Gaza’s skies now oscillate between punishment and mercy, terror and relief, as U.S. aid is dropped among its besieged population alongside U.S.-made bombs.
Canada will resume funding to UNRWA and pay a pledge of $25m due in April. In Gaza, another Palestinian child dies of thirst and hunger in the north, bringing the number of children to die from malnutrition to 18.
The “flour massacre” marked a new phase in Israel’s starving of northern Gaza when the army opened fire on crowds waiting for aid trucks. “Our lives must have become so cheap for so many people to die this way,” a witness told Mondoweiss.
U.S. airdrops of food and aid in Gaza have been described as “performative BS” that “fools no one.” Meanwhile, Hamas’s delegation has arrived in Cairo for ceasefire talks as Ramadan is due to start next Sunday.
Israeli soldiers have photographed themselves posing with the lingerie of Palestinian women they have displaced or killed in Gaza. They join a long line of conquest images, from Abu Ghraib images to the spectacle of Jim Crow-era lynchings.
UNRWA says that the famine in northern Gaza can be avoided if more food convoys are allowed in, but Israel continues to hold up over 2000 aid trucks. Meanwhile, Netanyahu reaffirms plans to invade Rafah, where 1.5 million Gazans have sought shelter.
“It is true that there are many people who prefer to flee and search for a safe place outside the Gaza Strip, but this is not the case for the majority of people…It is not easy to start life again away from a homeland that you love.”
A new Israeli Democracy Institute survey shows that 68% of Jewish Israelis oppose “the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents.”
Benjamin Netanyahu’s postwar plan would see Israel exerting direct control over a demilitarized Gaza Strip while permanently dismantling UNRWA and assigning “local officials” to govern civilian affairs.
Many Palestinians are fleeing Rafah ahead of Israel’s impending invasion, but when they return to their destroyed neighborhoods they still face bombardment. “We escaped death to walk into a different kind of death,” Jamila Eleywa tells Mondoweiss.