الكاتب: kafej

A heavy downpour in Gaza that followed six weeks of war has brought with it new concerns and challenges for thousands of Palestinians who have lost their homes, those forced to live in flimsy tents and others fleeing south to escape the Israeli military bombardment.

The start of the rainy season and the possibility of flooding has increased fears that the enclave’s damaged sewage system will be overwhelmed and will spread disease.

“We’re very concerned. We’ve already got outbreaks of diarrhoeal diseases. We’ve already recorded well over 30,000 cases when we would normally expect 2,000 cases in the same period,” said Margaret Harris, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said the start of the rainy season could mark “the most difficult week in Gaza” since the conflict began.

Other aid agencies said trying to meet the daily needs of Palestinians has meant they’ve been unable to plan ahead for potential flooding.

Premature babies are in danger of dying as Israeli attacks cripple most hospitals in Gaza.

The World Health Organization says Gaza’s largest health complex – al-Shifa Hospital – resembles a cemetery.

How can this happen to places protected by international law?

And what impact is it having on Palestinians?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan – Co-founder of Gaza Medic Voices

Bushra Khalidi – Policy lead in the occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel at Oxfam

Dr Mads Gilbert – Medical head and professor at the Clinic of Emergency Medicine at the University Hospital of North Norway; is also the author of the book Night in Gaza and has worked with medical teams there

Hospital director says 179 bodies interred together in courtyard as Israeli forces encircle the facility.

Staff at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital have buried dozens of dead patients in a mass grave, hospital officials say, as thousands of Palestinians remain trapped in the facility surrounded by Israeli forces.

“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex, and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” Al-Shifa Hospital Director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told the AFP news agency on Tuesday. “We were forced to bury them in a mass grave.”

He said 179 bodies had been interred so far in the courtyard and seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those who have died since fuel for the hospital’s generator ran out on Saturday.

Israeli forces have surrounded the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, which Israel says sits atop a complex of tunnels and a command centre used by fighters from the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs Gaza.

Hamas has denied fighters are present and said 650 patients and 5,000 to 7,000 displaced civilians are trapped inside the hospital grounds and under constant fire from snipers and drones.

The United Nations estimated that at least 2,300 people – patients, staff and displaced civilians – are inside and may be unable to escape amid fierce fighting.

The deteriorating conditions at hospitals in Gaza has been a source of tension between Israel and its allies during Israel’s assault and siege on Gaza, which has cut off access to fuel.

Speaking on Monday, US President Joe Biden said he hoped to see “less intrusive action relative to hospitals”.

The United Nations said 22 of 36 hospitals in Gaza are not functional due to lack of generator fuel, damage and combat.

“The 14 hospitals remaining open have barely enough supplies to sustain critical and lifesaving surgeries and provide inpatient care, including intensive care,” said the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Palestinian Territories.

Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said on Tuesday that an Israeli offer to move babies out of Al-Shifa Hospital with portable incubators has not resulted in a concrete plan.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said moving sick and vulnerable patients out of the hospital was an “impossible task”.

“And again, why would you need to move them?” she asked. “A hospital should never be under attack. A hospital is a place of safe haven. This is agreed under international humanitarian law.”

Israel has denied that the hospital is under siege and said it is giving people inside the hospital routes to escape. Medical workers and health officials in the hospital have rejected the claim and said Israeli fire has brought additional danger to the performance of their medical duties.

“The occupation is still besieging the hospital, and they are firing into the yards from time to time,” al-Qudra said. “We still can’t move around, but sometimes doctors are taking the risk when they need to attend to patients.”

Israel has bombarded Gaza and launched a ground offensive after Hamas fighters from the territory carried out an attack on southern Israel last month, killing more than 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.

The Israeli assault has killed more than 11,200 people, including more than 4,600 children, according to Palestinian officials.

US Treasury Department has said that the sanctions were jointly coordinated with the UK and target Hamas financing.

The United States and the United Kingdom have announced jointly coordinated sanctions targeting the Palestinian armed groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

In a statement on Tuesday, the US Department of the Treasury said that it was imposing a third round of sanctions on Hamas, targeting the group’s leadership and and the mechanisms through which Iran provides support to the group and the PIJ.

“Hamas’s actions have caused immense suffering and shown that terrorism does not occur in isolation,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement.

