‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 290: Israel launches a new offensive on Khan Younis forcing thousands to again flee

Casualties 

• 39,006 + killed* and at least 89,818 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 28,903 Palestinians have been fully identified, and around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
• 578+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank including eastern Jerusalem. These include 138 children.**
• Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
• 682 Israeli soldiers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army since October 7.***

* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on July 22, 2024. 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 Palestinian Ministry of Health on July 19, this is the latest figure.

*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000 including at least 8,000 permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7, as of June 18.

Key Developments 

• Israel killed 172 Palestinians, and wounded 388 across Gaza since Thursday, July 18, raising the death toll since October 7 to 39,006 and the number of wounded to 89,818, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
• Israel launches a new invasion of Khan Younis, ordering residents to flee yet again, killing at least 40 in the early hours of Monday.
• Thousands of Palestinians flee eastern Khan Younis as Israel launches a new invasion.
• Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis says that they no longer have the capacity to treat more wounded.
• Yemen announces that the number of victims of Israel’s attack on Hodeida reached nine.
• ِYemen’s Ansar Allah leader Abdel Malek al-Houthi says that Israel should expect the group’s strikes “at any moment and without redlines,” following a Yemenite drone strike that hit Tel Aviv on Friday.
• Netanyahu is sending a negotiating team to Qatar, while the Israeli energy minister says a deal is expected to be reached in two weeks.
• Following the International Court of Justice ruling on the illegality of occupation, Netanyahu says that “Jews can’t be occupiers in their own land.”
• UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine Francesca Albanese says that Israeli settlers involved in violence against Palestinians have to be held accountable.
• The Israeli central command issued a military order allowing itself to demolish Palestinian buildings and ban new ones in area ‘B’ of the West Bank, where building and urbanization have been the domain of the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo Accords in 1993.
• Israeli settlers torch olive groves in the village of Madama and injure international solidarity activists and residents in the village of Qusra, both near Nablus, and beat a Palestinian family near Hebron.
• The World Health Organization says that poliovirus (variant 2) has been found in at least six wastewater samples in Gaza.
• UNICEF says that Israel’s killing of children in Palestine increased by 250% in comparison to last year, the rate of a child killed every two days.
• UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini says that Israeli forces opened fire at a UNRWA aid convoy on its way to Gaza.

Israel launches new offensive on Khan Younis, 40 killed so far as thousands more forced to flee

At least 40 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli air strikes in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, since the early hours of Monday, July 22, as the Israeli army launched a new surprise offensive on the city.

The new offensive targeted the eastern parts of Khan Younis, where around 400,000 people have been concentrated, including many families displaced multiple times since the beginning of Israel’s assault on the strip.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Monday afternoon that two of the remaining health centers in Khan Younis have gone out of service, as they are located in the eastern part of the city where the Israeli army ordered Palestinians to leave, significantly weakening the already-devastated health system in the city.

Also on Monday, the al-Nasser Hospital, the only remaining functioning hospital in Khan Younis, announced that it could no longer deal with the overwhelming number of wounded.

Israel had already invaded Khan Younis last December and withdrew in April, after destroying most of the city’s infrastructure. Palestinian rescue teams recovered hundreds of dead bodies from the streets of Khan Younis over the course of weeks following Israel’s withdrawal.

During its first invasion, the Israeli army raided the al-Nasser hospital last February, for ten days, forcing medical staff, patients, and civilians taking shelter in the hospital to leave. The staff returned to the hospital after Israel’s withdrawal and reactivated it, amid a severe lack of fuel for power generators, medicine, and medical equipment.

Israeli settlers ramp up attacks in West Bank after ICJ ruling on occupation

Israeli settlers attacked on Monday Palestinian residents and international solidarity activists at the village of Qusra, near Nablus, injuring a number of them, while another Israeli settler attack targeted the village of Madama near Nablus, where settlers set fire to olive tree groves, according to local sources. More settler attacks were reported in Hebron and in the north of Ramallah.

These attacks came a day after the International Court of Justice – ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and other territories occupied since 1967 is illegal.

The court ruled in response to an advisory opinion request by the UN General Assembly. The ruling included that Israel must withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory and compensate Palestinians for losses.

The ICJ ruling arrives at the heels of a series of Israeli moves to advance the annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank. In late June, Israel legalized five settler outposts, including three in the northern West Bank, where Israel had unilaterally disengaged in 2005, withdrawing settlers from the area. Last May, Israel revoked the 2005 disengagement law for the northern West Bank, allowing settlers to return to the evacuated outposts.

In June, Israel’s finance minister with powers over the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, was recorded saying that he had been transferring authorities over the West Bank from the army to government bodies under his control, in order to “prevent the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state without the government being accused of annexation.”

On Thursday, the Israeli army issued a military order allowing itself to control urban growth and construction in area ‘B’ of the West Bank, including the demolition of buildings and the banning of new ones. Urbanization and building in area ‘B’ of the West Bank has been a domain of the Palestinian Authority since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Israel has officially maintained the position that the Palestinian territories are temporarily “administered” until a negotiated agreement over them is reached with the Palestinians. However, Israel has continued to confiscate Palestinian land and build settlements since the Oslo Accords. In recent years, Israeli politicians, especially Netanyahu, have been promising to annex parts of the West Bank.

In response to the ICJ ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the ruling was made “of lies,” adding that “Jews can’t be occupiers in their own land.” On Monday, the EU’s foreign affairs representative, Joseph Borrell, responded by saying that you “can interpret history however you want, but we are talking about international law.”

“I will discuss again what we can do other than talking,” added Borrell. “We support the International Court of Justice and ask the Israelis not to continue building colonies.”

UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, said on her account on ‘X’ that “Violent settlers must be held accountable. As Israel has proven unwilling or unable to bring them to justice, other countries must do so.”

“One of the implications of the ICJ AO [Advisory Opinion] is that UN member states may now be under an obligation to disclose the list of their nationals residing in the oPt [occupied Palestinian territory], especially as they commit crimes against the illegally occupied population,” she added.