Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 221

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has said that aid workers “are not and should never be a target”.

“Far too many colleagues working for the UN have been killed in Gaza. At UNRWA alone, 188 team members have been killed since this war began. No one is safe in Gaza including aid workers,” he wrote in a post on X.

Two UN workers were driving to the European Hospital in southern Gaza in a UN-marked vehicle on Sunday when their vehicle came under fire. The UN has confirmed that the attack killed the organisation’s first foreign staff member in Gaza since the start of the conflict on October 7.

The Israeli military has yet to confirm its forces were responsible for the attack.

Germany’s Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert has condemned attacks by right-wing Israeli activists on convoys delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“To raid aid trucks and prevent food from reaching the needy is disgraceful. And it certainly won’t help the Israeli cause of freeing the hostages and securing the country against the terror of Hamas,” he wrote in a post on X.

On Sunday, Israeli far-right activist group Tzav 9, which seeks to stop all humanitarian aid going into Gaza, blocked a shipment as it went through the Tarqumiyah checkpoint near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

US National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said the attack was “completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour”.

The global charity is sounding the alarm over the risk of deadly diseases spreading in Gaza, saying that the Israeli invasion of Rafah is compounding a “lethal cocktail of over-crowding, sewage and hunger”, Al Jazeera reports.

Oxfam’s staff in Gaza are describing piles of human waste and rivers of sewage in the streets. They said people are also drinking dirty water while children are being bitten by insects swarming around the sewage. All of this makes conditions ripe for the outbreak of epidemics, including Hepatitis A and cholera, the charity warned.

The situation is further worsened by Israel’s invasion of Rafah, it said.

“Israel’s military assault on Rafah could be devastating, not only because of the risk of mass civilian casualties, but also the repercussions of vast numbers of people being forced to move,” Oxfam’s Middle East Director Sally Abi Khalil said.

Celebrities who have remained silent on the crisis in Gaza are feeling the wrath of angry fans wielding the “digital guillotine” to block them on social media and streaming platforms, AFP reports.

Taylor Swift, Drake and many more have become targets of the “Block Out 2024” movement, which began on TikTok in response to the perceived disconnect between the glamorous Met Gala and the grim realities of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

For months, pro-Palestinian activists have flooded the comments sections of social media sites, urging stars to join calls for a ceasefire in Gaza’s deadliest conflict.

But matters came to a head after last week’s Met Gala, a glitzy fundraiser and the biggest night in fashion featuring A-list stars from screen, stage, sports and the world’s runways.

Dressed in an extravagant gown, influencer Haley Kalil posted on TikTok lip-synching “Let them eat cake” — a phrase notoriously associated with Marie Antoinette that symbolizes the callous disregard of 18th century French aristocrats towards the poor.

Fellow TikToker ladyfromtheoutside, who started the movement, responded: “It’s time for the people to conduct what I want to call a digital guillotine, a digitine, if you will,” referring to the execution apparatus used during the French Revolution.

“Take our views away, our likes, our comments, our money,” she urged.

Her message was taken up as a rallying cry for the pro-Palestinian movement, and early signs suggest the boycott may be having an impact.

Protests, messages weaved into commencement addresses, and the heckling of guest speakers, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld, are just some of the ways students in the US showed support for Palestine during graduation ceremonies across the country this week.

Watch the full report by Al Jazeera below:

The Israeli military has stormed the occupied West Bank city of Nablus and arrested a Palestinian man, the Wafa news agency reports.

Israeli settlers have also attacked two Palestinian men near the village of Duma, south of Nablus, and stoned the car of another man, according to Wafa.

The group has called US Senator Lindsey Graham’s suggestion that Israel strike Gaza with a nuclear bomb “shocking” and “reflective of the depth of his immorality”, Al Jazeera reports.

“It is also reflective of his inherent mentality of colonialism, as well as that of a group of high-ranking politicians in the US, who support the genocide being perpetrated by an occupation army against civilians,” Hamas said in a statement.

Hamas said Graham’s stated position “makes him complicit in the genocidal war on Gaza”.

The group “urged people to denounce such positions and continue pushing for an end to the war against Palestinians in Gaza”.

The Government Media Office in Gaza has condemned the Israeli army for killing a foreign UN employee and injuring another staffer in Rafah while they were riding in a United Nations vehicle, Al Jazeera reports.

“They were targeted while they were riding in a United Nations vehicle bearing the United Nations flag and United Nations insignia”, a statement from the office says.

The statement shared on Telegram demanded “an end to the war of genocide” and blamed the US administration for Israel’s “war crimes”.

Greece and Turkey cannot agree on all issues related to the bombardment in Gaza but they can agree that violence must end and a long-term ceasefire is needed, Greece’s prime minister said after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.

“Let’s agree to disagree,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis said according to Reuters, responding to Erdogan who said that he was saddened by the Greek view that deems Hamas a terrorist organisation.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “more than 1,000 members” of the Palestinian fighter group Hamas were being treated in Turkish hospitals amid the ongoing bombardment in Gaza, AFP reports.

Erdoga nmade the announcement to reporters, adding that he considered Hamas “a resistance organisation”.

