and
ARREST NETANYAHU FOR GENOCIDE!
Senator Laphonza Butler and Alex Padilla's offices
One Post St. (@Montgomery BART) and 333 Bush St.
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Please consider amplifying the new AFT4Palestine divestment campaign's launch tweet:
https://x.com/Aft4Palestine/status/1813973522995396761 (and follow us on social media too!)
We are already getting hit by the right-wing press and AFT leadership is getting thousands of emails (we have been told) so we need some grassroots help getting our campaign message out going into the AFT convention next week!
And if by any chance any of you will be at the AFT convention next week in Houston, please get in touch! We need volunteers to help with the floor campaign and we will also have a AFT4Palestine-ers meet up.
https://www.aft4palestine.org/take-action
Tell AFT: Divest from Genocide, Apartheid, & Scholasticide
The AFT currently holds only one bond of a foreign government in the form of an Israel Bond. Through its investment in Israel Bonds, our union is lending unrestricted funds to the Israeli government that can be used to fund any and all violence and human rights violations–with no guardrails. With resolution #34, we are asking AFT to support justice in Palestine by divesting from its Israel Bond.
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‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 286:
Casualties
· 38,848 + killed* and at least 89,459 wounded in the Gaza Strip. Among the dead, 28,428 have been fully identified. These include 7,779 children, 5466 women, and 2418 elderly people as of May 1. In addition, around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
· 576 + Palestinians 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 18, 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 17, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded according to declarations by the head of the Israeli army’s wounded association to Israel’s Channel 12 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.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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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.
U.S. Parole Commission Denies Leonard Peltier’s Request for Freedom; President Biden Should Grant Clemency
In response to the U.S. Parole Commission denying Leonard Peltier’s request for parole after a hearing on June 10, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, made the following statement:
“Continuing to keep Leonard Peltier locked behind bars is a human rights travesty. President Biden should grant him clemency and release him immediately. Not only are there ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of his trial, he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, is approaching 80 years old, and suffers from several chronic health problems.
“Leonard Peltier has been incarcerated for far too long. The parole commission should have granted him the freedom to spend his remaining years in his community and surrounded by loved ones.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness. We are now calling on President Biden, once again, to grant Leonard Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of mercy and justice.”
Background
· Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International joins Tribal Nations, Tribal Leaders, Members of Congress, former FBI agents, Nobel Peace Prize winners and former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, whose office handled Peltier’s prosecution and appeal, in urging his release.
· Parole was also rejected at Peltier’s last hearing in 2009. Due to his age, this was likely the last opportunity for parole.
· A clemency request is pending before President Joe Biden. President Biden has committed opens in a new tab to grant clemency/commutation of sentences on a rolling basis rather than at the end of his term, following a review of requests by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice.
Amnesty International has examined Peltier’s case extensively for many years, sent observers to his trial in 1977, and long campaigned on his behalf. Most recently, Amnesty International USA sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission urging the commission to grant him parole.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-parole-commission-denies-leonard-peltiers-request-for-freedom-president-biden-should-grant-clemency/
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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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Boris Kagarlitsky is in Prison!
On February 13, the court overturned the previous decision on release and sent Boris Kagarlitsky to prison for five years.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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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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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:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
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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Daniel Hale UPDATE:
In February Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale was transferred from the oppressive maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois to house confinement. We celebrate his release from Marion. He is laying low right now, recovering from nearly 3 years in prison. Thank goodness he is now being held under much more humane conditions and expected to complete his sentence in July of this year. www.StandWithDaniel Hale.org
More Info about Daniel:
“Drone Whistleblower Subjected To Harsh Confinement Finally Released From Prison”
https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/
“I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?” by Daniel Hale
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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) Images appeared to show a separate strike by Israel’s military near emergency vehicles.
By Riley Mellen, July 15, 2024
“Both experts also said the Civil Defense vehicles would have been clearly visible to the soldiers launching the strikes. Mr. Bryant said that, in the Israeli military’s calculus, ‘any Hamas targets carry enough military necessity that any civilian loss is considered proportional.’ In the aftermath of the two blasts, videos captured people carrying dozens of dead and injured away from the scene, some of them in bright orange Gaza Civil Defense vests. An aerial image of the first strike published by the Israeli military and analyzed by The Times indicates the resulting crater was close to 60 feet in diameter, indicative of a 2,000-pound bomb.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/15/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas
A Gaza Civil Defense vehicle with shrapnel damage after an Israeli airstrike on Saturday. Credit...The New York Times
The Israeli military launched an additional airstrike near emergency responders during a deadly barrage on a villa in Gaza this weekend aimed at the top Hamas military commander in the territory, videos and photographs reviewed by The New York Times show.
