Summary
That concludes today’s blog on the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza. Here’s the latest from today:
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that a ‘massive operation’ is needed in Rafah as he asks security officials to present an evacuation plan for the area. Earlier Friday, Netanyahu ordered Israel’s military to prepare for evacuating Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip ahead of an expected invasion.
The head of the Palestinian Authority said in a statement that Israel’s military escalation in Rafah aims to push Palestinians from their land, Reuters reported. The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday that it holds the Israel and US governments responsible for any effects of the expected invasion, saying that Israel’s actions threaten peace and security in the region.
Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said that civilians in Gaza are at “grave risk of genocide” in response to Israel ordering people in Rafah to evacuate ahead of an expected invasion.
Undercover Israeli killings in West Bank hospital ‘may be war crimes’, a group of UN experts said Friday. The killing of three Palestinian men in a hospital in the occupied West Bank last month by Israeli commandos disguised as medical workers and Muslim women may meet the threshold for war crimes.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warned of a “bloodbath” if Israeli operations expand to Rafah. “No war can be allowed in a gigantic refugee camp,” he said Aid workers said Israeli military advance into southern Gaza’s Rafah area could cause mass deaths among the more than one million Palestinians trapped there, with humanitarian aid in danger of collapse.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that Israeli forces had raided the PRCS al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis. “The occupation (Israeli) forces stormed al-Amal hospital and started searching it. We’re finding it difficult to communicate with our crews inside the hospital,” a PRCS statement said on Friday. The Israeli military did not immediately respond when contacted by AFP about soldiers entering the hospital.
At least 22 people, including children and women, were killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight into Friday in the central area of the Gaza Strip and in the southern city of Rafah on the border with Egypt. The strikes hit a residential building in Rafah and a kindergarten-turned-shelter for the displaced in the central town of Zuwaida. The dead and wounded were taken to nearby hospitals, where the bodies were seen by journalists from AP.
Thank you for reading the Guardian’s coverage.
Updated
Several employees were fired from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees as apart of “reverse due process” after being accused of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attacks in Israel.
Here’s more information on the latest regrding UNRWA starring and the ongoing investigation, from the Guardian’s Emine Sinmaz.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said he did not probe Israel’s claims against the employees before dismissing them and launching an investigation.
At a press conference in Jerusalem, Lazzarini was asked if he had looked into whether there was any evidence against the employees and he replied: “No, the investigation is going on now.”
He described the decision as “reverse due process”, adding: “I could have suspended them, but I have fired them. And now I have an investigation, and if the investigation tells us that this was wrong, in that case at the UN we will take a decision on how to properly compensate [them].”
Read the full article here.
