Tuesday 22nd of October 2024
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water from the god chosen people.....

Five-year-old Tala Ibrahim Muhammad al-Jalat is just about awake but not moving, her milky eyes rolled to the back of her head.

Tala is severely dehydrated and malnourished.

By her bedside in Nasser hospital in Khan Younis her father Ibrahim Muhmmad al-Jalat holds her hand, careful not to disturb the intravenous drip feeding into her wrist.

He knows that the scorching weather, with temperatures close to 40 degrees, and a lack of clean water have brought his daughter close to death.

"The situation is getting worse," he says.

"The temperature in our tent is unimaginable, and the water we drink is definitely contaminated, because both young and old are getting sick."

With their homes destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are now displaced, living under canvas in makeshift camps with little protection from the scorching sun.

Getting water, whether it is clean or not, is a daily struggle. Long queues form at distribution centres.

With the sewage system badly damaged and with few toilets, what water there is is easily contaminated.

"It is no secret that the biggest cause of intestinal infections currently occurring in the Gaza Strip is the contamination of the water supplied to these children," says Dr Ahmed al-Fari, head of the children's departments at Nasser Hospital.

"The first problem is intestinal infections with vomiting and diarrhoea which causes dehydration," he says.

"The second problem is hepatitis C or A, which are no less dangerous than intestinal infections, if not more so."

The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says 67% of Gaza's water and sanitation system, poor at the best of times, has now been destroyed.

"We need a tremendous international effort to re-establish water and sewage networks," says Salaam Sharab, who's a water engineer in the Khan Younis municipality.

"We in Khan Younis have lost between 170 and 200km of pipes, which have been completely destroyed, along with wells and water tanks."

The Israeli military says it is allowing around 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter the strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing every day.

It says the problem is that aid agencies on the other side are not distributing it.

The aid agencies argue continued fighting, especially in the area around Rafah in southern Gaza, means it is too dangerous for them to operate.

They also say what's being allowed in is a drop in the ocean of what's actually needed.

Children with pre-existing conditions can be especially hard hit by malnutrition and contaminated water.

Lying semi-conscious on a bed further down the corridor from Tala is nine-year-old Yunis Jumaa, who has cerebral palsy.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd119dz515wo

 

 

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killing their own....

The army probe identified numerous examples of Israeli forces targeting Israeli civilians, as well as overreacting or failing to act on October 7. Mainstream media has smeared The Grayzone for exposing Israel’s “Hannibal Directive” scandal months ago.

Editor’s note: The Washington Post and Israel’s Haaretz have published numerousscurrilous and error-filled attacks on The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and other colleagues for helping expose the Israeli military’s deliberate killing of Israeli civilians while held captive by Palestinian militants on October 7. The Israeli army investigation and a June 12, 2024 United Nations report are the latest official investigations which corroborate our factual reporting.

The following article was originally published by Antiwar.com. 

A review by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) set to be released this summer will conclude that Israeli soldiers killed many of their own people on October 7, Israeli media reported. The inquiry is expected to identify multiple failures of the IDF during the Hamas rampage in southern Israel.

According to Israel’s Channel 12 News, the IDF report due to be released in mid-July found “many casualties due to our forces firing on our forces.” Tel Aviv has been accused of ordering its soldiers to kill hostages rather than allow Hamas to use them in negotiations, a policy long known as the ‘Hannibal Directive.’

The IDF’s October 7 review appears to point to incompetence rather than the intentional killing of its own civilians. However, Israeli outlet Ynet’s investigation of the IDF’s conduct found Tel Aviv had ordered troops to follow the Hannibal policy.

Still, the conclusions from the forthcoming report will amount to an official admission that scores, if not more, of Israelis were killed by IDF soldiers, not Hamas.

On October 7, Hamas launched a large-scale assault on southern Israel that left hundreds of attackers, 767 Israeli civilians, and 376 members of the Israeli security forces dead. The Jerusalem Post recently reported that many of the Israeli deaths were caused by IDF overreaction or inaction.