After several Israeli munitions hit the grounds of the villa in the Al-Mawasi area Saturday morning, at least one additional, smaller missile hit a busy street outside the compound as emergency service workers were responding. It exploded directly in front of two vehicles clearly marked as belonging to Gaza Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, spraying them with shrapnel and apparently killing and injuring first responders.
The Israeli military said that it had “struck military targets of the utmost significance” but that the strike “will be examined.”
Israeli officials said the initial strike, which targeted the Hamas commander Muhammad Deif, hit the compound with at least five precision-guided missiles. The blast near the rescue workers was nearly 100 yards away from the entrance to the compound, suggesting a separate strike.
In comparison with the first strike, which destroyed a building and buried Palestinians inside an enormous crater, the second was significantly smaller. Videos show the strike and its immediate aftermath from three different angles. All the videos show a plume of white smoke rising from a street crowded with rescuers, bystanders and people injured in the first strike.
In two of the videos, a loud whooshing sound can be heard before the explosion, indicating an airstrike, rather than an artillery blast or an explosion on the ground, said Wes Bryant, a retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant who was responsible for choosing targets and assessing civilian casualties during the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Bryant and Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, said that shrapnel damage seen on one of the Civil Defense vehicles and two cars near the blast was consistent with a Spike or Mikholit missile, two munitions used by the Israeli military.
Both experts also said the Civil Defense vehicles would have been clearly visible to the soldiers launching the strikes. Mr. Bryant said that, in the Israeli military’s calculus, “any Hamas targets carry enough military necessity that any civilian loss is considered proportional.”
In the aftermath of the two blasts, videos captured people carrying dozens of dead and injured away from the scene, some of them in bright orange Gaza Civil Defense vests.
An aerial image of the first strike published by the Israeli military and analyzed by The Times indicates the resulting crater was close to 60 feet in diameter, indicative of a 2,000-pound bomb. President Biden has paused the delivery of these weapons to Israel since May over concerns about the civilian casualties they might cause.
Axel Boada contributed video production. Neil Collier contributed reporting.
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2) They Were Told They Were in a Safe Area. Then Came the Missiles.
Survivors of a strike in Gaza on Saturday that Israel said had targeted Hamas’s top military leader described a scene of carnage, with fire, smoke, blood and bodies everywhere.
By Vivian Yee and Ameera Harouda, July 15, 2024
Vivian Yee reported from Cairo, and Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar.
Gaza health officials said that more than 90 people were killed in the strike on Saturday and more than 300 injured. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
When the explosions began on Saturday, many Gazans were sitting down to meager breakfasts, or drinking tea. They were waking up their children, or walking down the road.
Suddenly, the sound of destruction was booming through Al-Mawasi, the once sparsely populated part of southern Gaza where tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled to after the Israeli military declared it safe for civilians.
Despite that designation, Israel struck the area with a barrage of airstrikes on Saturday morning, saying that it had targeted Hamas’s top military commander and another military leader. While it remained unclear on Sunday whether the main target had been killed, Gaza health officials said more than 90 people were killed in the attack, about half of them women and children, and more than 300 wounded.
During the attack, sand flew high up in the air and came down “like winter rain,” said Ahmed Youssef Khadra, 38, who was having breakfast with his family in their shared tent.
Their tent collapsed on them. Mr. Khadra could see bodies hurled this way and that, landing only to be buried in sand, he said. Smothered in sand himself, he said he could barely process what was happening.
“What was that? What happened? What will happen? We didn’t understand,” he said, describing his panic over his four children, who had been in the tent with him. “At a moment like this, you think of one thing — what happened to you, and what might have happened to the people you were with? Have they died?”
For more than five minutes, he said, he could hear explosions, each following the previous one with less than a minute’s pause in between; then fire, smoke, sand, dead people. He said the strikes had hit two encampments with at least 100 tents in each, each tent with a family of seven or eight people, as well as the road running through it and a three-story building nearby.
He said he saw people decapitated by the strikes and others cut in half. When rescuers arrived to help, he said, they, too, were struck by missiles.
Fawzia Al Shaikh, 82, had just gone to wash her hands after having some tea with her son and daughter when half her family’s tent collapsed in the first strike. Her daughter fled in terror; Ms. Al Shaikh’s two granddaughters ran toward her, crying, “Where’s Mom?” she recalled.