“Together with our partners we are decisively moving to degrade Hamas’s financial infrastructure, cut them off from outside funding, and block the new funding channels they seek to finance their heinous acts.”

Britain added sanctions on four Hamas senior leaders and two financiers, the Foreign Office said in a statement, including the group’s political leader in Gaza and the commander of its military arm.

The fresh sanctions against Hamas come more than one month after the group launched a deadly assault on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel has vowed to eliminate the group, launching a ground offensive and hammering the Gaza Strip with air strikes, severely restricting food, water and electricity and cutting off fuel supplies to Gaza’s more than 2.3 million residents.

Palestinian authorities in Gaza say more than 11,200 people have been killed in the Israeli assault, including more than 4,600 children.

About 70 percent of people in Gaza have been displaced by the fighting after the Israeli military ordered people in northern Gaza to move south, but Israel continues to bombard the southern end of the Strip.

The latest sanctions focus on Hamas leaders, as well as individuals and entities who allegedly act as conduits for Iranian funding. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US would continue to work with other countries to “disrupt these terrorist financing channels”.

In a press release, the Treasury Department said that the US has designated Mahmoud Khaled Zahhar, who it calls a “senior member and co-founder” of Hamas.

The United States, in coordination with the UK, is imposing sanctions on individuals and entities that have supported Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups. We continue to coordinate with our partners and allies to disrupt these terrorist financing channels.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) November 14, 2023

The sanctions also target the Lebanon-based money exchange company Nabil Chouman & Co, which the US says is used by Hamas to transfer money from Iran to Gaza. The owner of the company and his son were both also designated.

The US also took aim at the smaller PIJ, which is allied with Hamas and took part in the October 7 attacks, sanctioning Nasser Abu Sharif, the group’s representative to Iran, and Akram al-Ajouri, the group’s deputy secretary-general.

The sanctions freeze any US assets held by the designated individuals or entities and generally bar people in the US from dealing with them.

Mohammed al-Halbousi calls decision ‘strange’, implies it violates constitution and undermines national stability.

Iraq‘s top court has terminated the tenure of Parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, who called the decision “strange” and suggested it violated the constitution and undermined national stability.

The Federal Supreme Court’s ruling on the career of the country’s most powerful Sunni politician is final and not subject to appeal, according to state media reports on Tuesday.

The court said in a statement that it decided to terminate al-Halbousi’s membership in Parliament along with that of lawmaker Laith al-Dulaimi. It did not elaborate on why it was issuing the decision.

In a video shared by his media office, al-Halbousi also said: “We are surprised by the issuance of such decisions, we are surprised by their lack of respect for the constitution.”

He said that in his five years as speaker he had operated with integrity and “never discriminated” between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

The decision was related to a case brought against al-Halbousi this year by the same court, state media reported, without elaborating, according to the Reuters news agency.

Lawmakers had gathered for a regular parliamentary session and al-Halbousi was in the chamber at the time the decision was issued but then exited, independent Iraqi lawmaker Amer al-Fayez told Reuters.

Al-Halbousi, a former governor of Anbar province, was elected speaker in 2018. He was 37 at the time and the youngest speaker of Parliament in Iraq’s history. He was re-elected in 2022 for a second term.

He has been the highest Sunni official in Iraq. Under the country’s sectarian power-sharing system, the Parliament speaker is always Sunni, the prime minister Shia and the president Kurdish.

Now 42, the former engineer from western Iraq who worked as a US contractor after the United States’ invasion in 2003, cultivated good relations with the Shia  Muslims and Kurds who helped his rise to power.

However, he lost support within Iraq’s ruling Shia alliance, the Coordination Framework (CF), after he tried to form a government with their opponents following parliamentary elections in 2022. He ultimately joined the CF in government, but analysts say the damage was done and he was seen as untrustworthy and as accumulating too much power due to his push to rally Sunnis who had been politically divided since 2003 into a unified front.

The court’s decision was against the backdrop of a dispute between al-Halbousi and al-Dulaimi, also Sunni. Al-Dulaimi had filed a lawsuit against al-Halbousi claiming that the speaker had forged his signature on a resignation letter, an allegation the speaker denied, The Associated Press news agency reported.

Deputy Speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi will take over as interim speaker until a new head of the legislature is appointed.

The political shakeup comes ahead of Iraq’s scheduled provincial elections on December 18. Polls for provincial councils last took place a decade ago.