IN the midst of catastrophic humanitarian suffering for more than two million Palestinians – half of them children, the Israeli occupation army continued, for the 398th consecutive day, to pound and target different areas and massacre more civilians in the Gaza Strip, especially in the northern areas.
Reporters for the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) said on Thursday that the Israeli occupation army carried out attacks on several homes, civilian targets and shelter centres in different areas of Gaza during the past 24 hours, killing and injuring dozens of citizens.
The Israeli army’s large-scale genocidal campaign in northern Gaza, especially in Jabalia and Beit Lahia, has entered day 34, where its forces continue to intensively bomb homes and shelters and attack civilians while imposing a tight siege on the entire area.
Deliberate Israeli attacks on ambulance and civil defence workers already deprived northern Gaza of any rescue services.
According to local sources, civilians near the Faluja cemetery in Jabalia refugee camp launched appeals to save them as their homes caught fire following Israeli attacks.
Israeli quadcopters also dropped bombs on the gate of the Halima as-Saadiya School in Jabalia an-Nazla, northern Gaza, injuring a number of displaced people.
The Israeli army attacked a house belonging to the family of al-Asi in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, killing five people and injuring others.
Different Israeli airstrikes in central and southern Gaza also claimed the lives of eight civilians and injured several others.
Martyred and wounded civilians were reported following an Israeli attack on a house belonging to the family of as-Sani in an-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
More casualties were reported in different areas of Gaza following Israeli aerial, artillery and shooting attacks yesterday.
- UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini urged the world on Wednesday to save it from an Israeli ban that would have ‘disastrous consequences’ for millions of people in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially those caught up in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
Lazzarini told the 193 nations of the UN General Assembly that they must take action to prevent Israel from implementing legislation that prohibits the agency’s operations in the Palestinian territories. The law, adopted by Israel’s parliament last month, takes effect in 90 days.
‘Without intervention by member states, UNRWA will collapse, plunging millions of Palestinians into chaos,’ Lazzarini warned at a General Assembly session held to highlight the Israeli measure against the agency.
Lazzarini noted that recent legislative moves by the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) target UNRWA as a ‘war goal’ intended to dismantle its services.
He said the measure goes beyond undermining UNRWA’s mission, aiming to ‘end Palestinians’ right to self-determination and aspiration for a just, political solution’ by ‘shifting unilaterally long-established parameters for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.’
Lazzarini described the Gaza Strip as a ‘dystopian horror’, devastated by ‘the most intense bombardment of a civilian population since World War II.’
Saying that humanitarian aid has been severely restricted, Lazzarini said the obstructions have led to widespread deprivation.
‘Palestinians are being burned and buried alive by airstrikes,’ while brutal sieges, attacks on hospitals and detention of men and boys in undisclosed locations further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he said.
Highlighting the spread of violence in the occupied West Bank, Lazzarini said that ‘settler violence and military incursions are a daily occurrence. Public infrastructure is destroyed, deliberately inflicting collective punishment on Palestinians’.
He emphasised that the Palestinian economy is on the brink of collapse, and stressed that ‘for the past year, UNRWA has been a lifeline for the people of Gaza. It is the only pillar of their lives left standing.’
‘Dismantling UNRWA will not terminate the refugee status of Palestinians – this status exists independently of the agency – but it will severely harm their lives and future,’ he said.
Talking about Israeli army attacks on the agency, he said that ‘at least 239 UNRWA personnel have been killed, others detained and reportedly tortured, and more than two-thirds of our premises have been damaged or destroyed’.