Ms. Al Shaikh was trying to run with them, urging them along since she could not carry them, when another missile hit, blocking their path with flames, she said. She was praying and trying to calm her granddaughters at the same time. Then, she said, another missile fell in front of her, and the smoke made it hard to see where to go.
Somehow they made it a little farther, she said, when a young man found them and helped her move the girls along to an area where ambulances were taking the wounded away. The whole way, she said, “I was praying, repeating the shahada” — the Muslim declaration of faith — “crying, and wishing for death until I fell to the ground.”
Eventually Ms. Al Shaikh saw her daughter, whose hand and leg later had to be amputated, she said. There were many others missing limbs, she said, and many people half-buried in the sand.
“I saw death with my own eyes,” she said. “I had never seen such scenes in my life.”
Many of the wounded were taken by ambulance to the emergency room at Nasser Hospital, where staff members told Scott Anderson, a senior United Nations humanitarian official in Gaza, that they had admitted more than 130 people from the strikes in Al-Mawasi on Saturday.
Already over capacity before the attack, the emergency room soon was treating people on the floor, on benches, on bed frames without mattresses or on mattresses, Mr. Anderson said in an interview after visiting the hospital on Saturday.
Lacking enough cleaning supplies, the hospital staff members could not disinfect the floor between patients, so they simply washed it down with water, he said.
“You could smell the blood when you walked in,” Mr. Anderson said of the hospital. He called it “one of the most horrific things I’ve seen in the nine months I’ve been there.”
Many of the injured appeared to be children, he said, while other people at the hospital were searching — without much luck — for relatives they had lost track of during the strikes. One 18-year-old woman he met still bore the scars of a war injury she had suffered in October, he said. She had survived that, only to be paralyzed from the waist down during Saturday’s strike.
More than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, according to the Gazan authorities, whose figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The Israeli invasion began after Hamas led a cross-border attack on Israel in which, the Israelis say, some 1,200 people were killed.
Israel has placed some blame for civilian casualties during the war on Hamas, which embeds fighters among civilian buildings, as the military argues happened on Saturday. The Israeli military said its two targets were hiding in a walled compound within the designated humanitarian zone.
On Sunday, Israel said it had succeeded in assassinating a senior Hamas commander in the Al-Mawasi strike, though it could not confirm whether Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, had been killed, as intended. Both were believed to have been architects of the Oct. 7 attack.
The bloody aftermath of the strike was still playing out on Sunday, Mr. Khadra said. A huge crater had replaced the encampments, and people were searching for family members among the dead. His four children, ages 3 through 13, were uninjured but still traumatized.
With their tents collapsed, people were trying to salvage whatever they could. Dozens of families had no idea where they would now go or, without access to new building materials, how they would find shelter from the punishing summer sun.
Many families at the hospital told Mr. Anderson they were in despair because they had thought Al-Mawasi was relatively safe. Now that illusion was shattered, he said, yet he expected people to stay in the area — there being almost nowhere else to go in Gaza.
“It’s very hard when you have no answers to give a mother who says, ‘Why can’t we have anywhere safe?’” he said.
Emad Mekay contributed reporting from Cairo.
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3) Surge in West Bank Violence Raises Further Concerns Among Israel’s Allies
By Ephrat Livni, July 16, 2024
Inspecting damage at a construction material depot after a reported overnight attack by Israeli settlers, near the village of Bazariya in the West Bank on Friday. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A surge in Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is raising the ire of some in the international community as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government officially expands its hold on the occupied territory by claiming more land and quietly assists extremists with tacit military support, according to rights activists.
The European Union on Monday sanctioned five Israeli settlers, two outposts and an extremist group that were “responsible for serious and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank,” the European Council, the E.U. body that represents the heads of the member governments, said in a statement. The United States last week also imposed sanctions on Israelis and entities in the West Bank that the State Department said had incited violence against Palestinians or encroached on Palestinian land.
Peace Now, an Israeli organization that tracks Jewish settlements, responded to the European sanctions by accusing the Israeli government of failing to enforce its own laws and of being complicit in the settler violence.
The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval, though the international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli law. Settlers are governed by Israeli civil law while their Palestinian neighbors are subject to Israeli military law.
Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation that turns land needed for any future independent Palestinian state into an unmanageable patchwork. But the war with Hamas in Gaza has given Israel’s right-wing government, intent on West Bank expansion, a way to bolster settlers who oppose the creation of a Palestinian state under the guise of providing added security amid heightened tensions, some rights groups say.
