Casualties
- 32,623 + killed* and at least 75,092 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 450+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
- 597 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 estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on March 17, 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
- Israeli forces killed 71 Palestinians and wounded 112 in air and artillery strikes across the Gaza Strip.
- Israel’s raid into al-Shifa hospital enters its 12th day, destroying more buildings in the vicinity of the hospital.
- Israel releases 102 Palestinians detained from Gaza in recent weeks.
- Israel admits eight soldiers wounded in 24 hour period as fighting between Israeli army and Palestinian resistance intensifies in Gaza City and in Khan Younis.
- ICJ orders new provisional measures in South Africa’s genocide case against Srael, including provisions to prevent famine.
- North Gaza-based journalist Bayan Abu Sultan, who was feared missing since March 19 after reporting that Israeli forces killed her brother in front of her, reappears on Twitter and confirms that she is alive.
- At least 40 Syrian soldiers and Hezbollah fighters killed in Israeli strikes on Aleppo, Syria.
- UN special rapporteur for Palestine says, “there is enough grounds to believe that Israel is committing genocide.”
- West Bank: One Palestinian teenager was wounded in al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron, in an Israeli raid.
- West Bank: Israel raids Nablus and the refugee camps of Shu’fat and Qalandia north of Jerusalem.
71 Palestinians killed, death toll rises to 32,623
The Palestinian health ministry announced in a statement on Thursday that 71 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, while 112 others were wounded in the past day.
In Gaza City, the Israeli army continued its raid on al-Shifa Hospital for the 12th day. Local sources reported that Israeli forces burned and demolished several buildings in the surroundings of al-Shifa.
Medical sources said that Israeli forces continue to hold 160 Palestinians, including medical staff, in the Human Development building in the al-Shifa complex.
In Deir al-Balah, in the center Gaza Strip, Israeli warships opened fire at Palestinian homes on the beachfront. In Al-Maghazi refugee camp, east of Deir al-Balah, an Israeli strike on the Mousa family home killed six people, including both parents and four children, wounding several of their neighbors.
In Khan Younis, Israeli strikes killed 12 Palestinians, while a nurse was reported killed by Israeli troops at the Nasser hospital.
In Rafah, in southern Gaza, Israeli strikes on the east and center of the city killed at least 12 Palestinians, including children.
Viral journalist reported missing reappears, Israel releases 102 Gaza detainees
The Israeli army released 102 Palestinians who were detained from the Gaza Strip and held in Israeli custody for several days and weeks, according to local media reports.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, nine of the released are paramedics who work for the society and who were detained for 46 days. Three of the released were taken to some of the few remaining operating hospitals in Gaza to be treated from the effects of torture, the group said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian journalist Bayan Abu Sultan, who was reported missing in the surroundings of al-Shifa since March 19, posted on social media Thursday for the first time in 12 days.
“I survived,” Bayan wrote on Thursday on X. Her last tweet before she disappeared read “Israeli forces killed my only brother in front of my eyes.”
Bayan is one of the few Palestinian journalists still reporting from Gaza City and the north. She and her family were staying in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital, where her family returned after being displaced in the early weeks of the Israeli assault when her brother was killed.
After activists and journalists began sounding the alarm over Bayan’s feared disappearance, Reporters Without Borders demanded in a statement that Israeli forces provide information about Bayan’s whereabouts, assuming that she was detained.
Palestinians remaining in Gaza City continue to face severe shortages of supplies, especially of food. “Hunger, the shortage of goods and skyrocketing prices have made people [in Gaza City] lose taste for life,” Huda Amer, another Gaza-city-based journalist, told Mondoweiss. “We hear bombings and shootings in the street”, she added.
UN rapporteur says ‘enough grounds’ for genocide in Gaza
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said that there are “enough grounds” to believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
Albanese made her remarks on Thursday during the presentation of her report entitled “Anatomy of a Genocide” to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The report, which was released earlier this week, indicated that Israel was violating three of the five acts described in the Genocide Convention.
Albanese said that she has received threats because of her report, and that she has been pressured and “attacked” since the beginning of her mandate.
Commenting on Albanese’s report, the White House’s spokesperson Mathew Miller accused Albanese of “making antisemitic comments,” and that the entire post of human rights rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian Territories was “unproductive.” In February, Israel denied Albanese entry to the country.
On Thursday, the International Court of Justice ordered a new set of provisional measures to prevent genocide, including provisions to prevent famine.
The measures were requested by South Africa as part of its ongoing case against Israel at the international court.
The ICJ judges noted that “Palestinians are no longer facing the risk of famine … but famine is setting in”. The court ordered Israel to ensure the “unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” including food, water, fuel, and medical supplies. The order is legally binding, though, like the initial provisional measures granted by the court back in January, and since ignored by Israel, the court does not have an enforcement mechanism.
Already, 31 Palestinians, mostly children, have died of food shortage in the Gaza Strip since Israel imposed a total blockade of food, water, electricity, and fuel on the 2 million people living there in the immediate aftermath of October 7.
Israeli army wounds on Palestinian, raids West Bank towns
A Palestinian man was wounded in the stomach by Israeli forces on Thursday night during an Israeli military raid on the al-Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Local media sources reported that Israeli forces fired light flares before entering the camp, and that they were confronted by local youth throwing stones. Israeli troops responded with live fire, wounding one man.
