(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . June 2024 humanitarian situation in Gaza [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-18 Writing in his blog Informed Comment on June 16, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan describes the current humanitarian situation in Gaza. First, Cole notes that the United Nations Security Council on June 10 called for a ceasefire in Gaza (by a vote of 14-0 with Russia abstaining). Resolution 2735 required Hamas and Israel to reply with a letter outlining their response. Cole says Hamas has complied but Israel has not, and members of the Israeli government including Netanyahu “have made it clear in public remarks that they will defy the Security Council and will reject the Biden peace plan.” Cole gives details: To underline this defiance of the will of the world community, between June 10 when the UNSC order came down and June 14, the Israeli armed forces killed 142 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 396. Cole quotes Doctors without Borders (MSF) that the casualties since the start of June are further proof of the “complete dehumanization of the Palestinians,” saying that “more than 800 people have been killed and over 2,400 wounded in intense bombing and ground offensives by Israeli forces in Gaza.” Brice de le Vingne, Head of MSF Emergency Unit, asked, “how can the killing of more than 800 people in a single week, including small children, plus the maiming of hundreds more, be considered a military operation adhering to international humanitarian law? We can no longer accept the statement that Israel is taking ‘all precautions’ – this is just propaganda.” Cole says: “In the past month and a half, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reminds us a million Palestinians were again displaced from the south, and 100,000 were displaced from the north.” Cole continues: Displaced means made homeless and likely sleeping rough with few toilets or potable water or food. Most of the domiciles in Gaza have been made into rubble by the Israelis, though 16% of the displaced have tried to go home. Some erect tents over their former homes. Some 31% go to new shelters. Cole says “families reported irregular food distributions, overcrowded and dilapidated shelters with an average of eight to 10 persons per shelter, lack of sanitation infrastructure, and a range of health issues such as skin diseases, hepatitis A, gastroenteritis, and respiratory illnesses.” He also says that according to OCHA, “some 8,000 children in Gaza have been formally diagnosed with malnutrition and another 3,000 have been identified as in imminent danger of it.” He notes severe water shortages: Israeli airstrikes have taken out water pipes, wells, and sewage treatment plants. There is only 28% the potable water in Gaza that existed on October 6. This is not an accident, as MSF pointed out. People are forced to collect surface water that is tainted with sewage, causing a range of diseases of the intestinal tract and liver. Cole reports that “the Israeli military has expelled all but about 90,000 people from Rafah, which had had a pre-war population of 300,000 and had swollen to 1.2 million before the Israeli invasion of early May.” Cole points out that Those 90,000 people have no functioning hospital, since Israel has destroyed the medical facilities there, according to the World Health Organization. As for schools in Gaza, Cole says: OCHA finds that “over 76 per cent of schools in Gaza are now assessed as requiring full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to be functional again.” He adds: The Israeli Air Force continues to directly target schools; this week it smashed a UN school functioning as a shelter, killing 30 refugees. ------------------------------------- UPDATE: from the New York Times (free link) The Israeli military said on Monday June 17 that it had paused operations during daylight hours in parts of the southern Gaza Strip, as a new policy announced a day earlier appeared to take hold, along with cautious hopes that it would allow more food and other goods to reach desperate civilians. The new policy avoids daytime combat along a seven-mile route in eastern Rafah. The pause does not apply to central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled. The New York Times article describes the situation elsewhere in Gaza: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/18/2246998/-June-2024-humanitarian-situation-in-Gaza?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/