Casualties
Gaza: 10,328 Killed, 4,237 of them children; nearly 26,000 Wounded
Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem: 163 Killed
Key Developments
- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that Gaza received only 570 aid trucks in the past month, which is roughly what Gaza required daily prior to October 7.
- Gaza’s Ministry of Interior says that almost 900,000 people are still in northern Gaza, where most of the armed clashes between resistance fighters and Israeli soldiers are taking place.
- World Health Organization (WHO) says Israel carried out 229 attacks against hospitals and healthcare centers, which resulted in the death of 509 patients and medical staff and injured 447 people.
- Israel destroys the solar panels on the roof of Shifa Hospital, the largest medical center in the Gaza Strip, which is still operating despite shortages of staff and fuel to operate electricity generators.
- Almost 70 percent of the Gaza population is internally displaced, 710,000 of them sheltering in UNRWA facilities.
- At least 163 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Four Palestinian prisoners arrested after October 7 died in Israeli custody.
- Hundreds of Lebanese walk in the funeral procession of three girls and their grandmother in the village of Blida on Tuesday morning.
- The Israeli army says it has fired back at Hezbollah sites in Lebanon and that it intercepted two drones in the Upper Galilee.
- The U.S. deploys a nuclear submarine to the Red Sea on Sunday, the latest in its show of force in the region.
UN Chief: ‘Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children’
Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip entered its second month on Tuesday. At least 10,500 Palestinians have been killed and 24,000 injured in airstrikes and ground shelling, which have targeted houses, schools, hospitals, water tanks, solar panels, main roads, mosques, and universities.
In less than a month, an estimated 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on the Gaza Strip, an area of 365 square kilometers where 2.3 million Palestinians live, the majority of them refugees whose families were expelled or fled from their towns during the 1948 war.
The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has left no corner of Gaza safe for Palestinians. In the past month, all communications and internet have been cut in Gaza, and Palestinians there are still lacking fresh drinking water and food, while local hospitals continue to suffer from fuel shortages and medical supplies.
Prior to the war, Gaza needed 500 trucks of humanitarian aid daily to ease the crisis and help hospitals operate. A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told Al-Jazeera that Gaza has only received 570 aid trucks in the past month. The last humanitarian convoy to enter the enclave was 92 trucks on Monday.
In the past 24 hours, Israel bombed the house of the Astal family in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, killing 12 people and injuring 29 others, Wafa news agency reported. Neighboring buildings were also damaged, and dozens are missing under the rubble.
Another house belonging to the Asref family in the Maan area, east of Khan Yunis, was hit by an airstrike, killing eight people from the Jarghun and Barham families.
Israel’s decimation of Gaza has forced Palestinians whose houses were destroyed to shelter with relatives or neighbors, which was the case with the Jarghuns and Barhams. But this did not prevent them from being bombed again.
On Tuesday morning, the house of the Muqbel family in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, was attacked, killing at least 25 people. Dozens were also wounded when a series of Israeli air raids attacked five houses in Rafah.
Israel also heavily bombed the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, and destroyed the Salah Din Mosque. Al-Zaytoun is of strategic importance to the Israeli army as it allowed Israeli forces to reach Gaza’s seaside to the west, splitting the Gaza Strip into north and south.
Gaza’s Ministry of Interior said that almost 900,000 people are still in Gaza City and northern Gaza despite the heavy bombardment and the Israeli threats that all inhabitants should flee to the south.
Most of the armed clashes between resistance fighters and Israeli soldiers are taking place in Sheikh Radwan, Rashid Street, Beit Lahia, Al-Zaytoun, and areas north of Gaza City.
Wafa reported that houses, apartments, kindergartens, roads, and infrastructure in the south of Gaza City’s neighborhood of Tal al-Hawa were also pummelled on Monday night.
The death toll in the Gaza Strip as of Tuesday afternoon was 10,328, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported. 4,237 of them are children, and there are still 2,800 people missing under the rubble.
The media office of the Gaza government said that 48 journalists were killed since October 7, including Wafa journalist Muhammad Abu Hasira and Palestine TV reporter Muhammad Abu Hattab, who was killed along with 11 family members in an Israeli air strike on their home in Khan Yunis last week.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Israel carried out 229 attacks against hospitals and healthcare centers, which resulted in the death of 509 patients and medical staff and injured 447 people.
On Monday, Israel destroyed the solar panels on the roof of Shifa Hospital, the largest medical center in the Gaza Strip, which is still operating despite shortages of staff and fuel to operate electricity generators.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a Palestinian-British doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières, wrote on X: “Israel just hit the solar panels on the roof of Shifa hospital. Shifa MUST go dark. Israeli necropolitics means it needs to declare victory over a hospital.”
The Palestine Red Crescent said on Monday that Al-Quds Hospital, which it runs, was forced to close after Israel destroyed 12 ambulances and the roads leading to the hospital were cut off by air raids. It also warned that Al-Quds Hospital could stop operating in 24 hours if fuel tanks dry up.
