World News
(12 October 2023), https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20231012162739531.
407 We Are Not Numbers,
Tributes to Refaat Alareer,
killed Dec. 9, 2023 (18
December 2023), https://wearenotnumbers.org/tributes-to-refaat-alareer-killed-dec-9-2023/.
408 ANSCH, Report on the Impact of the
Recent War in 2023 on the Cultural Heritage in Gaza Strip – Palestine (7 November
2023) https://www.heritageforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Report-of-the-effects-of-the-last-war-of- 2023-on-the-cultural-heritage-in-Gaza-Strip-Palestine-english.pdf.
destroyed, including the ancient port of Gaza (known as ‘Anthedon
Harbour’ or ‘Al Balakhiya’) — the archaeological site of a 2,000-year-old Roman
cemetery listed on both the Islamic Heritage List and the tentative UNESCO
World Heritage List.409 Israel
has also destroyed Gaza City’s ‘Old City’, including its 146-year-old historic
houses, mosques, churches, markets and schools. It has also destroyed Gaza’s
more recent history of more hopeful times, including the Rashad al-Shawa
Cultural Center — site of a historic meeting between United States President
Bill Clinton and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat 25 years ago — and an
important cultural hub for Palestinians in Gaza, with its theatre, library and
event space.410 And Israel
is destroying Gaza’s future academic and cultural potential: alongside the 352 Palestinian schools it has damaged
or destroyed,411 the 4,037
students and 209 teachers and educational staff it has killed,
alongside the other 7,259 students
and 619 teachers it has injured.412
50.
Israel has damaged or destroyed an estimated 318
Muslim and Christian religious sites, demolishing the places where Palestinians
have worshipped for generations.413 These include the Great Omari Mosque, originally a fifth century Byzantine church, an
iconic landmark of Gaza’s history, architecture and cultural heritage, and a place of worship
by Christians and Muslims for over 1,000 years.414 Israeli
shelling has also damaged the Church of Saint Porphyrius,
founded in 425 AD and believed to be the third oldest church in the world — alongside
two other churches that
have sustained direct Israeli
fire.415 Gaza’s Christians themselves have
been targeted
and killed by Israel in
the very
church compounds where they sought shelter.416
51. Along with its destruction of the physical monuments to the history and heritage of the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has sought to destroy the very Palestinian people who form and create that heritage: Gaza’s celebrated journalists, its teachers, intellectuals and public figures, its doctors and nurses, its film-makers, writers and singers, the directors and deans of its universities, the heads of its hospitals, its eminent scientists, linguists, playwrights, novelists, artists and musicians. Israel has killed and is killing Palestinian story-tellers and poets, Palestinian farmers and fishermen, alongside Gaza’s local legends: pastry chef Masoud Muhammad al-Qatati, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his house on 3 November 2023, whose shop’s motto ‘let the poor eat’ — and reputation for giving away the popular Palestinian treat ‘knafeh’ to indigent customers — earned him the nickname ‘Father of the Poor’; 84- year-old Elham Farah, from one of Palestine’s oldest Christian families — a reputed accordionist and music teacher, known as ‘Mother Orange’ to generations of Palestinian music students for her shock of red hair,417 — shot dead by an Israeli sniper outside the Holy Family Church in Gaza City when she
409 UNESCO, Anthedon Harbour (2 April 2012), https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5719/.
410 “Erasing History:
The Destruction of Gaza's Cultural
Heritage by Israel's
War Machine”, LBC International (8 December
2023), https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/news-bulletin-reports/740070/erasing-history-the-destruction-of-gazas-cultural- heritage-by-israels/en.
411 UNICEF, UNICEF in the State
of Palestine Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report
No. 10 (14 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/media/150141/file/SoP-Humanitarian-SitRep-14-December-2023.pdf.
412 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
413 Palestine Red Crescent Society, Response
Report as of Saturday, October 7th 2023, 6:00 PM Until Sunday, December 24th 2023,
24:00 AM (24
December 2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestine-red-crescent-
society-response-report-saturday-october-7th-2023-600-pm-until-sunday-december-24th-2023-2400-am-enar.
414 “Images show major damage
to Gaza’s oldest
mosque”, BBC News (8
December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67664853.
415 “Photos show Gaza's Church of Saint
Porphyrius, one of the oldest
churches in the world, after the complex
was damaged by Israeli
airstrikes”, Business Insider (24
October 2023), https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-gaza-war-church- airstrikes-damage-2023-10.