 

“According to the report, the probe will find numerous cases of friendly fire errors leading to tragic deaths, groups of IDF soldiers who were too hesitant to confront Hamas invaders (as still others rushed to fight without being formally summoned),” the outlet noted, adding that “higher-up commanders ordering some groups of soldiers to remain in a reserve second-line capacity – when they should have headed into the front, and not knowing how to handle complex battlefield questions involving a hostage.”

While Tel Aviv has denied that the Hannibal Directive was put into effect and insists it is no longer used, evidence has emerged of Israeli forces firing on homes knowing civilians were inside. One incident in Kibbutz Be’eri left 12 Israeli civilians dead.

There are multiple probes investigating the IDF’s actions on October 7, though one Israeli government-led inquiry was shut down by the country’s top court this week amid objections from the IDF and a number of senior officials.

https://thegrayzone.com/2024/06/21/israeli-army-friendly-fire-october-7/

 

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water cut....

 

Israel Has Reduced Water Access in Gaza by 94 Percent Since October

 

By Sharon Zhang / Truthout

 

Oxfam has warned that Israel’s longstanding policy of using water as a weapon against Palestinians has reached its peak amid Israel’s genocide, with water access for Palestinians in Gaza now at a small fraction of pre-genocide levels as Palestinians die of dehydration, starvation and disease.

According to a report on Israel’s water deprivation policies by Oxfam, Israel has reduced water access in Gaza by a whopping 94 percent since October. This means Palestinians only have access to an average of roughly 4.7 liters of water per person per day, or only about 1.2 gallons a day.

In the supposed “humanitarian safe zone” in al-Mawasi — which Israeli forces have attacked relentlessly — Palestinians only have access to an average of 2.5 liters per day, the report said.

This paltry amount of water must be used for all purposes: drinking, cooking, bathing, laundry, and more. It is far less than the minimum of 15 liters needed per day in emergencies, as determined by UN officials.

This dramatic reduction in water access is the result of Israel’s sustained attacks on Gaza’s water infrastructure, Oxfam said. Israel has destroyed 100 percent of wastewater treatment plants in Gaza and has destroyed all water desalination plants and water sanitation warehouses in Gaza City, while destroying the vast majority of infrastructure in other parts of the Strip.

The report found that Israel has damaged or destroyed five sanitation sites every three days just since October. This amounts to nearly 70 percent of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza being compromised by Israel.

“The Israeli military’s operations in Gaza have repeatedly committed violations of international humanitarian law depriving people of access to water, an indispensable resource for their survival, by damaging or destroying water infrastructure, contaminating water sources, and blocking supplies needed to enable water production,” the report says.

Meanwhile, delivering water in humanitarian convoys is nearly impossible due to Israel’s aid blockade, the report says. Maintaining what is left of sanitation infrastructure is its own challenge, as Israeli forces have targeted maintenance workers within Gaza as part of their attacks on all systems supporting life in Gaza.

“My colleagues and I have been living through a nightmare these past nine months, but we still feel it’s our responsibility and duty to ensure everybody in Gaza is getting their minimum right of clean drinking water,” Monther Shoblak, general manager of Gaza’s water utility, said in a statement. “It’s been very difficult, but we are determined to keep trying — even when we witness our colleagues being targeted and killed by Israel while undertaking their work.”  

Israel’s current attacks on water access are part of its decades-long campaign to exercise control over basic needs in Gaza in order to kill Palestinians through deprivation.

As a result of Israel’s deprivation campaign, water access was already subpar in Gaza before October. Though the World Health Organization recommends a daily quantity of 100 liters per day for regular activities, as of March 2023, Palestinians in Gaza had access to only about 83 liters per day, while those in the occupied West Bank had access to 89 liters a day. Israelis, including those who live in illegal settlements in the West Bank, have access to almost 250 liters a day, by comparison.

This means that Israel, over the course of its nine months of genocide in Gaza, has cut water access in Gaza to 6 percent of levels that were already insufficient for regular life.

 

https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/23/oxfam-israel-has-reduced-water-access-in-gaza-by-94-percent-since-october/

 

 

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