GAZA: The Hamas government’s health ministry warned on Friday all hospitals in Gaza would have to stop or reduce services “within 48 hours” for lack of fuel, blaming Israel for blocking its entry.
“We raise an urgent warning as all hospitals in Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation’s (Israel’s) obstruction of fuel entry,” Marwan Al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, said during a press conference.
“We call on international institutions to exploit the decision of the International Criminal Court to stop the genocidal war in Gaza Strip,” he added.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday “for crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed between October 8, 2023, and May 20 this year.
The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in a July air strike, but whose death Hamas has not confirmed.
Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of war in the Palestinian territory following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
In late October, the health ministry reported that all hospitals but one in northern Gaza were out of service.
The only medical facility still only partly functioning in the area affected by the Israeli assault had “no medicine or medical supplies,” Kamal Adwan hospital director Hossam Abu Safia said at the time.
The ministry’s latest warning comes three days after the World Health Organization (WHO) expressed grave concern for hospitals still partly operating in northern Gaza.
WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said on Tuesday that the organization was “particularly concerned about Kamal Adwan Hospital” in Beit Lahia, where Israeli forces launched an offensive against Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups last month.
Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages
https://arab.news/2pk8c
Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages
- “We raise an urgent warning as all hospitals in Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours,” Marwan Al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, said
- “We call on international institutions to exploit the decision of the International Criminal Court to stop the genocidal war in Gaza Strip“
Israeli settlers forcibly enter Palestinian home in latest West Bank attack
- The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home
- Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land
JERUSALEM: Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank overnight, breaking in and killing sheep, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. It was the latest in a surge of attacks by settlers against Palestinians in the territory in recent months.
Israeli police said they arrested five settlers.
The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home, and fired tear gas inside, sending three Palestinian children under the age of 4 to the hospital, said Amir Dawood, who directs an office documenting such attacks within a Palestinian governmental body called the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.
Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land, damaging property and dispensing pepper spray, not tear gas. They said they are investigating.
CCTV video from the attack in the town of As Samu’, shared by the commission, showed five masked settlers in dark clothing, some with batons, approaching the home and appearing to enter. Sounds of smashing are heard, as well as animal noises. Another video from inside shows masked figures appearing to strike sheep in the stable.
Photos of the aftermath, also shared by the commission, show smashed car windows and a shattered front door. Bloodied sheep lie dead as others stand with blood staining their wool. Inside the home, photos show broken glass and the furniture ransacked.
Dawood said it was the second settler attack on the family in less than two months. He called it “part of a systematic and ongoing pattern of settler violence targeting Palestinian civilians, their property and their means of livelihood, carried out with impunity under the protection of the Israeli occupation.”
During October’s olive harvest, settlers across the territory launched an average of eight attacks daily, the most since the United Nations humanitarian office began collecting data in 2006. The attacks continued in November, with the UN recording at least 136 by Nov. 24.
Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — areas claimed by the Palestinians for a future state — in the 1967 war. It has settled over 500,000 Jews in the West Bank, in addition to over 200,000 in contested East Jerusalem.
Israel’s government is dominated by far-right proponents of the settler movement, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Cabinet Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the nation’s police force. Earlier this week, Smotrich said the Israeli cabinet had approved a proposal for 19 new Jewish settlements, another blow to the possibility of a Palestinian state.