The army has shut down “so many roads” in the West Bank that thousands of acres of land have become off limits to Palestinians, Hagit Ofran of Peace Now’s “Settlement Watch” project said in a phone interview. The military erects gates in the name of security, but the result is that it shuts off Palestinians’ access to large areas they rely on, she added, and that ultimately advances settlers’ aims.
Notably, there are also more Israeli troops stationed in the area than before the war. “In every settlement, you now have reserve soldiers who are settlers and who take extremist measures against Palestinians,” Ms. Ofran said. “Settler soldiers are actually an armed militia.”
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, is a settler himself and responsible for extremist policies meant to expand Israel’s hold over the West Bank. Mr. Smotrich is taking away much of the military’s authority there and instead putting settlers in charge of civil administration, effectively taking control, Ms. Ofran noted. In a secretly recorded speech on June 9, Mr. Smotrich outlined this carefully orchestrated program to take authority over the West Bank out of the hands of the Israeli military and turn it over to civilians working for him while deflecting international scrutiny.
From the perspective of some in the Israeli military, settler violence is a threat to Israel’s security. Retired Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, former chief of Israel’s Central Command, which oversees the West Bank, rebuked the Israeli government’s policies in the area and condemned the rising tide of “nationalist crime” in his departure speech last week.
But as the military’s presence in the West Bank has increased since Oct. 7, so have violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops meant to maintain order there, further escalating tensions in the already fraught region.
Israeli forces shot a man dead in the West Bank on Tuesday during clashes in Al Bireh, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel’s military said on social media on Tuesday that it was chasing people who fired on a car with Israeli civilians inside in Ramin, a village in the northeast of the West Bank, adding that the civilians had been lightly injured in the attack and had been evacuated for treatment. It gave no further details.
Israeli forces have killed more than 530 West Bank Palestinians since the war in Gaza began, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks West Bank violence on a weekly basis. In its latest update, the agency said that the Israeli military on July 9 killed a 13-year old Palestinian boy in Deir Abu Mash’al village near Ramallah and injured three other boys.
The Israeli military, in response to a query about the incident, said in a statement that since Oct. 7, there had been “a significant increase” in attempted terrorist attacks in the West Bank and nearby area — more than 2,000 in total — and that it is “actively conducting operations” to prevent terrorism. The military confirmed the U.N. report of violence on July 9, but not a death or the involvement of any children in the confrontation, stating that “masked terrorists hurled rocks” at Israeli military vehicles and a “soldier in the area responded with live fire, hitting one of the terrorists.”
Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
An Israeli strike hits another school turned shelter, the Palestine Red Crescent says, and other news.
· An Israeli strike hit a United Nations school building that was being used as a shelter by thousands of displaced people, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which said that five people had been killed and eight others wounded on Tuesday. The Israeli military said in a statement that the strike was aimed at fighters who had planned attacks against its troops and said “numerous steps” were taken to lessen the risk to civilians. Israeli forces have repeatedly struck in and around schools turned shelters in recent weeks, contending that Hamas has used them for military purposes.
· Israel will begin the process of drafting some ultra-Orthodox men for military service next week, the military said on Tuesday. The Supreme Court had ordered the military to begin calling up ultra-Orthodox religious students — long given a pass so as to study scripture — after an order extending the exemption lapsed. Many Israelis resent that the ultra-Orthodox do not shoulder the burden of military service. Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox students are of draft age, but Israeli officials have said the process is likely to be gradual.
· Palestinian militants in Gaza fired several rockets toward the Israeli border town of Sderot, setting off air raid sirens there for the first time in days, the Israeli authorities said on Tuesday. Israel’s aerial defenses intercepted one rocket, while two others fell in open areas, a spokesman for the Sderot municipality said. There were no immediate reports of any major casualties. The near-constant missile barrages from Gaza that characterized the early days of the war have slowed to a trickle, particularly since the Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah began in May.
· An attack apparently by an Israeli drone in Syria, near the border with Lebanon, has killed a Syrian businessman who was under sanctions from the United States, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. The businessman, Baraa’ al-Qaterjy, who helped fund Syrian militant groups, had been driving on Monday on a road between Beirut and Damascus when his vehicle was hit, the observatory said. Israel has conducted numerous strikes in Syria in recent months in its campaign against forces backed by Iran, but it rarely comments on them.
· Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Donald J. Trump’s newly chosen running mate, has been a steadfast supporter of Israel throughout the country’s war in Gaza, defending its wartime policies in the face of growing criticism over the civilian death toll. When members of the Senate considered a bill providing military aide to both Israel and Ukraine, Mr. Vance led a group of senators proposing legislation to send money only to Israel. Echoing the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he said the country needed to eliminate Hamas after the terrorist group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
· More than 100,000 people in Gaza are believed to have contracted hepatitis A since last Oct. 7, the World Health Organization said on Monday. The virus is often transmitted through person-to-person contact or contaminated food — and the United Nations has warned of the risks in Gaza, where many people have fled their homes and lack access to clean water or working toilets. The W.H.O. said that “the entire population of Gaza is at risk” because of violence, lack of food and the spread of disease.
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4) Civilian casualties in Gaza remain unacceptably high, the State Department says.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, July 16, 2024
A father holding the body of his son in Deir al Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, this month. Credit...Ramadan Abed/Reuters
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has expressed “serious concerns” to two top Israeli officials about the death toll in Gaza, the State Department says.
Mr. Blinken expressed his concern during a meeting on Monday with the Israeli national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi; and Ron Dermer, who is a key adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, a State Department spokesman said.
“We have seen civilian casualties come down from the high points of the conflict,” the spokesman, Matthew Miller, said. “But they still remain unacceptably high. We continue to see far too many civilians killed in this conflict.”
The Health Ministry in Gaza says that more than 38,000 people have died in the territory since Oct. 7, when Hamas led an attack on Israel in which around 1,200 people were killed, according to the Israeli authorities. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. On Tuesday, it reported dozens of deaths in the previous 24 hours.
The U.S. government has repeatedly criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s administration over civilian casualties in Gaza, but critics of President Biden have said that Washington undermines that message by continuing to supply Israel with weapons for use in the conflict.
The Israeli military argues that it does all it can to spare civilians but that it is fighting an adversary that hides within the civilian population and sets up military bases in densely populated areas.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said that 90 people were killed on Saturday, half of them women and children, and that 300 other people were wounded when Israel conducted a major airstrike in southern Gaza targeting a top Hamas military commander, Muhammad Deif, who is considered one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack.
The secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, called on Monday for a cease-fire, saying said that the “extreme level of fighting and devastation in Gaza is incomprehensible and inexcusable.”
“Nowhere is safe,” he said. “Everywhere is a potential killing zone.”
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5) Hamas’s leader in Gaza is facing pressure to end the war, the C.I.A. director says
By Julian E. Barnes, July 16, 2024
Yahya Sinwar at an event in Gaza City last year. Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
The C.I.A. director told a closed-door gathering that the leader of Hamas in Gaza is under increased pressure from his military commanders to end the war with Israel and accept a truce and the release of hostages, according to a person briefed on his remarks.
The remarks by William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, are a more pointed version of comments American officials have been making privately and publicly. Mr. Burns said the internal pressure on Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, has been building for the last two weeks, as commanders and ordinary Palestinians are tiring of the fight. Mr. Sinwar is still believed to be hiding in tunnels under Khan Younis.
But Mr. Burns said that it was the responsibility of both parties, the Israelis and the Palestinians, to take advantage of the moment. The C.I.A. declined to discuss Mr. Burns’s comments, which were made at an annual conference of business leaders held in Sun Valley, Idaho, by Allen & Company, an investment bank.
Administration officials have expressed some optimism that a deal can be reached. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said in a recent interview that he sees a path forward for the talks.
Mr. Burns, whose comments were first reported by CNN, has led the American team in negotiations to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. Both Israel and Hamas have agreed to a framework deal that was hammered out by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
But U.S. officials do not believe that there will be any final agreement on the deal until after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel visits Washington next week.
Administration officials have said that Hamas has agreed to yield control of Gaza to an independent group. But other American officials are skeptical about whether Hamas’s willingness to cede power is permanent.
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6) Israel says it has killed or captured around 14,000 combatants, but leaves considerable ambiguity.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg reporting from Jerusalem, July 17, 2024
The collapsed minaret of a mosque in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, on Wednesday. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s military has said that it had killed or captured around 14,000 combatants in Gaza since the war there began more than nine months ago, an unverifiable and ambiguous number that gives a measure of Israel’s assessment of its progress toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of destroying Hamas.
