Gazans are left with no choice as Israel’s government imposes “a total siege” in the region.
The Israeli-Palestinian crisis this week started with a violent, unheard-of offensive against Jewish communities. Today, it is anticipated that the flare-up will primarily occur in occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in Gaza, the maritime outpost from which Hamas militants launched their attack on October 7. Since the weekend, the Jewish military has been shelling Gaza, killing close to 800 people. Israel is expected to immediately launch a ground invasion of Gaza with the stated intention of exacting retribution on the country’s ruling party, Hamas, and other military Arab groups, according to numerous foreign officials and regional security experts. Advertising &# 13,
It is obvious that almost everyone in the heavily populated area will suffer greatly as a result of Israel’s operation. Mahmoud Shalabi of the nonprofit Medical Aid for Palestinians told the BBC that Gaza City’s main hospital now resembles” a slaughterhouse.” Almost 200, 000 Gazans have been displaced from their homes, according to a statement from the UN released on Tuesday. Israel has repeatedly bombed the only exit from Gaza into another country, the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and is enforcing what its defense minister described as” a complete siege on Gaza … no electricity, no food. While Mark Regev, an adviser to Israel’s leader, told CNN he expected” a new reality in Gaza ,” there is little international pressure for Israeli restraint in the name of recognizing the difference between the perpetrators and ordinary people. Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters on Tuesday that” the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” When questioned by reporters on Monday night about whether the United States wants its Jewish counterparts to stop collectively punishing Gazans, White House spokesman John Kirby responded,” Israel has the right to defend itself. We and Israel have a lot of shared values. One of those values is respect for life, which Hamas is not showing in all.”
The cost of Israel’s operation will be high, as will the protracted conflict that will probably follow as Hamas and its allies retaliate against Jewish targets, provoking further Jewish vengeance. One of the world’s most desolate battlefields is expected to be Gaza, a battered strip of land that houses 2.3 million people in desperate circumstances. The majority of Gazans, who live in refugee camps and rely on humanitarian aid, are among the poorest people in the world. During conflicts between Israel and violent Israeli organizations, they have endured numerous setbacks. Hamas won elections that in 2006 and took over in 2007 after Israel withdrew from the region in 2005 while maintaining control over the majority of its borders and essential infrastructure. Israel has from blockaded Gaza and launched significant offensives against it in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, in addition to a number of smaller operations. Some, like the Jewish crackdown on protesters at the Israel-Gazi border in 2018 that lasted months, resulted in considerable civilian casualties. Numerous home areas have been the target of the latest Israeli campaign, which has also damaged numerous hospitals, mosques, and aid facilities. Israel’s promises to demand a hefty price from Hamas indicate that it will continue to score dozens of goals. Additionally, its self-proclaimed siege— which U.N. experts referred to as” collective punishment”— will probably result in excruciating shortages. The International Committee of the Red Cross’ regional director, Fabrizio Carboni, wrote on X on Monday,” During the darkest hours of our presence in Gaza, we never imagined a scenario where 2 million civilians could probably survive through large bombing, deprived of water, food, electricity, and medicines.” ” Every action should be taken right away to prevent this situation ,” advertisement, # 13
Freelance journalist in Gaza named Ghada Kord told HuffPost that she now feels as though she is in a nightmare. She is unable to escape the smell of the dead bodies of people, dogs, and cats that she witnessed on the ground shortly after an Jewish airstrike struck Gaza City’s center. According to Kord, ambulances are unable to reach people who have been killed or injured due to a lack of fuel and closed streets. She doesn’t have electricity, and her internet is shaky. Clinics and pharmacies have closed. The sky is now covered in a blanket of smoke. Gaza has two million residents, though not all of them are members of[ armed ] factions. They are ordinary people, she claimed. Kord hasn’t already been able to get in touch with her own family. She is aware that things will only get worse. She declared,” We’re going to experience a major catastrophe.” On October 10, 2023, an Jewish airstrike hit the Gaza Strip, causing smoke to rise. Israeli officials have advised Gazan citizens to think twice before attacking specific neighborhoods, according to Momen Faiz / NurPhoto via Getty Images. # 13 of the advertisement
