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International Women’s Day
Codepink March/Rally for Gaza!
Saturday, March 9, 2024, 12:00 Noon
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA
Gather at Welcome Center Plaza
Southeast end of GG Bridge at 11:30 A.M.
March begins on Eastern Walkway at 12:00 Noon
Rally at Welcome Center Plaza after the march at 1:30 P.M.
Optional: Bring food to share after the rally to celebrate International Women’s Day and our shared commitment for Global Peace Everywhere, from Gaza to Ukraine!
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Art Against Imprisonment Presents
A Benefit for a New Oakland Mural-
Sumud: Resistance Until Liberation
A collaboration between artists and activists that explores and confronts the deep interconnections between the brutal systems of imprisonment in the U.S. and Palestine.
Caroline Davis on Saxophone
Satya Chima, CCWP
Opium Sabbah, Oakland Jericho Movement
Sunday, March 10, 2:00 P.M.
Eastside Cultural Center
2277 International Blvd., Oakland
For more information contact:
artagainstimprisonment@gmail.com
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See Gaza Strip Access Restrictions.pdf since 2007 at:
** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”
Source: mondoweiss.net
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We are all Palestinian
Listen and view this beautiful, powerful, song by Mistahi Corkill on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwuhbLczgI
Greetings,
Here is my new song and music video, We are all Palestinian, linked below. If you find it inspiring, please feel free to share with others. All the best!
Mistahi
We are all Palestinian
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Labor for Palestine
Thousands of labor representatives marched Saturday, December 16, in Oakland, California. —Photo by Leon Kunstenaar
Video of December 16th Labor rally for Palestine.
Bay Area Unions and Workers Rally and March For Palestine In Oakland
https://youtu.be/L9k79honqIA
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
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Just Like The Nazis Did
By David Rovics
After so many decades of patronage
By the world’s greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
After crushing so many uprisings
Now they’re making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their Final Solution
Just like the Nazis did
They forced refugees into ghettos
Then set the ghettos aflame
Murdering writers and poets
And so no one remember their names
Killing their entire families
The grandparents, women and kids
The uncles and cousins and babies
Just like the Nazis did
They’re bombing all means of sustaining
Human life at all
See the few shelters remaining
Watch as the tower blocks fall
They’re bombing museums and libraries
In order to get rid
Of any memory of the people who lived here
Just like the Nazis did
They’re saying these people are animals
And they should all end up dead
They’re sending soldiers into schools
And shooting children in the head
The rhetoric is identical
And with Gaza off the grid
They’ve already said what happens next
Just like the Nazis did
Words of war for domestic consumption
And lies for all the rest
To try to distract our attention
Among their enablers in the West
Because Israel needs their imports
To keep those pallets on the skids
They need fuel and they need missiles
Just like the Nazis did
They’re using food as a weapon
They’re using water that way, too
They’re trying to kill everyone in Gaza
Or make them flee, it’s true
As the pundits talk of “after the war”
Like with the Fall of Madrid
The victors are preparing for more
Just like the Nazis did
But it’s after the conquest’s complete
If history is any guide
When the occupying army
Is positioned to decide
When disease and famine kills
Whoever may have hid
Behind the ghetto walls
Just like the Nazis did
All around the world
People are trying to tell
There's a genocide unfolding
Ringing alarm bells
But with such a powerful axis
And so many lucrative bids
They know who wants their money
Just like the Nazis did
There's so many decades of patronage
For the world's greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
They're crushing so many uprisings
Now they're making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their final solution
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
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Free Julian Assange
Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange
Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count. We are to believe we are represented in this country. This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well. Please take this action as often as you can:
Find your representatives:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Leave each of your representatives a message individually to:
· Drop the charges against Julian Assange
· Speak out publicly against the indictment and
· Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges:
202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard
Leave a message on the White House comment line to
Demand Julian Assange be pardoned:
202-456-1111
Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST
Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:
202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Leonard Peltier Update - Not One More Year
Coleman 1 has gone on permanent lockdown.
The inmates are supposed to be allowed out two hours a day. I have not heard from Leonard since the 18th.
The last time I talked to Leonard, he asked where his supporters were. He asked me if anyone cared about these lockdowns.
Leonard lives in a filthy, cold cell 22 to 24 hours a day. He has not seen a dentist in ten years. I asked him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, is your pain level at 13?” He said, “Something like that.” Leonard is a relentless truth-teller. He does not like it when I say things that do not make sense mathematically.
That is why Leonard remains imprisoned. He will not lie. He will not beg, grovel, or denounce his beliefs.
Please raise your voice. Ask your representatives why they have abdicated their responsibility to oversee the Bureau of Prisons and ensure they adhere to Constitutional law.
