Keeponstalin

UNICEF spokesperson Kazem Abu Khalaf yesterday announced the closure of approximately 21 malnutrition treatment centres in Gaza due to the resumption of Israeli military aggression and the issuance of evacuation orders in operational areas.

He further emphasised that Israel continues to impose a blockade on Gaza, preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, medical supplies, nutritional supplements, and other essential materials for the 35th consecutive day.

UNICEF reported on Saturday that more than one million children in the Gaza Strip have been deprived of life-saving assistance for more than a month, warning that “the continued denial of aid entry into Gaza constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and has dire consequences for children.”

Israel has launched a massive wave of air strikes on Gaza, killing hundreds of people and shattering the fragile two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

Tuesday’s attack, which took place across Gaza, was its most intense since the ceasefire came into effect on January 19, with the Palestinian Health Ministry reporting at least 326 people killed.

Here is how the world is reacting to the deadly attacks:

Almost immediately after the Hamas attack on October 7, Weiss and the rest of the settler movement set their sights on Gaza. Against the backdrop of Israel’s massive bombardment and ethnic cleansing of the territory’s north, they ramped up their efforts to re-establish Jewish settlements there, broadcasting their intentions loudly and bluntly — and with the knowledge that they could count on significant support within the governing coalition.

This past December, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionism party and functions as the overlord of the West Bank, declared (not for the first time) on Israeli public radio, “We must occupy Gaza, maintain a military presence there, and establish settlements.” Many in Smotrich’s camp wanted to prolong the war, reasoning that the longer Israel continued to brutalize Gaza, the greater the likelihood that settlers would succeed in installing an outpost — the germ of a settlement — in the Strip.

The announcement of a ceasefire agreement, which went into effect on Jan. 19, has slowed the Gaza resettlement movement’s momentum, but it has not stalled it.

The ceasefire is fragile, dangerously so: there is no guarantee that it will last beyond the initial six-week phase, which involves only a partial Israeli withdrawal from the territory. And there have already been reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to keep his hard-right government together, has conceded to Smotrich’s demand that Israel restart the war after the first phase ends and gradually assert full Israeli control over the Gaza Strip. Whether that happens will depend largely on the Trump administration’s willingness to exert continuous pressure on Netanyahu to carry out the subsequent stages of the ceasefire agreement — which would very likely jeopardize the survival of Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Amid this uncertainty, the settler movement has continued to press its eliminationist vision of resettling Gaza. The night before the ceasefire went into effect, Nachala led several dozen activists back to the Black Arrow memorial to stage a protest against the agreement. The settlers are openly praying for its failure, while a handful of the more militant among them remain camped within sprinting distance of the separation barrier.

If and when the ceasefire collapses and Israeli ground troops return to the Strip in full force, the settlers will be prepared to renew their push, even more determined to establish new settlements there. In that scenario, there will be frighteningly little standing in their way.

US President Donald Trump has doubled down on comments about displacing Palestinians in Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, escalating tensions with the Hashemite Kingdom and possibly leaving King Abdullah II “vulnerable to geopolitical blackmail”, experts warned.

Analysts believe that if Trump leverages aid, Jordan could be forced to rethink its alliances and look to Arab Gulf states, Russia, China, or the European Union to fill funding gaps.

It could also “[force] them to … implement deeply unpopular austerity measures that predictably lead to protests”, said Geoffrey Hughes, author of the book Kinship, Islam and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan: Affection and Mercy.

Much of Jordan’s population, which includes many Palestinians with Jordanian nationality and more than two million Palestinian refugees, was frustrated with the government’s unwillingness to cut ties.

“What might help Jordan is the old-school, and bipartisan, consensus wing in Washington that sees the Hashemites as indispensable to US foreign policy in the region, remembers the help that Jordan has given for decades to various US wars and interventions, and regards this ‘oasis of moderation’ as not worth destabilising in the long run,” Yom said.

“Trump will need to walk back this completely unrealistic proposition,” Toukan said. “If this was to become official American policy, it would undermine not only Jordan’s stability but that of the entire region, including Egypt’s.”

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are dead. So too are scores of aid workers and journalists. Entire communities have been turned to rubble, leaving residents displaced or homeless.

Israel is more isolated than ever. Europe has turned against free speech. And despite a campus protest movement that rivals the opposition to Vietnam War, the U.S. government remains steadfast in its support for Israel’s war machine.

In all likelihood, the ceasefire agreement will hold to the pattern of past Israeli deals with the Palestinians: immediate concessions for Israel and then a slow-rolling of the rest of the plan — the rebuilding and anything else that might significantly improve the position of the Palestinians, especially in Gaza.

Since the establishment of the state of Israel, Gaza has only ever been an open-air prison, or a collection of mass graves.

There is little doubt that Israel will become more politically isolated from its neighbors, and that it will need to maintain a forever war. Its position is still buoyed by American support. The global protest movement against the war and crimes in Gaza may lose intensity, but the young people traumatized by them will not forget — and the ongoing suffering of Palestinians will not let them.

Israeli forces detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital, after setting the health facility in northern Gaza on fire with doctors and patients inside, according to health officials.

The hospital was stormed by Israeli troops on Friday, following nearly three months of a suffocating blockade and constant air strikes on its departments and their vicinity.

The bombing caused several departments to catch on fire, killing and wounding Palestinian medical workers and patients, according to Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

All remaining medical staff, patients, and their relatives were taken out of the hospital at gunpoint, forced to strip down to their underwear, and transferred to an unknown location.