Substantial displacement has been sparked by fear of attacks in some areas, with the U.N. estimating that 187, 518 Gazans have fled their homes to seek refuge elsewhere in the strip, including more than 137, 000 at the country’s crowded schools and worries about their water supplies. In the meantime, leaving Gaza is nearly impossible. Israel has blocked all other routes into and out of Gaza, and the region’s southern neighbor Egypt is hesitant to open the Rafah crossing into its territory, which both the U.S. State Department and Israeli military have highlighted as an option. This is due to Jewish airstrikes and Egypts’ concern over a significant influx of refugees. Residents’ access to essential supplies has previously been restricted due to the complete disruption of life in the strip. Nearly 500, 000 people — one-fifth of the region’s population — need food rations this week, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which focuses on Palestinian refugees and plays a significant role in the fragile economy of Gaza. Only 13.5 % of Gaza’s health care staff is at work, and one-third of its health centers are closed, according to a UNRWA statement. The Jewish human rights organization B’Tselem and the charity Oxfam stated in press releases on Tuesday that while Gaza generally relies on the Jewish power grid, it is now reliant on its own little local power plant, which only operates for four hours per day, and private fuel supplies. Drinking water purification, phone charging, and internet access will be more difficult due to a lack of electricity. According to Oxfam, airstrikes have thus far prevented 400, 000 Gazans from having access to water and sanitation, and they have also shut down the city’s wastewater treatment facility, causing raw sewage to be released into the Mediterranean Sea. Uncertainty about one’s survival in the following day, hour, or minute is a very tough situation. – Nadia Hararah, marketing manager for Palestinian Americans with a family in GazaAdvertisement &# 13,
Abood Okal, a 36-year-old Palestinian-American, traveled to Gaza two weeks earlier to see relatives he hadn’t seen in six years. He was delighted to introduce his uncle, aunt, and cousins to his one-year-old. However, Okal is currently hiding out because he is unable to see his parents, who are only ten minutes apart and are American citizens. The windows and doors of their house have been destroyed by a bomb. It’s an impossible philanthropic situation, Okal told HuffPost. Okal and his wife have been clapping and telling their son that the booming noises are coming from fireworks in an effort to divert him from the bombs.” Thousands of people are on the streets with no shelter, no power, and pretty soon will run out of water.” However, as the blows continue to fall, it gets harder and harder to conceal the truth:” We’re running out of tricks up our sleeves to keep him unaware ,” Okal said. Gazans will also have to deal with the difficulty of residing in densely populated areas where street fighting is likely to be very harmful. Standard Gaza residents also have much influence over Hamas’ battle plan, which has tightened its grip on the region by refusing to hold elections and infrequently tolerating local dissent. Its advanced military bulwarks throughout the strip will probably ensure that any direct conflict with Israeli forces is prolonged. Hamas has suggested that it might kill Jewish hostages as retaliation for Israeli airstrikes, a tactic that could result in an even bloodier escalation. Advertising &# 13,
a building that was destroyed on October 10, 2023, in Gaza by an Israeli missile strike. In only four days, the death toll has previously skyrocketed, according to MOHAMED ZAANOUN, Middle East Images, and AFP via Getty Images. Hani Almadhoun, a Palestinian American from Virginia, learned on Monday morning via Telegram that 14 members of his family — including five children and elderly relatives — were killed by an Israeli airstrike. Death comes pretty quickly, Almadhoun warned HuffPost. ” No one shows us any solidarity.” For the past four days, he hasn’t been allowed to contact his family in Gaza. Almadhoun, who recently arrived in the area two months before, is concerned about the future. Almadhoun said,” We are reluctant to look at the media.” Few observers think Israel can be persuaded to forgo a significant operation in Gaza, saying,” It’s going to be another trauma.” European partners of the nation are somewhat promoting caution. President Joe Biden urged Jewish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to uphold global standards on Tuesday. ” Terrorists deliberately kill civilians by targeting them.” The laws of war are upheld, according to Biden. It is important. There is a difference, according to the foreign ministers of the 27 European Union countries, who expressed their desire to see humanitarian corridors leave Gaza and urged Israel never to completely stop supplying the strip. # 13 of the advertisement
However, calls for a wider ceasefire-like halt to hostilities remained insignificant. Additionally, a joint statement released on Monday by Biden and the U.S. ‘ s closest allies that angered some aid workers did not mention humanitarian aid for Gazans. According to U.N. estimates, Israel invaded Gaza on foot in 2014, killing 2, 251 Palestinians, including 551 children, and injuring more than 11, 000 people. Seattle-based marketing manager Nadia Hararah, a Palestinian American, is able to cope with her loss. She is concerned about various relatives in the area after five of her cousins were killed on Saturday. It’s a really challenging situation because you never know if you’ll live the following day, the hour, or the minute, she said. She is upset and defenseless as she unravels a trauma she claimed will never end. Hararah remarked,” I wish more Americans knew how much and how severe the Jewish occupation forces’ suffering has been.” They fail to understand that this isn’t just a case of thin air. that my family and I have experienced long-term suffering, albeit in different ways.
As people scramble for safety in sealed-off territory, IsraelPalestine gazaHamasIsrael pounds Gaza. Joe Biden slams Hamas and pledges his support to IsraelIsraeli Humanitarians who fought to put an end to the occupation because they were afraid they would be among the captive Palestinians. Gazan civilians have nowhere to turn as Israel’s government imposes” a perfect siege” on the area.