Uhuru, The African People’s Socialist Party, has stepped up for Leonard. NOT ONE MORE YEAR.
Fight for Free Speech – YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM8GDeGv90E
Leonard should not have spent a day in prison. Click “LEARN” on our website to find out what really happened on that reservation:
www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Mr. Kevin Cooper
C-65304. 4-EB-82
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94974
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Most of the aid trucks bound for northern Gaza were stopped along the way.
By Hiba Yazbek and Adam Rasgon, Mar. 4, 2024
"Ms. Ikrayyem’s brother Muhammed, 30, who is deaf and mute, slept on the beach for three days awaiting the aid trucks, she said. But after dodging bullets on Thursday, he managed to come home with a 25-kilogram bag of flour that 50 relatives sheltering together were now rationing and mixing with animal feed to make it last as long as possible, she added."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/04/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Palestinians carried the bodies of people who died in a chaotic scene surrounding aid trucks in Gaza City on Thursday. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Days after an aid delivery in Gaza turned into a deadly disaster, another convoy coordinated by the Israeli military failed to deliver most of its aid to desperate people in the north, Izzat Aqel, a Palestinian businessman involved in the initiative, said on Sunday.
Mr. Aqel, who was also involved in the aid delivery operation with the Israeli military that turned bloody last Thursday, said that 16 trucks carrying supplies were sent to the north on Saturday, but that only one made it to Gaza City. The rest, he said, had been swarmed and emptied in the Nuseirat neighborhood in central Gaza.
Fifteen more trucks set out for the north on Sunday evening and were slated to enter the area via an inland north-south road, he said.
The renewed missions — part of a newly hatched partnership with local businessmen — showed that Israel was pressing ahead with efforts to bring aid to northern Gaza, even after scores of hungry Palestinians were killed in the chaotic melee on Thursday.
It was not clear if the army was making significant changes to prevent a repeat of Thursday’s events. Representatives for the Israeli army referred questions about the effort to COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza.
COGAT did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The agency wrote on social media that 277 trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, which it said was the highest single-day total since the start of the war. But it was unclear how many of those trucks reached northern Gaza.
The convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended in devastation. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials and witnesses offered sharply divergent accounts of the chaos. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces, and doctors at Gaza hospitals said that most of the casualties were from gunfire. Israeli officials said most of the victims were trampled in a crush of people trying to seize the cargo, although they acknowledged that troops had opened fire at members of the crowd who, the military said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”
The operation came as hunger and starvation continue to stalk the north of Gaza at extreme levels, prompting the United Nations to warn of a looming famine. The World Food Program and other U.N. agencies have said that they were no longer able to deliver aid to the north, citing civilian attempts to rush aid trucks, Israeli restrictions on convoys, and the poor condition of roads damaged during the war. On Saturday, the United States conducted its first airdrop of aid, although U.S. officials have said such operations cannot move supplies at the same scale as convoys.
The Gaza health ministry said on Sunday that 15 children have died in recent days from what it described as malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. The ministry did not provide further details about the deaths, but it said that the hospital had run out of oxygen and fuel to power generators and was barely operating with very limited supplies. The ministry added in a statement that the lives of six other children in the intensive care unit were in danger from malnutrition and dehydration.
Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Sunday that one in six children under the age of 2 in Gaza was acutely malnourished.
“These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable,” she said of the reported deaths at Kamal Adwan.
Driven by hunger, desperate Gazans were still gathering at the same spot where many deaths were reported on Thursday, in hopes that more aid would come.
“Even after the massacre people are still going to Al-Rashid Street every day and will continue to until they secure any aid,” Ghada Ikrayyem, a 23-year-old resident of northern Gaza, said. “We expected people to be scared after what happened on Thursday, but we were surprised to see that even more people were going there now.”
Ms. Ikrayyem’s brother Muhammed, 30, who is deaf and mute, slept on the beach for three days awaiting the aid trucks, she said. But after dodging bullets on Thursday, he managed to come home with a 25-kilogram bag of flour that 50 relatives sheltering together were now rationing and mixing with animal feed to make it last as long as possible, she added.
“He came home terrified, he saw dead bodies everywhere,” Ms. Ikrayyem said in a telephone interview on Sunday. But despite narrowly escaping death on Thursday, Muhammed has returned to the same spot every day since, hoping to secure another bag of flour, she added.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.
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2) U.N. aid agency researchers say Gazans were abused in Israeli detention.
By Monika Pronczuk and Patrick Kingsley, Mar. 4, 2024
Palestinian detainees [blindfolded] being transported by Israeli soldiers in November. Credit...Yossi Zeliger/Reuters
An unpublished investigation by the main United Nations agency for Palestinian affairs accuses Israel of abusing hundreds of Gazans captured during the war with Hamas, according to a copy of the report reviewed by The New York Times.