416 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza
Strip and Israel | Flash Update #72 (18 December 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-72. 417
“84-year-old Elham Farah: Accordionist, aunt and Gaza's
first ever music teacher killed
by Israeli sniper”,
The New Arab (7
December 2023), https://www.newarab.com/features/gazas-first-music-teacher-elham-farah-killed-sniper.
returned home for warm clothes, and was left to bleed to death;418 and Al-Shaima Saidam, the
student with the highest final high school exam grades in the whole of
Palestine, killed with multiple members of her family in a strike on Al
Nuseirat refugee camp.419 Just
as Israel is destroying the official memory and records of Palestinians in Gaza
through its destruction of Gaza’s archives and landmarks, it is obliterating
Palestinian personal lives and private memories, histories and futures, through
bombing and bulldozing graveyards,420 destroying family records
and photographs, wiping out entire multi- generational families,421 and killing, maiming and
traumatising a generation of children.422 As
a Palestinian man, in a video by UNRWA, succinctly sums up: “These are all our
memories, our entire lives . . . Now it’s all gone; everything has turned into ashes.”423
52.
The Israeli army — erecting the Israeli flag over the
wreckage of devastated Palestinian homes, towns
and cities, including in Gaza City’s
Palestine Square itself,424 and spurred on by calls from within
the Israeli government and without
to ‘flatten Gaza’ and re-establish
Israeli settlements on the rubble of Palestinian
homes,425 — is destroying the very fabric and basis of Palestinian life in Gaza. Israel is
thereby deliberately inflicting on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of
life calculated to bring about its destruction.
8. Imposing measures intended
to prevent Palestinian births
53. As set out above, Israel’s actions are impacting Palestinian women and children in Gaza especially severely, with 70 per cent of those killed estimated to be women and children. Two mothers are estimated to be killed every hour in Gaza. Over 7,729 children were estimated to have been killed by 11 December 2023 alone,426 and at least 4,700 other women and children are reported missing,
418 Nadda Osman,
“Israel-Palestine war: The elderly Christian music teacher killed
by Israeli soldiers
in Gaza”, Middle East Eye
(14 November 2023), https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-christian-music-teacher-killed-gaza.
419 Nader Durgham,
“Israel-Palestine war: Palestine's top student killed
by Israeli air strikes”, Middle East Eye (17
October 2023), https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-top-high-school-student-killed.
420 “Damage to Gaza War Cemetery shows challenge of caring for monuments in
conflict zones”, Canadian Press (10 November
2023), https://www.cp24.com/news/damage-to-gaza-war-cemetery-shows-challenge-of-caring-for-monuments-in- conflict-zones-1.6639255; Christoph Koettl, Christian Triebert, “Satellite
Imagery and Video Shows Some Gazan Cemeteries Razed by Israeli Forces”, The New York Times (14 December 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/14/world/middleeast/gaza-cemeteries-damage-israel.html.
421 Mahmoud Mushtaha,
“A Second Nakba:
Israeli attacks are erasing entire
families from Gaza's
civil registry”, The New Arab
(31 October 2023), https://www.newarab.com/features/gaza-entire-families-being-wiped-out-civil-registry.
422 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel |
Flash Update #74 (20 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-74; UNICEF, Emergency Response Children Trapped
In Gaza Conflict Face Generational Trauma (1 November 2023), https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/children- trapped-gaza-conflict-face-generational-trauma.
423 Quoted in UN OCHA,
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update
#70 (15 December
2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-70.
424 “Israeli flag raised in symbolic Palestine Square in Gaza City, video
shows”, CNN (8 December
2023), https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-12-08-
23/h_7516b0f4b4970e9a01bffb26f1bb4739.
425 “Far-right minister
calls for Israel
to ‘fully occupy’
Gaza, reestablish settlements”, The Times of Israel
(15 December 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-minister-calls-for-israel-to-fully-occupy-gaza-reestablish-settlements/.
426 UNICEF, Joint Statement by UNICEF, UNDP,
UNFPA, WFP and WHO on Humanitarian Supplies
Crossing into Gaza (4 November 2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/joint-statement-by-unicef-undp-unfpa-wfp-and-who-on- humanitarian-supplies-crossing-into-gaza/; UN Women, Facts and figures: Women and girls
during the war in Gaza (22
December 2023), https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/feature-story/2023/10/facts-and-figures-women-and-girls- during-the-war-in-gaza.
believed to be
buried under the rubble.427 There
are multiple eye-witness accounts of pregnant women being killed by Israeli
soldiers, including while trying to access healthcare.428
54.