Israeli forces also raided Shu’fat and Qalandia, north of Jerusalem, and Nablus in the northern West Bank.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces continue to impose tight control on checkpoints in the Jordan Valley as they continue to search for the gunman behind yesterday’s shooting at an Israeli settlers’ bus north of Jericho, which wounded three Israelis.
Israel has arrested more than 7,800 Palestinians since October 7. Currently, at least 9,100 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, including 50 women, 200 children, and more than 3500 detainees without charges.
It’s always interesting to see what the military people think about the Gaza situation. Phil Klay was a marine in Iraq and later wrote about his experience ( his book ‘Redeployment’ won the 2014 National
Book Award for Fiction ) , and the war doesn’t look like self-defense to him, it looks like vengeance. His comments:
U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible… in Gaza, Israel has shown itself willing to cause heavy civilian casualties and unwilling to care for a population left without basic necessities for survival. It has offered no realistic plan for an eventual political settlement. Far from the hypothetical war for Israeli security, this looks like a war of revenge. …Israel’s lack of concern for civilian casualties is clear from well-documented individual strikes……..Perhaps the most damning indictment of Israel’s conduct is that it is fighting this war without any realistic vision of its outcome, other than the military defeat of Hamas. The “day after” plan that Netanyahu released in February suggests an indefinite Israeli military occupation of Gaza, rejects international negotiations toward a permanent settlement with the Palestinian people, and gives only a vague nod toward a reconstruction plan “financed and led by countries acceptable to Israel.” ...And a few years from now, if I talk with a survivor of this devastating war, will he blame Hamas for provoking it? I would guess that he’ll blame the country that bombed him without mercy and restricted the delivery of food while his family starved to death. And he’ll blame America for enabling it. And so will the rest of the world. And they’ll be right.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-support-for-israel-s-war-has-become-indefensible/ar-BB1kGySC
In a week, Israeli army executes 13 children in and near Al-Shifa Hospital
Palestinian Territory – In blatant violation of international law, particularly international humanitarian law, the Israeli army has executed 13 children by direct shooting in Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its Gaza City environs. This is a war crime and a crime against humanity, and is part of the genocide that the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip having been experiencing for the past six months.
For over a week now, the Israeli army has been conducting systematic and horrifying military operations inside and around Al-Shifa Medical Complex. These crimes include extrajudicial executions and deliberate killings of Palestinian civilians. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor field team has received identical testimonies about the killings and executions of Palestinian children between the ages of four and 16.
Some of the fatal shootings occurred during an Israeli army siege while the victims’ families were inside their homes; others occurred when the victims attempted to escape via routes that the Israeli army had designated as “safe” after forcibly evacuating them from their homes and places of residence.
Palestinian Islam Ali Salouha lives close to Al-Shifa Medical Complex. Salouha stated that Israeli forces killed his sons Ali, nine, and Saeed Muhammad Sheikha, six, in front of their families and fellow locals. They specifically targeted the children, he said, with live bullets.
According to Salouha, the family chose to stay in their apartment with several other residents because there was no safe way for them to leave after more than a week of Israeli forces besieging them inside their home amid frequent raids.
He explained that on the afternoon of Sunday 24 March 2024, the Israeli army ordered everyone in the vicinity, through loudspeakers, to leave their residential area immediately or face having their home bombed. As a result, the residents were forced to leave the area with a number of their neighbours and cross a corpse-strewn road that the Israeli army had designated for travel.
Salouha said that they were only able to walk for 10s of metres before they were suddenly exposed to intense gunfire, which targeted the two children, Ali and Saeed, in particular. The children then fell in front of them, their bodies covered in blood.
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6246/In-a-week,-Israeli-army-executes-13-children-in-and-near-Al-Shifa-Hospital
This includes footage of Palestinian fighters defending Al Shifa in the streets that surround the hospital with great courage and determination
Jon Elmer brings the latest news and videos from the battle that has raged around the al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City.
Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, Ali Abunimah and Jon Elmer of The Electronic Intifada were joined by Abdaljawad Omar, a writer and lecturer at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank to discuss all the latest developments, on the day 173 livestream. You can watch the entire broadcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F64B2…
https://youtu.be/Jg4g1yR_oZo?si=Fuj08IYzWiVf2b1Z
Jon Elmer details the remarkable story of the West Bank resistance fighter Mujahed Barakat Mansour, who held off the Israeli military in the hills around Ramallah.
(Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, Ali Abunimah and Jon Elmer of The Electronic Intifada were joined by Abdaljawad Omar, a writer and lecturer at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank to discuss all the latest developments, on the day 173 livestream. You can watch the entire broadcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F64B2… )
https://youtu.be/S9B4HXIFkRY?si=hvWU1wNLxfoQQDVc
The current episode of “The Bottom Line” is an informative discussion between host Steve Clemons and Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch. The discussion includes comments on the report from the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories, and the response by Matthew Miller, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, saying that she “has a history of anti-Semitic comments” and that “the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” The episode runs 24 minutes. It is titled: “Biden’s ‘double talk’ on Gaza: Cynical election politics?”
The program is available as a podcast, or here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-bottom-line/2024/3/31/bidens-double-talk-on-gaza-cynical-election-politics