The report was compiled by UNRWA, the U.N. agency that is itself at the center of an investigation after accusations that at least 30 of its 13,000 employees participated in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The authors of the report allege that the detainees, including at least 1,000 civilians later released without charge, were held at three military sites inside Israel.
The report said the detainees included males and females whose ages ranged from 6 to 82. Some, the report said, died in detention.
The document includes accounts from detainees who said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.
The draft document describes “a range of ill-treatment that Gazans of all ages, abilities and backgrounds have reported facing in makeshift detention facilities in Israel.” Such treatment, the report concluded, “was used to extract information or confessions, to intimidate and humiliate, and to punish.”
The report is based on interviews with more than 100 of the 1,002 detainees who were released back to Gaza by mid-February. The document estimates that 3,000 other Gazans remain in Israeli detention without access to lawyers. Its findings echo those of several Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, as well as separate investigations by two U.N. special rapporteurs, all of whom allege similar abuses inside Israeli detention centers.
The Times was unable to corroborate the entirety of the allegations in the report. But parts of it match the testimony of former Gazan detainees interviewed by The Times.
Israel has said that the detentions were necessary to find and interrogate Hamas members after the group’s attack on southern Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people and led to the abduction of some 250 others, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel says that hundreds of Hamas members have been captured.
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3) ‘We have reached a stage of hunger like never before.’
By Nader Ibrahim and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Mar. 4, 2024
Some Gazan families were walking south on Sunday, saying it was too hard to get food aid in the north. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Some residents of northern Gaza have been walking toward the southern part of the enclave, saying they were trying to find food because they had nothing to eat, video shot by The Associated Press showed.
One father, Omar Ahmad, carried his daughter on his shoulders as he walked on the main coastal road on Sunday. “We have reached a stage of hunger like never before,” he said. “When my daughter wants to eat in the morning, I can’t provide her with food or drink.”
Aid officials say that the northern part of Gaza has been hardest hit by restrictions on food and other essential items imposed as part of Israel’s war against Hamas. Israeli officials say they are pressing ahead with efforts to get more aid to northern Gaza.
In one measure of the desperation in the north, more than 100 Palestinians were killed early on Thursday after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials offered sharply divergent accounts of what had happened. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled in the crowd, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had opened fire at some who, the army said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”
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4) In second airdrop over Gaza, the U.S. delivers 36,800 ready-to-eat meals.
By Helene Cooper, Mar. 5, 2024
Aid packages over northern Gaza on Tuesday. Credit...Nicolas Garcia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United States made a second round of airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as the Biden administration continued its efforts to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory.
U.S. Air Force cargo planes dropped 36,800 ready-to-eat meals, in a joint operation with the Jordanian Air Force, “to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday. It said that army troops trained in aerial delivery were part of the airdrop, and that it was planning more such missions.
The operation on Tuesday followed a first round of airdrops on Saturday, two days after more than 100 Palestinians were killed as Israeli forces opened fire around a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza. Doctors at Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties were from gunfire. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled as they tried to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had fired on some people who they said had threatened them.
After the convoy killings, President Biden said the United States would find new ways to get aid to Palestinians in desperate need because of Israel’s five-month military campaign to destroy Hamas. Only a trickle of aid has been reaching northern Gaza via land, but aid groups have criticized airdrops as ineffective. The amount of aid delivered by four planes in a French-Jordanian airdrop last week was much less than a single truckload.
Although Mr. Biden has implored Israel, which has largely sealed its border with Gaza, to clear the way for more aid deliveries, the demand for food, water and medicine there remains huge. Those conditions have put Mr. Biden under political pressure to do more to help the Palestinians, even as the U.S. supplies Israel with military hardware.
Despite his frustrations with Israel’s political leadership, Mr. Biden has not threatened to put limits on American military aid to the country.
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5) UNRWA head says Israel is targeting the agency in a ‘deliberate and concerted campaign.’
By Victoria Kim, Mar. 5, 2024
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for UNRWA, in Geneva last month. He warned on Monday that the worst might be yet to come in Gaza if humanitarian services collapse. Credit...Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA, via Shutterstock
The head of the United Nations agency providing aid for Palestinians in Gaza has said that his organization was being targeted with a “deliberate and concerted campaign” to undermine its operations when its services are most needed.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, spoke on Monday before the U.N. General Assembly in New York in some of his strongest remarks in defense of the agency since Israel made public allegations that a dozen of its employees had participated in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks. He warned that the worst might be yet to come if humanitarian services collapse.
