‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 162: Israel kills 36 Palestinians in strike on Gaza home as Netanyahu approves Rafah invasion

Casualties

• 31,533+ killed* and at least 73,546 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
• 427+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem**
• Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
• 590 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, and at least 3,221 injured.***

*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel. Some rights groups put the death toll number at more than 40,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

** The death toll in West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to PA’s Ministry of Health on March 6, this is the latest figure.

*** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”

Key Developments

• At least 80 people killed in overnight Israeli attacks across Gaza, including at least 36 in the Nuseirat refugee camp
• Netanyahu says that a military plan for a ground invasion of Rafah has been approved
• Civilians in Rafah will be evacuated to “humanitarian islands” throughout the Gaza Strip
• UNRWA: 31 percent of children in northern Gaza under the age of two have acute malnutrition
• Several Israeli NGOs warn that the war in Gaza is leading to a “crisis” in Israeli prisons
• Spanish vessel “Open Arms” starts unloading cargo in Gaza
• Japan announces that it will also begin to deliver aid to Gaza via a maritime corridor
• Israeli military claims overnight strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon
• Israeli military faces the biggest mental health crisis since the 1973 war
• Israel, Hamas may start ceasefire talks on Sunday

Israeli approves plans for Rafah ground invasion despite international opposition

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved plans for a ground invasion of Rafah, despite warnings from the international community that this would be “catastrophic” for the 1.4 million Palestinians who are living, or currently sheltering there. 

“Extraordinary work is being done here above and below ground, the forces reach everywhere and the conclusion is that there is no safe place in Gaza for terrorists,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“Even those who think that we are delaying will soon see that we will reach everyone,” he added. “We will bring to justice anyone who was involved in October 7 — either we will eliminate them or bring them to trial in Israel. There is no safe place, not here, not outside of Gaza, not anywhere across the Middle East — we will bring everyone to their place.”

One of the biggest concerns for the international community is where the 1.4 million Palestinians who are currently in Rafah—many of whom are displaced from other parts of the Gaza Strip—will go. With the Egyptian border closed, and Palestinians who wish to cross needing to pay up as much as $10,000 simply to put their names on the list, many fear that a ground invasion—and the ensuing massacre that would likely come with it—would be devastating.

According to the Prime Minister’s plans, civilians in Gaza would be evacuated to “humanitarian islands” throughout the Gaza Strip—a plan that is tenuous, at best, given that at least half of Gaza’s buildings are either damaged or destroyed and any plan to rebuild anything that could be deemed an adequate shelter is far in the future.

Nuseirat refugee camp massacre

Meanwhile, massacres against civilians continue. Just last night, the Israeli military attacked Nuseirat refugee camp and the surrounding areas, killing at least eighty civilians, including 36 people, in a strike on a single home. 

While the Israeli military claims that at least fifteen Hamas fighters were killed in the attacks, Gaza’s government media office claims that the majority of those killed were children, alongside several pregnant women.

Now, more than 12,000 children have been killed in Gaza—and in northern Gaza, an estimated one-third are suffering from acute malnutrition, up from an estimated 15 percent in January. Of course, this is entirely avoidable—if humanitarian aid were allowed into Gaza, not nearly as many would be going hungry and facing malnourishment, and the devastating health conditions that go along with it would not be an issue. 

“Malnutrition among children is spreading fast and reaching devastating and unprecedented levels in the Gaza Strip due to the wide-reaching impacts of the war and ongoing restrictions on aid delivery,” UNICEF wrote in a statement.

“An immediate humanitarian ceasefire continues to provide the only chance to save children’s lives and end their suffering. We also need multiple land border crossings that allow aid to be reliably delivered at scale, including to northern Gaza, along with the security assurances and unimpeded passage needed to distribute that aid, without delays or access impediments.

UN official: Doctors in Gaza “no longer see normal-sized babies”

For newborn babies, it is even more dire—as there is almost no such thing as a “healthy birth” in Gaza anymore.

“The doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies,” Dominic Allen, a representative for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for Palestine told Al Jazeera. “What they do see though, tragically, is more stillborn babies and more neonatal deaths.”

While the land border is still closed, the maritime corridor is officially open, as the Spanish humanitarian aid vessel “Open Arms” docked in Gaza and started unloading its cargo this weekend. Japan has also announced that it will also start delivering aid to Gaza via a maritime corridor. Nevertheless, humanitarian organizations continue to point out that both maritime corridors and aid drops are “costly and inefficient” compared to simply opening up the Rafah crossing and allowing the trucks that have been waiting there for weeks into Gaza.

Crisis in Israeli prisons as raids and arrests continue across the West Bank

Several Israeli NGOs–including, but not limited to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Adalah–gathered in Geneva to voice their concerns to the United Nations that the war in Gaza is contributing to a “crisis” in Israeli prisons.

“What we are looking at is a crisis,” Tal Steiner, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) told the Associated France Presse. 

“There are almost 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody right now,” she continued. “That is a 200 percent increase from any normal year.”

The meeting comes at a moment when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has actually instructed government ministries to prepare for an “influx” of prisoners, anticipating capturing more terrorism suspects in Gaza in the coming months as the war continues. 

Over the past six months, the Israeli security services have arrested nearly 7,000 Palestinians from across the West Bank—often holding them in administrative detentions, meaning that they can be held for months without due process or charges. Prisoners report that the torture begins “almost immediately,” with beatings, interrogations and threats of rape. Significant overcrowding has lead to a lack of hygiene and increased hunger–making the spread of infectious disease a very real and ever-present threat.

More than half of them are in administrative detention, meaning that Israel will hold them for months without due process or charges. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, nine people have died in Israeli custody since the October 7th attacks. 

Israeli military raids and arrests across the West Bank continue, as Israeli forces stormed Nablus and two villages north of Ramallah last night, arresting a total of twenty people in the past twenty-four hours, including two former prisoners.