At the time of the raid, there were 350 people in the hospital, including 180 medical workers and 75 wounded people, according to the Gaza-based Government Media Office

“In 2024, Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza reached catastrophic proportions. Relentless aerial bombardments, ground invasions, and siege tactics deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians, leaving children to suffer the most,” DCIP’s report says.

The number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons also reached a record high in 2024, the group said.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed one Palestinian child every four days this year, “an escalation made possible by decades of impunity,” the group said.

Israel’s violence included using children as human shields “systematically” this year, as DCIP has documented throughout the genocide.

This includes an incident in March in which Israeli tanks surrounded a group of Palestinian children waiting in line for aid in Gaza City. Soldiers stripped the children and tied them up, depriving them of food and water and forcing them for an entire day to walk in front of tanks and in front of buildings that the military wanted to enter, as DCIP found.

Israeli forces’ weaponization of starvation, meanwhile, has put children, especially newborns and children with disabilities, at heightened risk, with babies as young as two months old starving to death, the group said; in August, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel killed 210 newborn babies a month on average in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide.

Over the past four months, nearly 19,000 children in Gaza were hospitalized for acute malnutrition due to Israel’s starvation campaign, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has reported.

This is almost double the number of acute malnutrition cases among children in Gaza in the first six months of 2024, the agency reports; at that time, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) head had said that northern Gaza was under a “full-blown famine” because of Israel’s brutal humanitarian aid blockade.

UNRWA reported on Sunday that one of their only remaining functional health centers has only six boxes of baby formula left to distribute, despite thousands of babies in need — and that was the first shipment of baby food the agency reviewed in three months, the group said.

“It has been 14 months. People here really are surviving on bread, lentils, food in tin cans. We are not seeing fruit and vegetables around. We are not seeing people with families and children get the nutrients that they need,” said UNRWA emergency officer Louise Wateridge last week.

Israel’s aid blockade is causing health effects that will compound for decades to come. The UN Population Fund for Palestine recently reported that there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza who lack essentials like food, water and hygiene supplies. According to the group, 8,000 of these women are among the 345,000 people in Gaza facing “famine-like conditions.”

"The UK is directly aiding and abetting these atrocities, providing Israel with material support at a time when the ICC has arrest warrants out for two of its leaders.”

Khem Rogaly, who is researching British military involvement in the war on Gaza, highlighted US military cargo and British spy plane flights from UK airbases in Cyprus, as well as the British-made components in Israel’s F-35 jets and British participation in the defence of Israel.

“This is not only about arms export licenses - but active collaboration, logistical support, supplies and supporting missions that have been ongoing for 14 months,” Rogaly said.

“This means Britain is not only failing in its third-party obligations under international law but are longstanding active participants in the crimes outlined today.”

And so the Palestinians from northern Gaza speaking in London - either in person or on video - were doing so in the knowledge that Israel was attacking them and their families with the help of Britain, even while the British government continues to call for a ceasefire.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke in support of the ceasefire later the same day, adding that his administration would use the momentum from Tuesday’s deal between Israel and Hezbollah to push toward a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Biden also blamed Hamas for the failure to secure peace in Gaza to date, alleging that the group has failed to negotiate in good faith, despite reporting to the contrary.

But Netanyahu’s own address seemed to undercut Biden’s point. In pitching the ceasefire to the Israeli audience, Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for potential war crimes, emphasized that closing the northern front of its war would allow Israel’s military to regroup and give the nation an opportunity to focus on other enemies: Iran and Hamas. He also emphasized that Israel would “retain complete military freedom of action,” adding that “should Hezbollah violate the agreement or attempt to rearm, we will strike decisively.”

Israel intensified its bombing campaign against Lebanon in recent days, up through and beyond the announcement of the pending ceasefire. A day before the truce was announced, Israeli strikes killed at least seven Palestinians in Gaza City. Reports have surfaced in recent days of the IDF using sniper drones to target and kill civilians. And as the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza has been slowed by Israel, experts warned of “a strong likelihood of famine” in areas of northern Gaza.

Zonszein said that the truce does not imply Israel is interested in peace. She said that continued U.S. support gives Israel the unilateral ability to move freely in and over Lebanon by land, sea, and air. Maintaining the threat of violence against Lebanon, and, as Netanyahu mentioned in his speech, Iran, is core to Israeli strategy, she said.

Moments after Biden announced the deal, Israeli warplanes struck Beirut yet again. The bombing campaign continued in the hours leading up to the pending ceasefire.

The measure received 14 votes in favour, with the US the sole member to reject it. However, because the US is a permanent member of the council, it has the ability to veto any resolution brought forward

Unlike several previous resolutions regarding a ceasefire in Gaza, Wednesday's measure was brought forward by all 10 elected members of the Security Council.

The US has vetoed four previous attempts at calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, on most occasions being the lone vote against the measures.

The US and Canada have called The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network a “sham charity” and declared that anyone doing business with or donating to the group could face criminal charges.

Samidoun (meaning steadfast in Arabic) was formed in support of the 2011 hunger strike by Palestinians in Israeli prisons. At the time, there were fewer than 5,000 in indefinite “administrative detention” - effectively in limbo and held without charge.

Now, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, there are about 9,500 such prisoners. And for researchers and activists, Samidoun has been a resource in the campaigns to free these detainees.

Samidoun's website describes the group as "an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom".

In 2022, the US State Department cited Samidoun as a source in its annual human rights report for the West Bank and Gaza. That report is still available on the site.

The group has long expressed public support for armed resistance in occupied Palestinian territories - a stance which has been dramatically amplified since Israel's war on Gaza following the 7 October attacks on southern Israel.