Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah despite the international red line. Meanwhile, the U.S. has sanctioned two illegal settler outposts in the West Bank for the first time.
Israel’s Knesset approved a $19.4 billion budget increase to fund the ongoing Israeli genocide, while the Biden administration has indicated that it will greenlight the targeting of “high-value Hamas targets in and underneath Rafah.”
At least eighteen children have died in Gaza from malnutrition, while deaths by starvation have risen to 23. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that Biden’s proposed floating pier would take two months and 1000 U.S. troops to build.
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.
UNRWA’s chief says dismantling the agency is “short-sighted” and will “sow the seeds of hatred, resentment, and future conflict.” Israeli forces fire at Palestinians seeking aid and food in Gaza City and detain others in southern Gaza.
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.
The situation in Gaza grows worse by the day as Palestinians are starved and Israeli forces turn hospitals into morgues. In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, tensions rise as Ramadan approaches.
Haaretz is widely considered Israel’s leading liberal news source, but it has published and promoted some of the most harmful propaganda in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
A new Senate spending bill supported by the Biden administration would rush $14 billion in military aid to Israel while blocking funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.