With reconstruction stalled in Gaza, boys as young as 14 are clearing the wreckage of destroyed homes by hand for as little as $10 a day. Often they are the breadwinners for their families and are forced to abandon their studies to work for survival.
The Gaza Board of Peace is the latest attempt by colonial powers to use “development” plans to manage, fragment, and dispossess Palestinians. Palestinians have resisted these plans in the past and continue to do so today.
Nearly three years after a November 2023 Israeli airstrike buried them in the rubble, Gaza families recovered 112 of their dead and laid them to rest, including a mother still embracing her three children.
An Israeli strike destroyed two major medicine warehouses in Deir al-Balah, the latest Israeli attack on Gaza’s failing health system. Gaza’s Health Ministry says medicine shortages are now killing three cancer patients a day.
Hours after Donald Trump announced a “historic” agreement for disarming Hamas and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Israel attacked Gaza, killing 19. Palestinians weren’t surprised. “We don’t trust Israel, and we don’t trust America,” said one resident.
Amid an alleged ceasefire, Israel continues massacring Palestinians and stealing land in Gaza. The ongoing violence is not accidental: it is a political necessity for any Israeli government in power.
The church’s action follows resolutions by two other religious bodies at their summer meetings — the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the American Academy of Religion — both of which named Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide.
I have worked as a journalist in Gaza for nearly a decade, and I believe the Committee to Protect Journalists’ decision to remove the names of Palestinians killed while reporting from its records is yet another attempt to silence Gaza. It will fail.
Diana Abu Daraz and her 1-year-old daughter, Siwar, were killed in an Israeli strike on the Mawasi “safe zone” in Khan Younis. Survivors say the Israeli army didn’t wait after giving them notice of the strike, dropping bombs on the tent city.
Israeli soldiers shot three-year-old Rayyan Abu al-Ajeen in his father’s arms and mocked his father’s pleas as he cried for his dying son. The father says they were in the part of Gaza designated as “safe” for civilians during the “ceasefire.”