THE Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on the 200th day of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on Tuesday the Israeli military is planning to carry out a ‘new massacre’ in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, after the army issued new evacuation orders to people who have remained in the area.
Israeli forces will ‘wipe out the last remnants’ of Beit Lahiya, and will cause yet another wave of mass displacement in the area, where some 50,000 Palestinians reside, the Monitor said in a statement.
Earlier, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X the military ‘will use extreme force against terrorist infrastructure and subversive elements in the region’, telling residents to ‘evacuate the area immediately and head towards known shelters in blocks number 1770, 1766.’
However, the rights group has said that ‘nowhere is safe’ in the besieged territory, pointing to Israeli attacks on places previously deemed ‘safe’.
The shelters the Israeli army asked Palestinians to flee to, Euro-Med said, are destroyed areas that are ‘unfit for any form of life, and lack water supply as well as functioning sewage systems’.
As the world marked 200 days since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday that half of the Gaza population is suffering from hunger.
‘WFP provides necessary food aid to more than a million people every month in the Gaza Strip and works on operating food systems that have stopped working,’ the WFP said in remarks on its X page.
WFP pointed out that all the amounts of aid that are provided for Gaza is just a ‘drop in the ocean of needs’, stressing the need for a ceasefire to save the population.
Mass graves, crippled or destroyed hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths, total destruction of homes and infrastructure, and widening famine are haunting Gazans as Israel’s war on their besieged coastal enclave entered its 200th day.
The health ministry in Gaza said on the 200th day on Tuesday, at least 34,183 people have been killed and 77,084 have been wounded so far during the war.
About 72 per cent of those killed are women and children, while about 7,000 civilians are reported missing, including those who are believed to be still under the rubble, according to an update by Gaza’s Government Media Office.
On Monday, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said a child in Gaza is killed or wounded ‘every 10 minutes’.
The United Nations called on Tuesday for ‘a clear, transparent and credible investigation’ of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.
Credible investigators must have access to the sites, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, and added that more journalists need to be able to work safely in Gaza to report on the facts.
Earlier on Tuesday, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said he was ‘horrified’ by the destruction of the Shifa medical centre in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis as well as the reported discovery of mass graves in and around the facilities after the Israelis left.
He called for independent and transparent investigations into the deaths, saying that ‘given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators’.
‘Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,’ Türk said, adding: ‘The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are “hors de combat” is a war crime.’
Ezzat al-Resheq, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, affirmed that Gaza is still writing history after 200 days of the aggression, emphasising that ‘the Aqsa flood is redefining the stage, arranging international priorities, and reproducing liberation consciousness in the entire world’.
In his first televised appearance since early March, Abu Obeida, spokesman for al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, said that: ‘200 days since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the criminal enemy still struggles to salvage its public image and save face.’
In a speech on Tuesday, Abu Obeida rejected the Israeli claims of success in eliminating and dismantling the Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza, calling such claims ‘a big lie’, stressing that the Israeli occupation army ‘remains stuck in the sands of Gaza’.
‘In 200 days, the enemy has only achieved mass killings and destruction … and they will only reap more shame and defeat,’ Abu Obeida said.
‘200 days later, our resistance in Gaza is still as solid as the mountains of Palestine,’ Abu Obeida underlined.
The spokesman emphasised that the resistance would not give up the fundamental rights and demands of its people, which are the withdrawal of Israeli forces, lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and the return of displaced civilians to their homes.
Abu Obeida warned the families of Israeli captives in Gaza that ‘time is short and opportunities are few’, suggesting that the Israeli detainees could meet the same fate as Ron Arad (the Israeli airman who is still missing after being captured in Lebanon in 1986).
In response to other Israeli claims that ramping up military pressure on Hamas in Gaza would lead to the release of captives, Abu Obeida said that the ‘so-called military pressure on his Movement would only strengthen its adherence to its positions and make it more determined to protect its people’s rights’.
He accused the Israeli occupation government of procrastinating over reaching a prisoner exchange deal and trying to obstruct the mediators’ efforts to reach a ceasefire.
He expressed his Movement’s appreciation of every military and popular effort that supported Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, especially from Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
- Gaza’s killing fields, courtesy of the genocidal settler colonial regime in Tel Aviv, have now passed 200 days, without any reprieve for the besieged territory of millions of people.
According to reports, 3,025 massacres have been perpetrated by the murderous regime between October 7, 2023, and April 23, 2024, with at least 42,510 innocent civilians mercilessly butchered, including 15,780 children, which includes those presumed dead under the rubble.
On average, 212 people have been killed per day, including. 79 children and 50 women, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported on Tuesday, marking 200 days of the no-holds-barred onslaught on Gaza.
Gaza government office also released a statement on Tuesday, sharing grim statistics of the 200 days of war. An estimated 7,000 are missing under the rubble and more than 76,000 are injured.
Most of the public infrastructure has been destroyed in the besieged Strip, including 70 per cent of residential properties, all universities, and 33 out of 36 hospitals. In the occupied West Bank the Israeli army and settlers have killed 486 Palestinians and injured more than 4,700 in the past 200 days.
In addition, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s evil famine strategy has formed part of his war cabinet’s tactic to starve to death millions of Palestinians.
To compound the apartheid regime’s criminal conduct, the corruption-laden Netanyahu falsely implicated the UN agency for Palestinian refugees as aiding and abetting ‘terrorists’, resulting in the suspension of funding and a halt of its humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees.
Sadly, baseless allegations against UNRWA saw a shameful rush by Western governments to cut $450m funding at a time when ‘people were dying in droves’, as described by news media.
Months later, however, the world is now told that Israeli allegations have not been proven.
An inquiry – a rigorous one – led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, supported by three well-respected research institutes, concluded that there was no evidence for the claim that significant numbers of UNRWA employees have Hamas or Islamic Jihad ties.
That this decisive conclusion by the Colonna inquiry refutes Israel’s false claims, it is left to be seen whether Western governments will revert to funding UNRWA, thus striking a blow against Netanyahu’s malicious war aims. Or will they continue to drag their feet, as is the case now?
Israeli genocidal war on Gaza launched on October 7 last year completed 200 days on Tuesday, leaving behind a trail of death, destruction, displacement and starvation.
If they fail to recommence funding, Palestinians may not be faulted for believing that the West remains hostage to the Netanyahu regime’s lies and vengeful genocide.
Concurrently, another significant report has been issued castigating Israel’s bloody assault on Gaza’s medical institutions and the denial of healthcare. The author is a South African doctor, Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health.
In her scathing report, Mofokeng emphasised her difficulty in gathering data on the number of people needing medical evacuation due to the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
But she has been absolutely clear that the world is witnessing ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
‘Not only is Israel causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its bombardments, but it and their allies are also knowingly and intentionally imposing famine, prolonged malnutrition, and dehydration,’ she was quoted as saying.
At a press conference in Geneva, Mofokeng did not mince her words when she said that as a practising medical doctor, she bears witness, that the very practice of medicine is under attack.
‘This has been a war on the right to health and underlying determinants of health. The healthcare infrastructure in Gaza has been completely obliterated and the right to health has been decimated at every level,’ she said.
‘Not only is Israel killing and causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its bombardments, it and their allies are also knowingly and intentionally imposing famine, prolonged malnutrition, and dehydration.’