Israel’s accusations in January prompted 16 donor countries, including the United States, to suspend about $450 million in funding. Mr. Lazzarini said the agency faced a financial crisis while functioning “hand-to-mouth” and would soon be unable to serve millions of people dependent on it for food, shelter and basic medical care.
Mr. Lazzarini noted that Israel made the accusations as UNRWA employees had provided testimony in a case before the International Court of Justice about the suffering in Gaza. The submissions were followed by a “corresponding increase in attacks against the agency,” he said.
The court, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, has ordered Israel to take immediate steps to facilitate the aid Gaza desperately needs and is weighing whether Israel has committed genocide in its war in Gaza.
“Attacks against UNRWA seek to eliminate its role in protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees and acting as a witness to their plight,” Mr. Lazzarini said.
Israel has a long history of friction with UNRWA, which was founded in 1949 and is one of the oldest U.N. agencies. Some Israelis say its very existence perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by preventing Palestinians from setting down roots elsewhere in the Middle East as they hope to return to their former homes in what is now Israel.
Israel has claimed that at least 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff is affiliated with Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and that what it says are employees’ links to Hamas fundamentally compromise the agency. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel laid out a proposal last month for Gaza’s postwar governance with his war cabinet, as part of which he said UNRWA should be closed and replaced “with responsible international aid agencies.”
Last week’s disastrous aid convoy that Israel helped to organize highlighted the steep challenge for other groups trying to provide services in Gaza, where order is virtually nonexistent after five months of war.
Mr. Lazzarini said he had not received any additional information to back up Israel’s accusations after they were initially presented to him in January, but that the agency had immediately terminated the staff members’ contracts because of the gravity of the allegation.
Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, told reporters on Monday that the United States would wait for the outcome of the U.N. investigations into Israel’s allegations before deciding whether to resume funding for UNRWA. The Biden administration remains extremely concerned for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, he said.
“Parents are facing impossible choices about how to feed their children,” he said. “Many don’t know where the next meal will come from, or if it will come at all.”
“The situation is simply intolerable,” he said.
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6) Only a trickle of aid reaches northern Gaza, where the threat of famine looms.
By Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem, Mar. 5, 2024
Devastation on Sunday in Gaza City, the intended destination for trucks delivering desperately needed food. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Only a trickle of aid managed on Monday to reach the desperately hungry people of the northern Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face a growing threat of famine after nearly five months of fighting and blockade.
Fifteen trucks were dispatched overnight to northern Gaza as part of a relief effort involving Palestinian businessmen, according to COGAT, the Israeli military body that regulates aid to the Palestinians. But at least five of those were looted along the way, according to an Israeli official who was not authorized to comment publicly, and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
It was unclear exactly how many of the trucks reached their intended destination, Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Izzat Aqel, a Palestinian businessman involved in the operation, said he aimed to send an additional 30 trucks with food relief to northern Gaza on Monday night.
Aid officials have warned that Palestinians in Gaza could be on the brink of famine unless relief is substantially stepped up, with over 500,000 people already facing a dire lack of food. One in six children under the age of 2 in Gaza is acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said visits to hospitals in the north by agency officials — the first since early October — found severe levels of malnutrition and “children dying of starvation.”
The dire conditions have prompted crowds of desperate people to swarm aid trucks and contributed to a bloody scene last week, when Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians who had gathered en masse around a convoy of trucks that had entered northern Gaza. Over 100 Palestinians were killed, many by gunfire, according to Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said the troops had fired on members of the crowd who approached them in a threatening manner and attributed most of the deaths to a stampede around the convoy.
In the wake of the bloodshed at the convoy, Israel has faced even greater international pressure to facilitate more aid for Gazans, particularly in the north.
“We’re continuing to push hard for more trucks and routes to get more aid to people,” President Biden wrote on social media on Monday. “There are no excuses. The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough — and nowhere fast enough.”
On Saturday, the United States made airdrops of food into Gaza for the first time.
Since October, Israel has told the population of northern Gaza, home to more than a million people, to flee the fighting and head southward. But many remained, though the Israeli invasion began in northern Gaza, and some who evacuated have returned.
The area has been devastated, with many buildings destroyed, and Israeli forces have effectively toppled much of Hamas’s governing structure, leaving widespread chaos and lawlessness.
All of the aid trucks entering Gaza have gone into the south, with only a few continuing on to the north.
Despite the spiraling humanitarian crisis, Israel has maintained tight restrictions on aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli officials have closely scrutinized trucks bearing desperately needed food and relief at the Kerem Shalom crossing, which aid officials have labeled one key bottleneck. Israel says the inspections are necessary to prevent aid from reaching Hamas, the Palestinian armed group which Israel seeks to root out in Gaza.