Martin Griffiths, the UN deputy secretary-general and emergency relief coordinator, wrote on X: “We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now.”
On Tuesday, Griffiths said that the killing of 10,000 Palestinians in one month “defies humanity.”
Almost 70 percent of the Gaza population is internally displaced, 710,000 of them are currently sheltering in the premises of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
UNRWA said in a report on Monday that it has lost 79 of its staff in the war and 48 of its buildings, which include schools that were damaged by Israeli bombardment.
The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday that “the nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity.”
“Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day. More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades. More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organization,” Guterres said.
The UN chief also warned that the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem are “at a boiling point.”
West Bank death toll reaches 163 as Israel continues arrest campaign
On Monday evening, seven Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank, four of them in the city of Tulkarm.
They were identified as Izz al-Din Awad, a member of the Qassam Brigades, Jihad Maharaj Shehadeh, a leader of the Rapid Response Battalion in Tulkarm, Qasim Rajab, and Moamen Balawi. An Israeli military force raided Tulkarm early on Monday and shot them while they were inside a vehicle.
Mahmoud Taqatqa, 18, was killed on Monday evening after being shot by a bullet in the head in Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem. Israeli forces fired live bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at protestors in Beit Fajjar, injuring three people.
At least 163 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem since October 7.
On Tuesday morning, hundreds of Palestinians took part in the funeral procession of Saad Nimr Al-Froukh, 24, in the town of Sair, northeast of Hebron.
Froukh was shot by Israeli forces who stormed Sair this morning, according to Wafa, and injured two others. His brother Mujahid Nimr Al-Froukh, 31, was killed three days ago by Israeli settlers.
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Ministry of Health said that since January, 371 people have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank.
On Monday evening, Israel announced the death of an officer in the military police, a unit in the Israeli army, after she was stabbed by a 16-year-old Palestinian. Another Israeli officer was injured in the stabbing attack at the police station outside the Old City of Jerusalem.
Wafa reported that Israel has arrested 2,200 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. In the past 24 hours, 56 Palestinians have been detained, 11 of them in Ramallah’s villages of Al-Mughayir, Kufr Ni’ma, Al-Bireh, and Beitunia.
Fifteen people were arrested in occupied Jerusalem, and 22 from Hebron’s towns of Bani Na’im, Dura, and Al-Samu’.
The PA’s Prisoners’ Commission and the Prisoners’ Club warned that four people arrested after October 7 had died in detention. It accused Israel of carrying out a “systematic, premeditated assassination operation against prisoners.”
Majed Ahmad Zaqoul, 32, from the Gaza Strip, died in Ofer military prison. Israeli forces arrested him along with thousands of Gaza’s workers who were inside Israel and the West Bank when the war broke out on October 7.
Zakul moved to the West Bank three years ago from the Gaza Strip, and for the past six months, he has been working inside Israel. The Commission and the Prisoners’ Club said a fourth Palestinian died in Antot camp, but his identity has not yet been identified.
There are 7,000 Palestinians inside Israeli jails, including 62 female prisoners. Moreover, 2,070 of those prisoners are serving administrative detention terms, a policy used by Israel to indefinitely detain Palestinians without charge or trial.
Bisher al-Khasawneh, Jordan’s Prime Minister, warned of the continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip and the attempts to expel Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
He said such an act by Israel would be considered a “declaration of war.”
Intense fighting with Lebanon as U.S. sends a nuclear submarine in a show of force
Hundreds of Lebanese walked in the funeral procession of three girls and their grandmother in the village of Blida on Tuesday morning.
Samira Abdel Hussein Ayoub and her grandchildren Remas, Talin, and Layan Shor were killed on Sunday in an Israeli raid while they were trying to flee in a civilian car from the bombing of southern Lebanon.
Since October 8, Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces have been exchanging fire along the frontier of the north of occupied Palestine. Hezbollah had been attacking Israeli radars and military bases, while Israel launched raids and shelling into Lebanon.
On Monday evening, the Israeli army said that sirens went off in Shtula, Shlomi, Ras al-Naqoura, Akka, and Nahariyya after being targeted with shells and rockets from Lebanon. It said it documented 14 attacks on sites north of occupied Palestine.
On Monday, the intensity of fighting along the Lebanese borders had begun to heat up. The remaining residents of Kiryat Shmona were advised to evacuate. Hezbollah announced the attack on radars, CCTV cameras, and satellite towers in the Al-Raheb, Al-Malikia, and Jall ed Deir areas.
The Hamas branch in Lebanon said that it targeted Nahariyya and southern Haifa with 16 rockets.
The Israeli army said it fired back at Hezbollah sites in Lebanon and that it intercepted two drones in the Upper Galilee.
The ongoing war in Gaza is threatening to spill the conflict across the region. On Monday, the Pentagon announced that its military bases and forces in Syria and Iraq were attacked 38 times in less than a month, six times in the last two days, injuring 46 US military personnel.