Gazans are left with no choice as Israel’s government imposes “a total siege” in the region.
LOADINGERROR LOADING. This week’s crisis in Israel-Palestine began with a vicious, unprecedented offensive against Israeli communities. Now the flare-up is expected to mostly play out in occupied Palestinian territory — specifically in Gaza, the coastal enclave from which Hamas militants launched their Oct. 7 attack.. The Israeli military has been bombarding Gaza since the weekend, killing nearly 800 people. Many international officials and national security experts believe Israel will soon launch a ground invasion of Gaza with the stated goal of exacting revenge upon the territory’s ruling party, Hamas, and other armed Palestinian groups.. Advertisement. It’s clear that Israel’s operation will have dire consequences for nearly everyone in the densely populated area. Already, the chief hospital in Gaza City looks like “a slaughterhouse,” Mahmoud Shalabi of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians told the BBC. The United Nations said Tuesday in a statement that nearly 200,000 Gazans have been displaced from their homes.. Israel is imposing what its defense minister called “a complete siege on Gaza… no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” and has repeatedly bombed the only exit point from Gaza into another country, the Rafah crossing into Egypt.. “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari told journalists on Tuesday, while Mark Regev, an adviser to Israel’s leader, told CNN he expected “a new reality in Gaza.”. Amid worldwide shock over the assault on Israel, there’s little international pressure for Israeli restraint in the name of recognizing the difference between the perpetrators and ordinary people. Asked by reporters on Monday evening whether the U.S. wants its Israeli counterparts to refrain from collective punishment of Gazans, White House spokesperson John Kirby said: “Israel has the right to defend itself… We and Israel, as democracies, we have a lot of shared values, [and] one of those shared values is respect for life, the kind Hamas is not showing at all.”. Advertisement. The toll of Israel’s operation — and the prolonged conflict that will likely ensue as Hamas and its allies retaliate against Israeli targets, prompting more Israeli retribution — will be tremendous. Gaza, a battered strip of land that hosts 2.3 million people in desperate conditions, is set to be one of the world’s bleakest battlefields.. A Dark Familiarity. Gazans are among the globe’s most impoverished groups, with the majority living in refugee camps and relying on humanitarian aid. They have repeatedly suffered during fighting between Israel and militant Palestinian organizations.. After Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005 — retaining control of most of its borders and critical infrastructure — Hamas won elections there in 2006 and took over in 2007. Since then, Israel has blockaded Gaza and launched major offensives against it in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, as well as several smaller operations. Some involved significant civilian casualties, like a monthslong Israeli crackdown on protesters at the Israel-Gaza border in 2018.. The current Israeli campaign has so far targeted a number of residential areas and damaged multiple hospitals, mosques and aid facilities. Israel’s pledges to make Hamas pay a massive price suggest it will continue to hit a broad range of targets. And its self-proclaimed siege, which U.N. experts described as “collective punishment,” will likely lead to painful shortages.. “During the darkest hours of our presence in Gaza we never envisaged a scenario where 2 million civilians could possibly live through heavy bombing, deprived of water, food, electricity [and] medicines,” Fabrizio Carboni, the regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, wrote on X on Monday. “All measures to avoid such a situation should be taken immediately.”. Advertisement. Ghada Kord, a freelance journalist in Gaza, told HuffPost she already feels like she’s in a nightmare. She can’t shake the scent of the dead bodies of humans, dogs and cats that she saw on the ground immediately after a recent Israeli airstrike hit the center of Gaza City.. The lack of fuel and closed-down streets mean that ambulances can’t access people who have been killed and injured, Kord said. She has no electricity, and her internet is spotty. Pharmacies and clinics have shut down. A blanket of smoke has filled the sky.. “Two million people live in Gaza – not all of them belong to [armed] factions. They are civilians,” she said.. Kord hasn’t been able to contact her own family yet. She knows it’s only going to get worse.. “We are going to face a huge disaster,” she said.. Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10, 2023.. Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Israeli officials have warned Gazan civilians before striking particular neighborhoods and suggested that some should consider leaving the Palestinian territory altogether.. Advertisement. Fear of assaults on certain areas has fueled massive displacement, with the U.N. estimating that 187,518 Gazans have left their homes to seek shelter elsewhere in the strip — more than 137,000 of them at U.N. schools, which are becoming overcrowded and face concerns about their water supply.. Meanwhile, fleeing Gaza is almost impossible. The region’s southern neighbor Egypt is reluctant to open the Rafah crossing into its territory — which both the U.S. State Department and the Israeli military have highlighted as an option — amid Israeli airstrikes and Egypt’s fear of a huge refugee influx, and Israel has blocked all other routes into and out of Gaza.. The total disruption of life in the strip has already limited residents’ access to vital supplies.. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which focuses on Palestinian refugees and is a major player in Gaza’s fragile economy, has been unable to provide this week’s food rations to nearly 500,000 people — one-fifth of the region’s population — the agency said in a Tuesday statement. One-third of Gaza’s health centers are closed, and only 13.5% of its health care staff is at work, the UNRWA statement continued.. Gaza typically relies on the Israeli power grid but is currently dependent on its own small local power plant, which only runs for four hours a day, and private fuel supplies, which have limited diesel reserves, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and the charity Oxfam said in Tuesday press releases. Electricity shortages will make it harder to purify drinking water, charge cellphones and access the internet. Airstrikes have so far disrupted access to water and sanitation for 400,000 Gazans and shut down Gaza’s wastewater treatment plant, leading to raw sewage being emitted into the Mediterranean Sea, according to Oxfam.. “It’s a very difficult situation — not knowing if you’re going to live the next day, the next hour or the next minute.”. – Nadia Hararah, Palestinian American marketing manager with family in Gaza. Advertisement. Abood Okal, a 36-year-old Palestinian-American, arrived in Gaza two weeks ago to visit family members there whom he hadn’t seen for six years. He was happy to introduce his 1-year-old to his uncle, aunt and cousins. But now, Okal is sheltering in place, unable to see his parents — American citizens who are just 10 minutes away. A bomb has blown out the windows and doors of their home.. “It’s a difficult humanitarian situation that’s unthinkable,” Okal told HuffPost. “Thousands of people are on the streets with no shelter, no power, and very soon will run out of water.”. Okal and his wife have been trying to distract their son from the bombs, clapping and telling him the booming noises are from fireworks. But as the strikes keep pouring down, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide the truth: “We’re running out of tricks up our sleeves to keep him unaware,” Okal said.. Gazans will also have to contend with the challenge of living in tightly packed communities where street fighting is likely to be extremely dangerous.. Additionally, regular Gaza residents have little say over the battle strategy of Hamas, which has tightened its control over the strip, declining to hold elections and rarely tolerating local dissent. Hamas has suggested it might kill Israeli hostages in retribution for Israeli airstrikes — a tactic that could lead to an even bloodier escalation — and its sophisticated military bulwarks throughout the strip will likely ensure any direct clash with Israeli forces is prolonged.. Advertisement. A view of a building destroyed by an Israeli missile strike in Gaza on Oct. 10, 2023.. MOHAMED ZAANOUN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images. The death toll has already spiraled in just four days. In Virginia, Palestinian American Hani Almadhoun learned Monday morning from a Telegram chat that an Israeli airstrike killed 14 members of his family, including five children and elderly relatives.. “Death comes very fast,” Almadhoun told HuffPost. “We don’t get any solidarity.”. He hasn’t been able to reach his family in Gaza for the last four days. Almadhoun, who was just in the region two months ago, fears what is to come.. “We are afraid to look at media,” Almadhoun said. “It’s going to be another trauma.”. Slim Hopes. Few observers believe Israel can be persuaded to refrain from a major operation in Gaza.. The country’s foreign partners are encouraging caution to some degree. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden said he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abide by international standards. “Terrorists purposely target civilians and kill them. We uphold the laws of war,” Biden said. “It matters. There’s a difference.”. The foreign ministers of the 27 nations in the European Union said they would like to see humanitarian corridors out of Gaza and urged Israel not to fully cut off supplies to the strip.. Advertisement. Yet demands for a broader halt in hostilities — like a ceasefire — remained marginal. And humanitarian aid for Gazans was not mentioned in a joint statement that Biden and the U.S.’s closest allies released Monday, drawing ire from some aid workers.. In 2014, when Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza, it ultimately killed 2,251 Palestinians — including 551 children — and injured more than 11,000, per U.N. estimates.. Nadia Hararah, a Palestinian American marketing manager in Seattle, is unable to process her grief. Five of her cousins were killed on Saturday, and she’s worried about other relatives in the region.. “It’s a very difficult situation — not knowing if you’re going to live the next day, the next hour or the next minute,” she said.. She feels helpless and frustrated, unpacking a trauma she said is never-ending.. “I wish more Americans knew about how long and how deep the suffering has been at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces,” Hararah said. “They don’t recognize that this isn’t out of thin air. That me and my family have been suffering — differently, but suffering for a long time.”. Advertisement. Related. IsraelPalestine gazaHamas. Israel Pounds Gaza As People Scramble For Safety In Sealed-Off Territory. ‘Atrocity On An Appalling Scale’: Joe Biden Blasts Hamas, Pledges Support To Israel. Israeli Humanitarian Who Fought To End Occupation Feared To Be Among Hamas Captives
