Pearls and Irritations

American supplied Israel bombs killed at least 100 people as they stood while performing Fajr (dawn) prayers at the Al-Tabin school in the Daraj area of Gaza City on August 10th. This latest school massacre shredded many bodies to pieces, leaving them unrecognisable, resulting in civic defence workers collecting bundles of body parts.

Media reports state that three Israeli rockets hit the school, killing, maiming and setting fire to the building where hundreds of displaced people were taking shelter from the war. It has been described as the deadliest massacre in the 10-month-old war and internationally widely condemned. This is the latest of numerous schools attacked in the last month, illustrating a clear pattern of killing and maiming of defenceless civilians in school shelters, among them many women and children and is the latest of UN identified 174 deliberate bombings on shelters over the last 10 months.

UNRWA reports that as of July 15th, 70 percent of its schools in Gaza have been bombed during the war. As with all previous bombings the Israeli government reported that in this latest attack its air forces struck a “command and control centre” that “served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders” but as usual no evidence of such has been provided.

The United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that it is “horrified by the unfolding pattern of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) strikes on schools in Gaza killing internally displaced Palestinians seeking shelter there.” This deliberate pattern of bombing school and hospital shelters has become very obvious over the last four weeks.

August 9th, the Al-Tabin school in the Daraj area of Gaza City was bombed killing at least 100 people.

August 9th, an Israeli air strike killed six Palestinians sheltering in tents in Al-Mawasi refugee camp.

August 8th, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was bombed for the fourth time.

August 4th, Hassan Salameh and Nasser Schools in An Nassr area in western Gaza City were attacked almost simultaneously, with initial reports suggesting at least 25 Palestinians, including children and women, were killed.

August 3rd , there was an attack on Hamama School and the adjacent Huda School in Shake Radwan in Gaza City, with initial reports indicating at least 16 Palestinians were killed, including children and women.

August 1st, Dalal Moghrabi public school in Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City was struck, killing 15 Palestinians, including children.

July 27th, the Khadija School and the adjacent Ahmad Al Kurd School in Deir al Balah were struck, killing at least 30 Palestinians, reportedly including 15 children and 8 women.

July 16th, 23 people were killed and 73 more injured in an attack on a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp sheltering displaced people.

July 9th,  at least 29 people died in an Israeli strike at the entrance to Al-Awda school in the Khan Younis area, southern Gaza.

July 8th, Israel hit another Nuseirat refugee camp school school, claiming it was targeting “terrorists”.

July 7th, four people were killed in a strike on the church-run Holy Family school in Gaza City, in the territory’s north.

July 6, an Israeli aircraft hit Al-Jawni school Nuseirat, run by UNRWA where about 2,000 people were sheltering.

In every case Israel claimed that militants “used the compound as a hiding place to direct and plan numerous attacks against IDF troops” and “developed and stored large quantities of weapons inside”. but as usual no evidence of such has been provided.

So why are displaced Palestinians flocking to these school?

Families hope and believe that the UN schools will provide them with safety while sheltering under the UN flag, as international law states. They believe this even though they face fatigue, trauma, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. The benefits are that they have additional power and generator facilities as well as access to aid or medicine and so they feel luckier than those living in plastic tents and sleeping on the sand. There is also some psychological benefit in that people share their experiences with each other. However, they still face war, hunger, siege and chaos, and humanitarian workers report the increasing instances of violence and gender-based violence within these schools.

In addition, WHO reports that there is a growing number of adults and children suffering from waterborne diseases, such as hepatitis A, diarrhoea related illnesses, skin conditions, and others. There is concern also of the recent identification of the polio virus and the impact this will have on children yet to be vaccinated. The deliberate bombing and targeting of of health structures has resulted in only three hospitals operating partially in the Strip, and they need more oxygen and medical supplies to continue their work for the sake of providing first aid to the most critical cases. Israel continues to limit these critical medical supplies.

Over these last ten months more than 1.9 million of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes. More than 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip is now assessed as having been placed under evacuation orders since October of last year. Exhausted people are being moved from one place to another over and over again. Is an unbelievable nightmare with people reported saying that they are all waiting their turn to be killed and saying that “we feel as if we are being chased”. Israel is subjecting an entire people to a brutal and vicious collective punishment, forcing them run for their lives in a genocide war being conducted in plain sight. Israeli Ministers say that it is perfectly fine to starve them, deny them of food and water and arrest and torture them, raping and killing are fine too.

As of now, at least 39,699 people have been killed and 91,722 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza and a recent report in The Lancet medical journal, says the actual Palestinian death toll in Gaza could exceed 186,000 people. In addition, UNRWA reports that two out of every three buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed, and warns again that malnutrition among children in northern Gaza has surged by 300%. Meanwhile, humanitarian assistance missions requiring coordination with Israeli authorities continue to be denied and impeded and the volume of aid able to be brought from the operational border crossings into Gaza has decreased by more than half since early May, when the Rafah crossing was closed.

In spite of this carnage, and indeed the humiliation caused by Israel’s repeatedly ignoring the so called US’s “red lines” the United States is still sending an additional US $3.5bn to Israel to spend on US-made weapons and military equipment. This additional budget is on top of the more than US $3bn in annual military aid to Israel.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, condemned the worlds indifference to this ongoing mass bloodshed saying “Israel is genociding the Palestinians, one neighbourhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one ‘safe zone’ at the time with European weapons.” She concluded her comment saying “may the Palestinian people forgive us for our collective inability to protect them, honouring the most basic principle of international humanitarian law”.

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