A day after Israeli officials said 277 trucks — an unusually large number — had been allowed into Gaza over the previous 24 hours, Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said 140 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Monday.
The spike in relief entering showed “when there’s a political will, there’s a way,” she said, but declined to say whether it meant that Israel had loosened its restrictions. The increase in aid shipments was still far beneath what was needed to mitigate the sickness and hunger menacing many Gazans, she added.
U.N. officials have said the current system must be overhauled in order to mitigate the unfolding disaster. Both UNRWA and the World Food Program have suspended their operations in northern Gaza, citing both Israeli refusals to authorize convoys and their inability to protect cargoes from being seized by desperate Gazans amid the anarchy.
In conversations with their Israeli counterparts, U.N. officials have agitated for Israel to open up a crossing that would allow them to ferry aid directly into northern Gaza, avoiding the perilous southern routes, Jaime McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian chief in Jerusalem, told reporters last month.
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7) Palestinians were ‘completely traumatized’ after Israeli detention, aid agency’s chief says.
By Monika Pronczuk, Mar. 5, 2024
Israeli troops detaining Palestinian men during a raid in Amari, near Ramallah in the West Bank, on Monday. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees confirmed Monday that hundreds of Palestinians had reported abuse under Israeli detention, responding to a question about an unpublished investigation it had conducted that was first reported on by The New York Times.
“We have seen these people coming back from detention,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told reporters. Most of them were “completely traumatized by the ordeal they have gone through,” he added.
Palestinians interviewed by UNRWA reported a “broad range of ill-treatment” from the Israeli soldiers, Mr. Lazzarini said, including being forced to strip naked, verbal and psychological abuse, threats of electrocution, sleep deprivation, extreme noise and the use of dogs to intimidate people.
“We have indeed an internal report about their experiences,” Mr. Lazzarini said, adding that it had been shared with human rights groups.
UNRWA staff members have also been among the detainees, the agency said in a separate statement on Monday. It said they reported “torture, severe ill-treatment, abuse and sexual exploitation” while under detention and interrogation, without providing details.
Some said that, under torture and ill-treatment, they were forced to give false confessions “in response to questioning about relations between UNRWA and Hamas and involvement in the Oct. 7 attack against Israel,” according to the agency. UNRWA is itself at the center of an investigation after Israel alleged that at least 30 of its 13,000 employees participated in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The unpublished report, which was seen by The Times, includes accounts from detainees who said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month. Some, the report said, died in detention.
When presented with the findings of the report by The Times, the Israeli military said in a statement that some detainees had died in detention, including those who had pre-existing illnesses and wounds, without giving more details. It said every death was being investigated by the military police. The military said all mistreatment was “absolutely prohibited” and strongly denied any allegation of sexual abuse, adding that all “concrete complaints regarding inappropriate behavior are forwarded to the relevant authorities for review.”
In a separate report released Monday, the United Nations said it found signs that sexual violence was committed in multiple locations during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That report was a result of the U.N.’s deployment of a team of experts to Israel and the West Bank, led by Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict. The team said it also heard accounts of sexual violence against Palestinians that implicated Israeli security forces and settlers.
Palestinian officials and civil society representatives, it said, told the U.N. team of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians in detention, including the increased use of various forms of sexual violence.”
The team asked Israel’s government to give access to other U.N. bodies so they could investigate those allegations. The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, said, “Israel rejects the report’s call to investigate Palestinian claims regarding ‘sexual violence by Israeli elements.’”
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8) ‘We need a cease-fire,’ Biden says.
By Michael D. Shear, Hwaida Saad and Andrea Kannapell, Mar. 6, 2024
President Biden said Tuesday that talks on a possible six-week cease-fire in Gaza are “in the hands of Hamas right now.” He spoke just before a Hamas leader in Lebanon appeared to reject a proposed deal the United States is backing, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released only after a cease-fire was in place and Israeli forces have withdrawn.
Mr. Biden said that the Israelis had “been cooperating” in the indirect negotiations, which are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, and that “a rational offer” had been made.
“We will know in a couple of days what’s going to happen,” Mr. Biden said as he returned to the White House from a weekend in Camp David, where he was preparing for his State of the Union speech, scheduled for Thursday. “We need a cease-fire.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks echoed comments made earlier in the day by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and on Monday by Vice President Kamala Harris regarding their meetings with a member of Israel’s war cabinet, Benny Gantz, who was in Washington on a visit that was not coordinated with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The urgency for a breakthrough in talks has grown as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan approaches, with all sides treating the holiday as a deadline. Ramadan, a month of prayer, introspection and dusk-to-dawn fasting, is the one of the most important times of the Muslim calendar. A continued Israeli military onslaught during the holiday could further inflame Arab-Israeli tensions.
