Tag: Gaza and the West Bank

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The United Nations was forced to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza on Friday and warned of the growing possibility of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of a lack of fuel.

Israel announced that it will allow two tanker trucks of fuel daily into Gaza for the U.N. and communications systems. The amount is half of what the U.N. said it needs to conduct lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including fueling water systems, hospitals, bakeries and its trucks delivering aid.

Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of what’s needed.

The communications blackout, now in its second day, largely cuts off Gaza’s 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, couldn’t bring in its aid convoy Friday because of the communications cut-off and won’t be able to as long it continues, said spokesperson Juliette Touma.

“An extended blackout means an extended suspension of our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip,” Touma told The Associated Press.

Israeli forces have signaled they could expand their offensive toward Gaza’s south even while continuing operations in the north. Troops have been searching the territory’s biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command center Israel alleges was located under the building — a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

On Friday, the military said it found the body of another hostage, Cpl. Noa Marciano, in a building adjacent to Shifa, like that of another hostage found Thursday, Yehudit Weiss. Hundreds of mourners, many carrying Israeli flags, attended Marciano’s funeral Friday in her home town of Modi’in.

The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Aid dries up

After an American request, Israel agreed to let a “very minimal” amount of fuel into Gaza each day, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) a day for the U.N.

For the communications network, Israel also agreed on another 10,000 liters a day (2,640 gallons), a U.S. State Department official said .

UNRWA and other humanitarian groups need at least 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) a day to run lifesaving functions, Touma said. It was not immediately known if the fuel for communications would be enough to revive the network.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, said Abeer Etefa, a Mideast regional spokeswoman for the U.N.’s World Food Program.

“People are facing the immediate possibility of starvation,” she said Thursday from Cairo.

March for hostages

Israeli officials previously vowed fuel would not be let in until Gaza militants release the hostages. The government has been under heavy public pressure in Israel to show it is doing all it can to bring back the men, women and children abducted in Hamas’ attack.

Thousands of marchers — including families of over 50 hostages — embarked Friday on the fourth leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, chanting, “Bring them home!” They are marching to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, calling on his War Cabinet to do more to rescue their loved ones. They have urged the cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages.

Hamas has offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the cabinet has rejected.

Conditions at Shifa

With Israeli troops fanned out around the Shifa hospital complex, doctors spoke of horrifying conditions inside. Electricity has been out nearly a week, leaving incubators for infants and ventilators for ICU patients defunct. Nearly 7,000 people are trapped there with little food, including patients, staff and civilian families.

Hospital director, Mohammed Abu Selmia, told Al-Jazeera television that 52 patients have died since fuel ran out — up from 40 reported before Israeli troops stormed in on Wednesday. He said staff were amputating limbs of some injured to avoid infection spreading because of shortages in medicines.

More were on the verge of death as their wounds are “open with maggots coming out of them,” another doctor, Faisal Siyam, told Al-Jazeera.

Dr. Ahmad Mukhalalti, said most of the 36 premature infants suffer from severe diarrhea because there is no clean water. He said Israeli troops had taken away all the bodies from the morgue and from a mass grave that staff dug days earlier in the courtyard. The Israeli military had no comment on the report. The doctors’ accounts could not be independently verified.

Abu Selmia said Israeli troops should either bring them fuel to power equipment or allow an evacuation.

“The hospital has become a giant prison,” he said. “We are surrounded by death.”

Israel’s military said it delivered 4,000 liters of water and 1,500 ready-made meals to Shifa, but staff said it was too little for the numbers there.

Israeli military spokesman Col. Richard Hecht acknowledged that the troops’ search for traces of Hamas was going slowly. “It’s going to take time,” he said.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital. So far, Israel has shown photos and video of weapons caches that it says were found inside as well as what it said was a tunnel entrance. The AP could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

The allegations are part of Israel’s broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields across the Gaza Strip, contending that is the reason for the large numbers of civilian casualties during weeks of bombardment.

Strikes in the south

Airstrikes continued to hammer the southern sector of Gaza, where most of the territory’s population is now sheltering. Among them are hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israel’s calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north to get out of the way of its ground offensive.

In the Nusseirat refugee camp, a strike crushed a building to rubble killing at least 41 people, staff at the nearby hospital said. Residents said dozens more were buried in the wreckage.

Early morning strikes outside the city of Khan Younis killed 11 members of a family who had evacuated from Gaza City. Dozens of wounded, including babies and young children, streamed into the nearby hospital.

At the morgue, Alaa Abu Hasira wept over the bodies from the strike, lined side-by-side on the floor, including her son, daughter and several sisters. “All my loved ones are gone. All my loved ones are gone,” she sobbed.

So far, Israel’s ground assault has focused on northern Gaza as it vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities. If the assault moves into the south, it is not clear where Palestinians can go. Egypt has refused to allow a mass transfer onto its soil.

As the war continues to inflame tensions elsewhere, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian gunmen in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, killing at least three Palestinians. The fighting broke out late Thursday during an Israeli raid.

Israel’s military said five militants were killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry said three people died. The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed the three dead as members and identified one as a local commander.

In Gaza, surgeons are operating by flashlights, rationing anesthetics, and running out of precious fuel needed to keep patients alive. 

As the World Health Organization reports that more than one-third of the city’s hospitals are no longer operating and Israel’s bombing continues, health care professionals fear the worst. 

“The health system here is in its last throes before it completely boots down. If the electricity goes, that’s it. It just becomes a mass grave,” says Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has been working at Al-Shifa hospital over the last two weeks. “There’s no hospital, if there’s no electricity.” 