In a statement on social media on Tuesday, the Israeli military also said that it had eliminated half the leadership of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and that among those killed were 20 commanders of battalions, the largest grouping of Hamas’s forces, and 150 company commanders.
It said that it had struck 37,000 targets in Gaza from the air and more than 25,000 sites that it described as terrorist infrastructure and launch sites during the war. That figure did not appear to equate to the number of airstrikes, since some targets have been struck multiple times.
Israel has only occasionally released overall numbers for the toll the war has taken. It has previously said that it has killed more than 14,000 of Hamas’s estimated 25,000 fighters and, in March, Mr. Netanyahu was quoted in an interview with Axel Springer, the parent company of Politico, as saying that some 13,000 “terrorists” had been killed.
In its latest report, the military gave little detail about the 14,000 people it called terrorists who it said were killed or captured through late June.
A military spokesman gave no additional details when asked how many of the 14,000 had been apprehended and how many killed. The military also did not say how it had arrived at that number, or how it had distinguished combatants from civilians.
Critics of the war contend that Israel is too quick to identify any man killed as a fighter.
Throughout the war, there has been heated debate about how many people have died in Gaza, what proportion of those were fighters, and how many combatants Hamas has left.
The Gaza Health Ministry on Tuesday said that more than 38,000 people had been killed in Gaza since the start of the conflict, and nearly 90,000 others had been injured. The ministry does not offer separate counts of fighters and noncombatants, but it has said consistently that most of the dead have been civilians.
Just as with the numbers cited by Israel, there was no way to independently confirm the ministry’s. Those numbers also showed that the rate of deaths in the war had slowed in recent months.
While the health ministry’s tally is broadly accepted, its ability to keep records has been undermined by the severe damage to the health sector caused by Israeli airstrikes and fighting, and some experts have questioned elements of the ministry’s methodology and data. The ministry has periodically cautioned that there are doubtless bodies under the ruins of collapsed buildings that have not been found and added to the toll.
The ministry has at times published names of the dead, and in April it listed nearly 25,000 people it said it had identified, which showed that 60 percent of those killed were women, children and the elderly. In December, Israeli news media quoted military officials as saying that two-thirds of the dead in Gaza were civilians.
Hamas has taken advantage of the urban areas in Gaza to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure with an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, launching rockets near civilian homes and holding hostages in city centers. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, has said that the group tries to keep Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week expressed “serious concerns” about civilian casualties to two top Israeli officials and said that while they have come down as a percentage of the overall total, they still remain “unacceptably high.”
In a separate graphic, the military named the Hamas battalion commanders it said it had eliminated. Military experts say Israel has been largely successful in degrading the main units of Hamas’s fighting force. The dead included Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza and a presumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.
But it did not include as a confirmed casualty Muhammad Deif, the elusive leader of Hamas’s military wing, whom Israel targeted with airstrikes on Saturday. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that at least 90 people were killed, about half of them women and children, and 300 were wounded in the attack.
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7) Global Court Says Israel’s Occupation of Territories Violates International Law
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, July 19, 2024
An Israeli army reservist and resident of Tekoa, a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, standing guard near the settlement last year. Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
The International Court of Justice said on Friday that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem violated international law, the first time the world’s highest court has laid out its stance on an issue that has been the subject of debates and resolutions at the United Nations for decades.
The court was issuing an advisory opinion that, while not binding, carries authority and legal weight. It is unlikely to shape Israeli policy but could affect international opinion.
“The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the regime associated with them have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,” the court’s president, Nawaf Salam, said as he issued the opinion at the Peace Palace in The Hague.
Friday’s pronouncement received heightened attention because of the war in Gaza, which began more than nine months ago, and because of a separate genocide case brought in the same court by South Africa against Israel in December over its conduct in the war.
In January, the court ordered Israel to restrain its attacks in Gaza, and in May it ordered the country to immediately halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza.
The U.N. General Assembly in 2022 asked the court for its opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” of territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war, including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Israel regards the occupied West Bank as disputed territory and wants the future status of it to be decided in negotiations. It has allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews to settle there over the past decades. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem in a move that did not garner widespread international recognition. And it withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but blockaded the territory, along with Egypt, for 17 years after Hamas seized control of it in 2007.
The court held hearings in February at the Peace Palace. Israel did not appear at that session but filed a submission rejecting the validity of the proceedings as biased. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, told the court that Israel had subjected Palestinians to decades of discrimination, leaving them with the choice of “displacement, subjugation or death.”