The war is now approaching the five-month mark. Large parts of Gaza are in ruins, more than 30,000 people have been killed by the count of Gazan health officials, and severe hunger, bordering on starvation, is affecting hundreds of thousands.
Still, there was little sign Hamas, the armed group that governs Gaza, was ready to move toward a compromise. In Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday, a senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, repeated the group’s demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent cease-fire in place before it would release Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
“The security and safety of our people will not be achieved except with a permanent cease-fire and withdrawal from every inch of the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Hamdan said. “A prisoner exchange cannot take place before all of this is achieved.”
Mr. Hamdan said that Hamas had made its position clear to the Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
At a meeting with Mr. Blinken, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, said that Qatar and its partners would persist “to make sure that this deal happens, despite whoever is trying to undermine the efforts of bringing peace.”
“We want to see an end of the humanitarian suffering; we want to see the hostages back with their families,” he said on Tuesday.
Before the Hamas news conference, Mr. Biden was asked whether a cease-fire was possible before the beginning of Ramadan, which has often been accompanied by heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions over access to a major holy site in Jerusalem.
“There’s got to be a cease-fire,” Mr. Biden said, adding that if a deal is not reached by Ramadan to pause the fighting “it’s going to be very dangerous.”
He added, “So, we are trying very, very hard to get a cease-fire.”
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9) The U.S. makes a second airdrop but says it will not send troops into Gaza help the aid effort.
By Helene Cooper, Mar. 6, 2024
Palestinians in Gaza City scrambled for boxes of supplies airdropped by the United States, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Credit...Nicolas Garcia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Screenshot)
The United States made a second round of airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as the Biden administration continued its efforts to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory.
U.S. Air Force cargo planes dropped 36,800 ready-to-eat meals, in a joint operation with the Jordanian Air Force, “to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday.
It said that army troops trained in aerial delivery were part of the airdrop, and that it was planning more such missions. However, the Pentagon said on Tuesday that the United States did not intend to send its troops into Gaza to strengthen the aid distribution process.
“At this time there are no plans to put U.S. forces on the ground in Gaza,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a news conference.
Some aid experts and humanitarian groups have criticized the American airdrops as insufficient and largely symbolic, given the scale of the hunger problem facing Gaza after five months of war. Cargo planes can only move a fraction of the food a convoy of trucks can deliver, experts say, and a better solution would be for the United States to persuade Israel to open more border crossings and speed up inspections.
The operation on Tuesday followed a first round of airdrops on Saturday, two days after more than 100 Palestinians were killed as Israeli forces opened fire around a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza.
Doctors at Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties were from gunfire. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled as they tried to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had fired on some people who they said had threatened them.
After the convoy killings, President Biden said the United States would find new ways to get aid to Palestinians in desperate need because of Israel’s five-month military campaign to destroy Hamas. Only a trickle of aid has been reaching northern Gaza via land, but aid groups have criticized airdrops as ineffective. The amount of aid delivered by a French plane in an airdrop last week was much less than a single truckload.
Although Mr. Biden has implored Israel, which has largely sealed its border with Gaza, to clear the way for more aid deliveries, the demand for food, water and medicine there remains huge. Those conditions have put Mr. Biden under political pressure to do more to help the Palestinians, even as the United States supplies Israel with military hardware.
Despite his frustrations with Israel’s political leadership, Mr. Biden has not threatened to put limits on American military aid to the country.
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10) Starbucks workers are being laid off in the Mideast as boycotts hurt sales.
By Liz Alderman, Mar. 6, 2024
A Starbucks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2022. Credit...Budrul Chukrut/LightRocket, via Getty Images
Southeast Asia are losing significant business amid boycotts linked to the Israel-Hamas war, and at least one has started laying off employees.
Alshaya Group, a Kuwait-based franchise operator that owns the rights to operate Starbucks in the Middle East, confirmed on Tuesday that it planned to cut 2,000 jobs across the region “as a result of the continually challenging trading conditions over the last six months.”
Since the Israel-Hamas war began, Starbucks has been forced to deflect perceptions that the company has supported and even funded the Israeli government and the Israeli military. It issued a lengthy statement in October describing the claims as false, but that has not cooled the calls for boycotts in numerous regions.
Alshaya Group, which operates over 1,900 Starbucks shops in the Middle East and North Africa that employ 19,000 workers, said in a statement that it would provide affected employees and their families with “the support they need.”
The cuts added to drama playing out in the United States, where Starbucks management and a union of Starbucks workers sued each other after the union expressed solidarity with Palestinians.