Read More: ‘Our Death Is Pending.’ Stories of Loss and Grief From Gaza

Right now, his sense is that it will be “days, rather than weeks,” until Al-Shifa runs out of fuel needed to keep the hospital running. Palestine’s Ministry of Health said Tuesday that hospital generators will stop running in 48 hours, and aid workers tell TIME that the city is expected to run out of fuel on Wednesday evening. 

The situation is particularly dire for neonatal babies. Dr. Hatem Edhair, the head of the neonatal intensive care unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, fears that electricity shutting off will mean five babies dependent on ventilators will die. “If there is no electricity, it means the end of their life… because oxygen will not be available,” he says. 

Dr. Ahmed Mhanna, manager of Al-Awda hospitals in northern Gaza, said Monday that the hospital only had enough fuel to run another three to four days. They have been relying on two generators that have been consuming more than 13 liters per hour, he says. “If there’s no fuel, it means the generator will stop. If the generator will stop, the hospital will stop. We will close,” he says.

Mhanna is unfazed by the sound of a blast while on a phone interview with TIME. Asked whether he wants to cut the call, he responds: “No, it’s OK: they are bombing everywhere all the time.”

“We are feeling absolutely unsafe in the hospital. We are worried, we are afraid, we are human beings but we cannot do anything except continue our mission with our patients,” he says. 

So far, Israeli attacks have killed more than 6,400 people and injured more than 17,000 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health run out of the West Bank. More than half are women and children. The Palestinian Ministry of Health also reports 73 medical personnel have been killed, more than 100 have been wounded, and 25 ambulances are out of service.

The airstrikes follow Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people. As the U.S. works to funnels more than $14 billion in aid for Israel, pro-Palestinian advocates and aid groups are calling for a ceasefire with little success.

Read More: The Gaza Healthcare System Is Reportedly on the Brink of Collapse

The sheer number of injured Palestinians means Al-Shifa is operating well beyond its maximum capacity of about 700 patients—instead dealing with between 1,700 to 1,900 people, Abu-Sittah says. Hospital compounds have become makeshift tent cities—not only for patients but also civilians seeking shelter. “You feel that there’s a public health catastrophe waiting to happen,” Abu-Sittah says. 

So many people in such a small space, with inadequate access to hygiene and sanitation, can lead to an outbreak of infectious diseases, he says. Having dead bodies remain in the streets is another source of potential infection, health experts warn.

Al-Shifa hospital also can’t sterilize surgical equipment properly. Abu-Sittah has been going out to the corner store to buy bottles of vinegar and laundry detergent to clean wounds. He feels forced to cut some surgeries short because of how many patients he needs to treat. “Everyday you make more and more compromises about what you can and can’t do,” Abu-Sittah says. 

Even Edhair’s hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza—Israel had ordered a mass evacuation from northern to southern Gaza on Oct. 13—has had its share of nearby explosions. Last week, he says two airstrikes landed near the hospital, causing mothers to flee their rooms, crying. “This is terrifying,” he says. “We all are afraid of war. I want everyone to know we are civilians.” On Monday morning, he found an airstrike just 500 meters from his home, he says. His mother told him not to go to the hospital but he refused to listen.  

More than 20 hospitals have been asked to evacuate in the northern Gaza strip, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The Israeli government called Al-Awda hospitals less than a week ago and told Mhanna personally they have to evacuate staff and patients, he says. “I refused, of course, because where can I deal with my patients? All the hospitals in Gaza are overcrowded, people are lying in corridors.”

“A crime is a crime, even if you make it by appointment.”

Al-Shifa Hospital has received similar warnings. “Giving notice by telling hospitals that they need to evacuate—knowing very well that’s not possible—does not make targeting hospitals less of a war crime,” Abu-Sittah says. “A crime is a crime, even if you make it by appointment.” 

And as hospitals switch to caring for the victims of recent violence, routine care is almost impossible to provide. 

“When we think about war, we often focus on the victims of airstrikes… but ordinary lives don’t stop. Women still go into labor. They still have miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, preterm births, and hemorrhages,” says Dr. Brenda Kelly, a consultant obstetrician in Oxford, U.K. Many operating theaters in Gaza are now dealing with trauma-related injuries, leaving less room to treat pregnant women.

Read More: What Aid Groups Say Gaza Needs

Melanie Ward, CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians, a U.K. based nonprofit, is particularly worried about disruptions to routine care, such as kidney dialysis and cancer. More than 1,000 kidney dialysis patients have had their session time reduced from four hours to 2.5 hours per patient, according to Palestine’s Ministry of Health. About 9,000 cancer patients rely on chemotherapy to stay alive and the only hospital providing this service is running on a single generator expected to stop working within 24-48 hours, the ministry noted. 

She says the group has already released more than half a million dollars worth of medical supplies to hospitals across Gaza. But it’s not enough. “Some operations have been conducted without anesthesia, which I find barbaric,” she says. “We do not live in the middle ages.”

Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, a British-Egyptian senior pediatric neurology resident in London, co-founded the social media account @GazaMedicVoices, which shares firsthand accounts from health care professionals in the city. He says hospitals in Gaza were running on fumes even before recent airstrikes, as the city has been facing a blockade for more than a decade.

One story that haunts Abdel-Mannan is from a pediatric intensive care doctor in Gaza who said she was torn between helping two patients who arrived at the intensive care unit. “She had to basically let one not survive and choose the other one to keep them alive,” he says. “She was heartbroken over the idea that she’s having to make these decisions that almost feel like you’re playing God…because of the sheer volume of patients coming through the door.” 

In the meantime, doctors are feeling powerless—not only about dwindling supplies but about the scale of casualties. On Monday, after Abu-Sittah finished operating on a young Palestinian girl, he tried to console her, saying that her procedure went well and she was alright. “She said to me: things will never be alright: they killed my mom and dad.”