Israel versus Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, aid workers, journalists, and UN peacekeepers. 2023-24

Follow up on the Al Awda hospital situation:

Hospital patients spent part of the night on the street in Gaza, medical aid group says

Patients and medical staff of Al Awda Hospital in Gaza spent part of their night on the street “with bombs landing in close proximity,” following Israel’s orders to evacuate the facility, the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said.

Scott Hamilton, a spokesman for the aid group, which is known as MSF, said some of the medical staff and all patients have been moved to another location.

“But the situation remains extremely complicated and chaotic,” he told The Associated Press. “We call on Israel once again to cease the indiscriminate bloodshed, withdraw their ultimatum.”

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As the
@UN
's agency responsible for public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly condemns Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2000 inpatients in northern Gaza. The forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe.

The lives of many critically ill and fragile patients hang in the balance: those in intensive care or who rely on life support; patients undergoing hemodialysis; newborns in incubators; women with complications of pregnancy, and others all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death if they are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated.

Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond maximum capacity. Some patients are being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds.

Forcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence.

Hospital directors and health workers are now facing an agonizing choice: abandon critically ill patients amid a bombing campaign, put their own lives at risk while remaining on site to treat patients, or endanger their patients’ lives while attempting to transport them to facilities that have no capacity to receive them.

Overwhelmingly, caregivers have chosen to stay behind and honor their oaths as health professionals to “do no harm,” rather than risk moving their critically ill patients during evacuations. Health workers should never have to make such impossible choices.

Additionally, tens of thousands of displaced people in northern Gaza are seeking refuge in open spaces in or around hospitals, treating them as havens from violence as well as to protect the facilities from potential attacks. Their lives, too, are at risk when health facilities are bombed.

There are verified reports of deaths of health care workers and destruction of health facilities, which denies civilians the basic human right of life-saving health care and is prohibited under International Humanitarian Law.

WHO calls for Israel to immediately reverse evacuation orders to hospitals in northern Gaza, and calls for the protection of health facilities, health workers, patients, and civilians.

WHO also reiterates its calls for the immediate and safe delivery of medical supplies, fuel, clean water, food, and other humanitarian aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing, where life-saving assistance, including WHO health supplies that arrived earlier today, is currently awaiting entry.

I don’t think that the WHO would normally criticise a country by name like this.

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I’d be willing to bet that part of the reason that many hospital workers are not leaving is that Hamas will kill them and their families for doing so. Hamas sees them as valuable human shields covering their HQs.

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Sad Anthony Anderson GIF

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I don’t know if anyone has any information on this, but how does the internal dynamics of different Jewish ethnic groups play into the issues at hand? Like, it seems to me that every single PM since the countries founding are from a Ashkenazim background, but something like half the population of Israeli Jews are not of European extraction? How do Israelis who are of MENA extraction (Sephardim and Mizrahim) fit into all of this? I’d assume that their own ancestors being expelled from their own homelands with the founding of Israel and the commencement of hostilities in 48? How that shapes all of this is very unclear to me, but it seems like it SHOULD be important in understanding the political dynamics shaping this conflict…

[ETA] Also… JFC, this is apocalyptic…

:sob:

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The Israeli military is preparing to invade the Gaza Strip soon with tens of thousands of soldiers ordered to capture Gaza City and destroy the enclave’s current leadership, according to three senior Israeli military officers who outlined unclassified details about the plan.

Tens of thousands of Hamas gunmen are thought to have entrenched themselves inside hundreds of miles of underground tunnels and bunkers beneath Gaza City and the surrounding parts of northern Gaza. Israeli military leaders expect that Hamas will attempt to impede their progress by blowing up some of those tunnels as Israelis advance above them, and by exploding roadside bombs and booby-trapping buildings.

Hamas also plans to ambush Israeli forces from behind by emerging suddenly from hidden tunnel openings dotted across northern Gaza, according to a Hamas officer who was not authorized to speak to the news media.

To make it easier for its soldiers to operate, the Israeli military’s rules of engagement have been loosened to allow soldiers to make fewer checks before shooting at suspected enemies, the three Israeli officers said, without giving further details.

Fairly in-depth article with more details about plans. Apparently the invasion has been delayed because of weather. There is this bit though that’s something:

One plan now discussed widely by diplomats, officials and analysts involves allowing the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, to retake control of Gaza, after it was forced out by Hamas in 2007

Can I just say though, fuck war.

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I can’t comment on any of this it’s too heartbreaking. I’m just listening to my Muslimgauze as usual.

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IIRC Middle Eastern/North African Jews in Israel generally resent the Ashkenazi elite for neglecting and marginalising them and monopolising political power. When they arrived as refugees they were housed in camps or abandoned Palestinian houses. Then they moved up to dreary “development towns” far away from major cities.

At the same time they are fiercely nationalistic, being the base for the right wing “national-religious” parties, and have no sympathy whatsoever for Arabs or Palestinians.

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There are plenty of Palestinian Gandhis. Israel keeps killing them

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Egypt’s stance on the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is clear: Official and unofficial Egypt fear that if Palestinians were moved to Sinai, Israel would prevent their return and occupy Gaza as empty territory.

As simple as that.

Enforcing the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and those from the West Bank to Jordan would effectively erase the Palestinian presence from historical Palestine, leading to the disappearance of Palestine itself.

This is why transferring Gaza’s Palestinians to Sinai is seen as the liquidation of Palestine and the Palestinians’ rights in their homeland.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi explicitly said that at the Military Academy on Wednesday, emphasizing the need for Palestinians to remain on their land.

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Always did get the impression that he tried to look tough by associating with/making movies about tough guys.

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BBC News - Khan Younis: A Gaza city on its knees, now with a million mouths to feed

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Palestinian. Not from Arabia, he’s Palestinian.

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