Pregnant women and children –– including newborn
babies –– are also particularly impacted
by displacement, lack of access to food and water, shelter, clothes,
hygiene and sanitation, and lack of access
to health services. These effects are severe and significant. An estimated
5,500 of approximately 52,000 pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza giving birth
each month are doing so in unsafe conditions, often with no clean water, much
less medical assistance, “in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid
rubble, or in overwhelmed healthcare facilities, where sanitation is worsening,
and the risk of infection and medical complications is on the rise”.429 Where they are able to get
to a functioning hospital, pregnant women are having to undergo caesarean
sections without anaesthetic.430
56.
Premature births have reportedly increased by between
25-30 per cent, as stressed and traumatised pregnant women face a myriad of
challenges, including being compelled to walk long distances in search of
safety, attempting to escape from bombs and being crowded into shelters in
often squalid conditions. Particularly in northern Gaza, cases of placenta
abruption –– a serious condition that occurs to pregnant women during
childbirth which is potentially life-threatening to both mother and baby ––
have more than doubled.433
57. An ever-increasing number of Palestinian babies in Gaza are reportedly dying from entirely preventable causes, brought about by Israel’s actions: newborns up to three months old are dying of diarrhoea, hypothermia, and other preventable causes. Without essential equipment and medical support, premature and underweight babies have little to no chance of survival.434 Palestinian newborn
427 Red Crescent
Society, Palestine Red Crescent Society
Response Report As of Saturday, October 7th 2023, 6:00 PM Until
Sunday, December 24th 2023, 24:00 AM (24 December 2023), p.1, https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/latestresponse23012023/en%20220%202023.pdf..
428 "ﺟﺒﺎﻟﯿﺎ ﺑﻤﺨﯿﻢ اﻟﺰﻋﺘﺮ ﺗﻞ ﻓﻲ واﻟﺪﻣﺎر اﻟﺤﺼﺎر ﻣﺸﺎھﺪ”,
Al Jazeera (23 December 2023), https://www.aljazeera.net/videos/2023/12/23/اﻟﺰﻋﺘﺮ-ﺗﻞ-ﻓﻲ-واﻟﺪﻣﺎر-اﻟﺤﺼﺎر-ﻣﺸﺎھﺪ ; “Israeli
forces 'kill pregnant
women in Gaza, run over bodies with bulldozers': report”
The New Arab (23
December 2023), https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-army- shot-pregnant-women-ran-over-bodies-report.
429 WHO, Women and newborns bearing the brunt of the
conflict in Gaza, UN agencies warn (3 November 2023),
https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-bearing-the-brunt-of-the-conflict-in-gaza-un-agencies- warn.
430 UN News, Interview: 5,500 women in Gaza set to give
birth ‘in race against death’ (7 November 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/interview/2023/11/1143327.
431 Juzoor for Health and Social Development, The ravages
of war: impact on mothers
& newborns in Gaza (11
November 2023), https://www.juzoor.org/cached_uploads/download/2023/11/11/maternal-health-report-final-1699726911.pdf.;
2023), October (30 Arabic Jazeera Al اﻟﻒ اﻣﺮأ ﺣﺎﻣﻞ ﻓﻲ ﻏﺰة ﯾﻮاﺟﮭﻦ ﻣﺼﯿﺮا ﻣﺠﮭﻮﻻ “,”50 . تروى-ألول-مرة-تفاصيل-مرعبة-عن-واقع-50-ألفhttps://www.aljazeera.net/women/2023/10/30/
432 Interview with Dr Mai Al-Kaileh (Palestinian Minister of Health)
on Al Arabiya, 27 December
2023, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1W2QFCvmM8/?igsh=Ynk1NjRzdndnaHM5.
433 Oxfam, Babies dying from
preventable causes in besieged Gaza – Oxfam (24 November 2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/babies-dying-preventable-causes-besieged-gaza-oxfam. 434
Ibid.
babies have died due to the lack of fuel to supply hospital generators;435 others have been found
decomposing in their hospital cots, medical staff taking care of them having
been forced by Israel to evacuate.436
58.
On 3 November 2023, the World Health Organisation
warned that “[m]aternal deaths are expected to increase given the lack of
access to adequate care”, with deadly consequences on reproductive health,
including a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and premature
births.437 The impact will necessarily be long
lasting and severe for Palestinians in Gaza as a group. By 22 November 2023 the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence
against women and girls, its causes and consequences, has expressly warned that:
“[T]he reproductive violence inflicted by Israel on Palestinian women,
newborn babies, infants, and children could be qualified as… acts of genocide under Article 2 of the
Convention on the Prevention of Genocide … including “imposing measures
intended to prevent births within a group”. She stressed that “States must
prevent and punish such acts in accordance with their responsibilities under
the Genocide Convention.” 438
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