Boycotts have also been hurting sales at Starbucks franchises in Malaysia, a majority Muslim country. Berjaya Food Berhad, a Malaysia-based investment company that develops and operates restaurant and cafe chains across Southeast Asia, reported last month a 38 percent slump in quarterly sales as consumers turned away from its 400 Starbucks stores. The company’s stock has fallen over 20 percent since early October.
The company’s founder, Vincent Tan, appealed to customers in Malaysia to stop the boycotts in an interview with reporters on Monday, saying it was mainly hurting Malaysians.
“I think all those who are boycotting Starbucks Malaysia should know that it is a Malaysia-owned company,” he said. “We don’t even have one foreigner working in the head office. In the stores, 80 to 85 percent of employees are Muslims. This boycott doesn’t benefit anyone.”
The website for Starbucks in Malaysia issued a blog post saying that the company had no political agenda and did not use profits to fund any government or military operations. “It is important to note that Starbucks does not have any stores in Israel,” the post added, noting that the company ended a partnership in Israel in 2003. A similar post was published on the site for Starbucks in the Middle East.
In January, Starbucks cut its global annual sales forecast as the Israel-Hamas war hurt the business of its licensees in the Middle East. The company’s chief executive, Laxman Narasimhan, said the company had suffered “a significant impact on traffic and sales in the region” because of protests and boycotts. He said that the effects could also be felt in the United States, “driven by misperceptions about our position.”
Demands from some people for the company to take a stance on the war can be seen on social media and increasingly outside Starbucks stores in the wake of the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October. In its statement at the time, Starbucks denied that the company or its former chief executive, Howard Schultz, provided financial support to Israel.
Starbucks said it would continue to grow its business in the Middle East, including working with Alshaya Group in developing plans for the region. But those plans appear to be challenged, at least for now.
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11) Truce talks have been an exhausting tangle of emotions for Gazans.
By Adam Rasgon and Abu Bakr Bashir reporting from Jerusalem and London, Mar. 6, 2024
Palestinians living in tents in Rafah, Gaza, are hoping for a cease-fire and an end to the war so they can return to their homes. Credit...Reuters (Screenshot)
When President Biden suggested last week that a cease-fire was imminent, Khalil el-Halabi was elated.
Mr. Halabi, a 70-year-old retired U.N. official, paraded through a cluster of tents in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, delivering the news to people displaced by the war, prompting cheers and claps. But the joy didn’t last: The next morning, reports that gaps remained between Israel and Hamas brought him back down to earth.
“It’s a form of psychological torture,” Mr. Halabi said. “It’s unbearable. We’re told one day that the war is ending and then the opposite the next day.”
Palestinians in Gaza, whose lives may depend on a cease-fire, have followed news of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas with rapt attention. But a stream of conflicting reports has sent them on an exhausting emotional roller-coaster as they huddle in crowded apartments, tent cities and shelters.
The tension is especially acute in Rafah, which is densely packed with more than one million displaced people. Israel has repeatedly threatened to invade the city as it tries to root out the leadership of Hamas.
The United States is pressing for a cease-fire to be negotiated ahead of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month that begins in about a week. On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris said a deal was on the table for a cease-fire of at least six-weeks, one that would include the release of hostages held by militants in Gaza and the entry of a “significant” amount of aid. The U.S.-backed proposal is to exchange scores of Palestinian prisoners and detainees for 40 hostages in Gaza, officials say.
But the negotiations appear to be making little progress. Israel refused to send a delegation to talks in Cairo this week.
President Biden said Tuesday that cease-fire talks were “in the hands of Hamas right now,” and a Hamas leader in Lebanon appeared to publicly reject the deal, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released only after a cease-fire was in place and Israeli forces have withdrawn, a condition Israel has rejected. But the militant group signaled on Wednesday in a statement that it was still open to negotiations “until an agreement is reached that realizes our people’s interests and demands.”
Nidal Kuhail, 29, a resident of Gaza City who is sheltering in Rafah, said people were closely monitoring their phones and radios for updates on the negotiations, but were growing tired of waiting day after day without a breakthrough.
“We’re oscillating between being happy and then frustrated,” said Mr. Kuhail. “This seesawing in news reports has made the people incredibly confused.”
Those fluctuations have been going on for months, as a series of talks have led to no relief since a seven-day cease-fire in November.
In early February, when reports suggested that Hamas and Israel were nearing a deal, a celebration erupted in the Kuwait Specialty Hospital in Rafah, with people whistling and applauding, said Omar al-Najjar, a volunteer medical intern there.
“The atmosphere was upbeat,” said Mr. Najjar, 24. “People could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.” But the next morning, newer reports showed that the parties will still far from overcoming their differences, casting a depressed mood across the hospital, he said.
Mr. Najjar said hopes for a cease-fire had been dashed so frequently that many were no longer paying attention to the news. “People have completely lost hope,” he said.