Over the course of several days, representatives of more than 50 countries, an unusually high number for the court, addressed the hearings. Most sided with the Palestinian representatives. But a few speakers at the court, including those from the United States, Britain and Hungary — among Israel’s traditional allies — sided with Israel.
A U.S. State Department official argued before the court that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians were determined by its “very real security needs.”
One focal point of Friday’s case was Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as the government’s tolerance of violent land grabs by Jewish settlers.
Every Israeli government has allowed some Israeli construction in the territories, but the Netanyahu government has expanded the program and announced plans for thousands of new housing units. More than 400,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since 1967.
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8) A Border Crossing Shuttered for Months Traps the Sick and Wounded in Gaza
The Rafah crossing to Egypt has been closed since Israel captured it in early May, blocking the only route out of the territory for thousands of Palestinians who desperately need medical care.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 19, 2024
A 9-year-old Palestinian girl who suffered burns during an Israeli bombardment was treated at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in June. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After months of waiting, Fida Ghanem was granted a permit by Israel and Egypt to leave Gaza for urgent lymphoma treatment in the spring. But the next morning, Israeli forces seized the only border crossing from Gaza to Egypt, in Rafah, as part of a military offensive against Hamas in the area.
Ms. Ghanem, 42, died one month later in early June. The border was still shut.
“She should have been allowed to leave as soon as they found the cancer,” said her husband, Maher Ghanem. “But it was delay after delay.”
For nearly all Gazans, the southern Rafah crossing has been the only way out since the war began nine months ago. But since Israel captured it in early May, it has been closed to all civilians and Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials have been unable to agree on the terms to reopen it.
Aid workers and doctors have warned that the prolonged closure is endangering some of Gaza’s most defenseless, including children with severe burns, cancer patients and people needing heart surgery. More than 10,000 people need immediate medical treatment outside the enclave, according to the World Health Organization.
“The most vulnerable residents of Gaza — its children, sick, and elderly — are paying the highest price,” said Tania Hary, who directs Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that advocates freedom of movement for the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.
The closure also severed a vital route for humanitarian aid into Gaza, and at least for a time, significantly reduced the quantities going in to a population already struggling with widespread hunger.
The Gaza side of the Rafah crossing had been administered by Hamas since the group took full control of the territory in 2007 and until Israel captured it in May. Egypt, which closely coordinates with Israel on security, often used the crossing to exert pressure on Hamas, including by enforcing a joint blockade of Gaza with Israel for 17 years.
To address the aid disruption after the crossing was shut down, Egypt agreed to divert some trucks ferrying food and medicine into the enclave via a different route, through Kerem Shalom, an Israeli-controlled gateway.
Ordinary Gazans are often forced to pay thousands of dollars to go-betweens to obtain permission to cross the border. Dual nationals, whose exit is arranged by their embassies in Cairo, and the critically ill, who leave in coordination with the Egyptian authorities, generally do not have to pay.
Israel controls all other routes out of Gaza.
The Kerem Shalom crossing connects Gaza only to Israel, but there is a separate border point with Egypt about 25 miles south, outside the Israeli village of Nitzana. Last month, Israel and Egypt allowed about 20 sick and wounded children from Gaza to leave through Kerem Shalom and enter Egypt at Nitzana to test the feasibility of that route.
But thousands more who desperately need treatment are still stuck in Gaza.
Muna Abu Holi, a college professor from central Gaza, said she survived explosions that killed one of her daughters and left two others with deep shrapnel wounds. The surviving daughters, Lama and Malak, need surgery and obtained permits to leave through Rafah on May 7. But they are still waiting to get out.
“We’re grasping for any possible hope,” Ms. Abu Holi said. “Every piece of news we hear, we cling to.”
The United States has pressured Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank and administered Gaza before the Hamas takeover in 2007, to reopen the Rafah crossing.
But Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials cannot agree on how to do that.
Egypt demands a full Israeli withdrawal, according to Egyptian state media. Israel says it will not allow Hamas to control the crossing again, charging that it used Rafah to smuggle arms into Gaza.
In private, Israeli officials have sought to persuade the Palestinian Authority to send employees to informally run the crossing under Israeli security control, according to Palestinian officials and diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The Palestinian Authority rejected the idea, refusing to take over the border unless it was part of a broader push for full Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza — which Israel opposes. Israel similarly approached a mission of European Union border observers who were present at the crossing until 2007, but they refused to work there without the Palestinian Authority, diplomats said.
By late June, photos revealed that much of the Rafah crossing had been destroyed, another obstacle to any speedy reopening.