“These could be things like shrapnel, headaches, perforated eardrums, tinnitus, rolled ankle,” Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder said.
On Monday morning, two drone attacks were launched at Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq, and another drone targeted Al-Tanaf base in Syria. The U.S. accused Iran-backed militias in Iraq of responsibility for these attacks.
The U.S. also deployed a nuclear submarine to the Red Sea on Sunday, the latest in its show of force in the region, following the dispatch of troops and the deployment of two aircraft carriers and several destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Ongoing diplomatic fallout
The war is also costing Israel diplomatically.
South Africa is the latest country to recall its ambassador and all diplomats from Tel Aviv.
Naledi Pandor, the South African Foreign Minister, said, “We are extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories, and we believe the nature of the response by Israel has become one of collective punishment.”
“We felt it important that we do signal the concern of South Africa while continuing to call for a comprehensive cessation [of hostilities],” Pandor added.
Russia also expressed concern over the remarks made by an Israeli minister about the possibility of using nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip as one of the options in the war.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday that Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu’s comment raised questions.
“So we are hearing official statements about the presence of nuclear weapons?” Zakharova asked, adding that the International Atomic Energy Agency should launch an investigation into the matter.
Israel has never officially admitted the possession of nuclear weapons, although the issue has become an open secret following the leak of details of the Dimona reactor in the 1980s by Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center.
“Naledi Pandor, the South African Foreign Minister, said, “We are extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories, and we believe the nature of the response by Israel has become one of collective punishment.” ”
POLITICO claims that it received a leaked memo showing that State Department officials aren’t happy either –
“State Department staffers offered a blistering critique of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in a dissent memo obtained by POLITICO, arguing that, among other things, the U.S. should be willing to publicly criticize the Israelis.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/06/u-s-diplomats-slam-israel-policy-in-leaked-memo-00125538
Israel has had the power to make Biden fly on Airfare One, bow before Bibi, and immediately send weapons and funding. Weapons that are right now being used to kill over 10,000 unarmed civilians, including over 4000 little children as they took shelter in civilians structures, including hospitals. Israel has the power to make Biden lie at least 3 times, to the world, and the WH had to retract one of them. Israel has the power to make the US refuse to call for a ceasefire, and is the ONLY vote against calling for one at the UN. Israel has the power to make US media become their propaganda arm, as they are scared to go over the line drawn by Israeli lobbies here. Israel has the power to make Congress dance the hora to their tune, and those who don’t, get the zionist “treatment” of ugly name calling, accusations of being anti-semitic, and having to deal with candidates financed, and supported, by AIPAC. Hard to believe that this is the US sometimes.
Israel also has the power to make our democratic nation, accept, and support, their ultra right wing government, filled with racists and terrorists, who keep calling for Gaza to be bombed to rubble, back to the stone age, Palestinian towns erased, to be put in concentration camps, and now want Gaza nuked.
They control us and we know it.
Four weeks into Israel’s relentless and brutal attack on Gaza, indiscriminately bombing the most densely populated parcel on earth, the civilian death toll already exceeded the number of civilians killed in two years of the Russo-Ukraine war. 13 As if this metric isn’t horrible enough, the number of children slaughtered by Israel in three weeks surpasses the annual number of children killed in conflict zones since 2019. 14 The silence around the killing of so many children is suffocating. If at all, it is mentioned on the side as an unfortunate and tragic consequence of a war forced upon Israel and its ‘most moral army in the world’ 15 by the “barbaric” terrorist organisation Hamas.
Nevertheless, it is quite instructive to look at a recent case of mass child abduction – not murder – in the Russo-Ukrainian War, to notice a rather different reaction of the international community. According to a report from the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, over 6,000 Ukrainian children aged between four months and 17 years old have been detained at various camps and similar facilities in Russia. 16 “The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for President of Russia Vladimir Putin (who has explicitly supported the forced adoptions, including by enacting legislation to facilitate them) and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement. According to international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, such acts constitute genocide if done with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation or ethnic group.” 17
In other words, mass child abduction of worthy victims is a heinous crime justifying contempt, arrest warrants by the ICC, and allegations of genocide if perpetrated by official enemies. Mass child murder of unworthy victims on the other hand attracted little if any notice if committed by official allies. Such cruelty scarcely merits more than a footnote, as “the claim that “our side” never targets civilians is familiar doctrine in violent states. And there is some truth to it. Powerful states, like the United States [and Israel], do not generally try to kill particular civilians. Rather, they carry out murderous actions that they and their educated classes know will slaughter many civilians, but without specific intent to kill particular ones, [for example when] Israel carries out actions that it knows will kill the “grasshoppers” and “drugged roaches” who happen to infest the lands it “liberates”. There is no good term for this moral depravity.” 1(p.108)
https://9lab.org/opinion/deconstructing-hasbara-about-the-israel/palestine-conflict/