Over the past couple of days, the saga played out again. Arabic news outlets reported “significant progress” only to speak of “difficulties” a day later.
Hazem Surour, 20, originally from northern Gaza, said he had stopped letting news reports get his hopes up after months of Israel and Hamas failing to achieve a deal.
“We seriously need something real, not news reports,” he said. “We can only be patient and pray.”
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12) Despite U.S. rebuke, Israel advances plans for more housing in West Bank settlements.
By Aaron Boxerman Reporting from Jerusalem, Mar. 6, 2024
Construction in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank last month. Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli government is moving ahead with plans for more than 3,400 new housing units in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a top minister said on Wednesday, shrugging off sharp condemnation of the plans by the Biden administration.
A key committee authorized zoning plans for the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim, Kedar and Efrat, according to the office of Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister. The committee voted to move most of the homes to an intermediate stage of the planning process, while others neared full approval, according to planning documents.
Roughly 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli military rules over roughly 2.7 million Palestinians. Much of the Israeli right believes Israel should control the West Bank in perpetuity, while Palestinians see the area as integral to their aspirations for an independent state.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry condemned the latest moves, saying they represent “an explicit call for the continuation of the spiral of violence and wars.”
Tensions have soared in the occupied West Bank since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted all-out war in Gaza. Over 400 Palestinians, including over 100 minors, have been killed in “conflict-related incidents” across the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of the war, according to the United Nations. Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested in mass Israeli detention campaigns intended to root out militants, according to the Israeli military.
Mr. Smotrich announced the decision to advance the housing plans in February after a Palestinian shooting attack there killed at least one Israeli, calling it “an appropriate Zionist response.” A longtime leader of the settler movement, Mr. Smotrich conditioned his entry into the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on receiving more control over construction in the West Bank.
At the time, the Biden administration strongly criticized the new settlement plans. Following Mr. Smotrich’s announcement, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called Israeli settlements “inconsistent with international law,” reversing a Trump-era policy backing them and reverting to a decades-old State Department legal finding.
“I have to say we’re disappointed in the announcement,” Mr. Blinken said in late February. “It’s been longstanding U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace.”
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13) Israel turned back an aid convoy headed for northern Gaza, a U.N. agency says.
By Anushka Patil, Mar. 6, 2024
Israeli soldiers moving toward the Gaza border on Tuesday. Credit...Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
The Israeli military turned back a convoy trying to take 200 tons of food into northern Gaza on Tuesday, a U.N. agency said, a day after United Nations officials said children in the territory were dying of starvation.
The World Food Program was attempting its first food delivery into northern Gaza since it said on Feb. 20 that it had to suspend operations in the region because of Israeli restrictions and a breakdown of civil order among hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
The convoy of 14 trucks waited for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint inside central Gaza on Tuesday before the Israeli military turned it away, W.F.P. said in a statement. It was rerouted and then was stopped by a “large crowd of desperate people who looted the food,” said the agency, which is part of the U.N.
The turning away of the convoy “was an operational decision by the forces on the ground,” Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, said on Wednesday.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the convoy. It was not clear where the trucks were when the aid was taken.
The organization’s deliveries to the north had already been largely halted for three weeks before the Feb. 20 announcement over safety concerns and what it called the absence of a functional system for coordinating with the Israeli military, which has maintained tight control over aid to Gaza.
At least 15 children in northern Gaza have died in recent days from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the territory’s health ministry.
On Monday, as part of a relief effort involving Palestinian businessmen, 15 trucks were dispatched to northern Gaza, but at least five were looted along the way, according to an Israeli official who was not authorized to comment publicly.
United Nations officials have called for the system for delivering aid to be overhauled, after saying for weeks that Israel was continuing to impose excessive delays at checkpoints, interfering with aid missions and outright denying access to northern Gaza as the humanitarian crisis there spiraled. On Tuesday, a group of U.N.-appointed experts called on Israel to “end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians,” and said it was concerned about “an entire civilian population suffering such unprecedented starvation, so quickly and completely.”
The Israeli military directed a request for comment on Tuesday’s convoy to COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, which did not immediately respond. The agency has previously denied that it was obstructing aid to Gaza, and Israeli officials have accused Hamas of seizing some supplies.
The World Health Organization said at least 10 of the deaths from malnutrition or dehydration happened at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which its teams were able to visit for the first time since early October over the weekend.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the leader of the W.H.O.’s sub-office in Gaza, Dr. Ahmed Dahir, said the team saw at least two other malnourished children at Kamal Adwan and that other patients and health care workers themselves were “barely surviving on one meal a day.”
Aaron Boxerman, Adam Rasgon and Adam Sella contributed reporting.
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