The board of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, a brand owned by Unilever, said that the pro-Palestinian protests sweeping US college campuses and graduation ceremonies are “essential” to democracy, Reuters reports.

Lunch counter sit-ins, student-led protests against the Vietnam War and Apartheid South Africa, and now the campus protests in solidarity with Gaza, all are part of our rich history of free speech and non-violent protest that makes change and is essential to a strong democracy, the independent board said in a statement.

London-based Unilever did not immediately return a request for comment.

The government of Maldives has said it will formally join the lawsuit filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which accuses Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports.

In a statement by the president’s office, the government of Maldives said the move comes due to “genocidal acts perpetrated by Israeli occupying forces under the guise of security concerns [which] have resulted in mass displacement, acute starvation, and blockage of humanitarian aid”.

The government also said that demands made by Israel for the immediate evacuation of thousands of Palestinian civilians seeking refuge in eastern Rafah “are a testament to its failure to adhere to the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ”.

Hamas’ armed wing Al Qassam Brigades have lost contact with fighters guarding four Israeli hostages in Gaza, including Hersh Golberg-Poline, they said in a statement according to Reuters.

Mai Anseir and her extended family of 25 — who already had to move three times in the face of Israeli bombardment — say they have run out of options as Israeli troops get closer to the last sanctuary on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.

“We are here, we do not know how to leave. Our financial capabilities do not allow us to get transportation so that we can leave,” said the mother of five at an abandoned UN school where the family had taken shelter.

“And we cannot stay in [this] place because it is ‘zero’. The place is miserable. There are no services, no water, no electricity. There is no life in the place that we were at.”

Read more here.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 35,091 people have been killed in the territory during more than seven months of Israeli bombardment, AFP reports.

The toll includes at least 57 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 78,827 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

Amnesty International has criticised an inconclusive US report on whether Israel’s operations in Gaza violate international law, calling the findings an “international version of ‘thoughts and prayers’”, Al Jazeera reports.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview for NBC News: “We don’t have double standards.

“We treat Israel, one of our closest allies and partners, just as we would treat any other country, including assessing something like international humanitarian law and its compliance with that law,” he said.

“[People] can see for themselves, everything we’ve laid out in the report. The report also makes clear that this is an incredibly complex military environment.”

Blinken added that making such an assessment during a conflict about individual incidents is “difficult”.

“You have an enemy that intentionally embeds itself with civilians, hiding under and within schools, mosques, apartment buildings, firing at Israeli forces from those places,” he said.

Israeli forces have pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza’s northern edge to recapture an area where they had claimed to have defeated Hamas months ago, while at the opposite end of the enclave tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah, Reuters reports.

With some of the most intense fighting for weeks now taking place on both the northern and southern edges of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have again taken flight, and aid groups warn that a humanitarian crisis could sharply worsen.

Israel described its latest return to the north, where it pulled out most of its troops five months ago, as part of a “mop-up” stage of the onslaught to prevent fighters from returning, and said such operations had always been part of its plan. Palestinians say the need to keep fighting amid the ruins of previous battles is proof Israel’s military objectives are unattainable.

In sprawling Jabalia, the biggest of Gaza’s eight camps built 75 years ago to house Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, tanks pushed towards the heart of the district. Residents said tank shells were landing at the centre of the camp and air strikes had destroyed clusters of houses.

Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, Sarah Bracke, spoke to Al Jazeera about the student and staff protests against Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in the Netherlands.

She said the staff at three higher education institutions in Amsterdam witnessed police “violently” attempting to disperse a peaceful student encampment last Monday.

She said the staff today are protesting as they want to end the university’s complicity in “the ongoing genocide” in Gaza, but also want to call out the violent methods that police have used to suppress peaceful protests.

She also noted that there were Jewish staff and student protesters beaten by police despite the educational institutions claiming that police are needed to protect the safety of Jewish students on campus.

Israel has battled Hamas in Gaza, including in far-southern Rafah, despite US warnings against a full-scale invasion of the crowded city and of the threat of post-conflict “anarchy” across the Palestinian territory, AFP reports.

Clashes also raged in northern and central areas of the besieged Gaza Strip, AFP correspondents and witnesses said, as Israel prepared to mark a sombre Independence Day, beginning Monday night.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Memorial Day event that “our war of independence is not over yet. It continues even today … We are determined to win this struggle.”

AFP correspondents reported helicopter strikes and heavy artillery shelling in the east of Rafah, as well as battles in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, says medical staff at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah have received an evacuation order from Israeli forces.

He said although the situation in the area has been “dire”, until today, the Israeli forces had not placed a call to the hospital’s director.

Medics based at the hospital fear that an attack on the hospital would mean a “complete collapse” of the limited medical system in Rafah, he added.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that the besieged Palestinian territory’s health system is “hours away” from collapse, after fighting has blocked fuel shipments through key crossings, AFP reports.

“We are just hours away from the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of the necessary fuel to operate generators in hospitals, ambulances, and (for vehicles to) transport staff,” the ministry said in a statement.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says nearly 360,000 people have now fled Gaza’s Rafah since Israel issued evacuation orders on May 6.

“There’s nowhere to go. There’s no safety without a ceasefire,” the agency said in a post on X.