Israel’s government has mostly rebuffed taking responsibility for the sick and wounded Gazans. This week, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, shot down a proposal by his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to build a field hospital for Gazan children along the border with the enclave.
Even before the war, the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza crippled the enclave’s health sector, forcing many to seek treatment in Israel or the West Bank. Basic equipment such as X-ray machines could take years to arrive, if at all, and the toll led some doctors to emigrate.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that triggered the war, Israel stopped allowing Gazans to enter for medical care. Gaza’s hospitals were overwhelmed by the mass deaths and wounded, as well as by tens of thousands seeking safety from the Israeli offensive.
Already underequipped doctors struggled to cope amid shortages of medicine and of fuel for hospital generators. And Israeli forces stormed some medical facilities that they said Hamas used for military purposes, including in tunnels underneath some hospitals. Hamas and Gaza health officials denied those claims.
In November, Egypt, in coordination with Israel, began allowing a handful of urgent cases, such as those of children with cancer, to leave through Rafah. Most of the evacuees were ferried to Egyptian hospitals; others were sent to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or several European countries. A few were treated in the United States.
Early in the war, just 10 sick and wounded Gazans were permitted to leave daily, which expanded to roughly 50 by early May, before the crossing closed, said Dr. Shannon Barkley, a senior World Health Organization official for Gaza and the West Bank who is based in Jerusalem.
But demand has always outstripped those limits.
According to W.H.O. figures, Gaza officials have submitted at least 12,760 requests for people to leave for medical care since the war started. About 46 percent were approved, many after delays of weeks or months.
Both Israeli and Egyptian security agencies vet the lists of those who can leave, according to Dr. Barkley. They rarely approve requests to transfer sick or wounded men aged 19 to 60, according to the W.H.O.
“The medical need is enormous because the health system has been decimated,” Dr. Barkley said.
Mr. Ghanem, a former officer in the Palestinian Authority security forces, said he buried his wife in June without a proper funeral because there was an Israeli offensive in central Gaza. She, too, was a victim of the war, he said.
For one Gaza boy, even an unusual opportunity to circumvent the border closure came too late.
Nabil Kuheil, 5, was diagnosed with acute leukemia in mid-April, with the war in full swing, as his once well-to-do family was living in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah.
“We were living in tents, flies descending in the daytime and mosquitoes at night,” said his mother, Aya Kuheil, 28. “Suddenly, he was covered in bruises that turned first red, then purple. His stomach swelled; they told me there was growth in his spleen and liver.”
On May 6, Nabil’s name appeared on a list of evacuees who could leave the following day alongside a note indicating that his case was urgent. But by the next morning, Israel had launched its offensive in Rafah and seized the crossing.
For weeks, the family waited.
In late May, Ms. Kuheil received surprising news: Israel had approved Nabil for treatment at Augusta Victoria, a Palestinian-run hospital in East Jerusalem — a rare occurrence during this war.
The next morning, feverish and quaking, he was taken in an ambulance to the Kerem Shalom crossing, said his mother, who accompanied him.
Israel never publicized his evacuation, possibly fearing backlash at home. Some Jewish Israelis, including members of the governing coalition, have voiced opposition to humanitarian aid for Gazans.
Nabil “was in severe pain, with a high fever, dirty and covered in blue discolorations,” said Dr. Khadra Salami, the pediatric oncologist who treated him in Jerusalem.
“It was clear that the leukemia had infiltrated all his organs,” she said.
Two days later, Nabil died from a drug-resistant infection he had picked up in Gaza. Dr. Salami said the three-week wait after the closure of Rafah probably cost him his life.
“Every day of the delay mattered,” she said.
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9) Deadly Protests Grip Bangladesh
By The New York Times, July 19, 2024
Students protesting the quota system faced off against police officers and Awami League supporters in the Rampura area of Dhaka on Thursday.
For days, university students in Bangladesh have been locked in deadly clashes with the police and supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s party, in which at least 33 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured.
Students have been demonstrating against a quota system for government jobs, which they consider unfair. On Thursday, protesters set fire to at least two government buildings in Dhaka, the capital, including Bangladesh’s national television station. The government has severed communications, with mobile internet service cut and TV stations knocked off the air.
Ms. Hasina’s government has deployed the police and paramilitary forces, including an antiterrorism unit, against the demonstrators. Students, armed mainly with sticks and bats, have fought the police and members of the student wing of the Awami League, Ms. Hasina’s party.
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