CrossFireArabia
The Israeli occupation army’s recent killing of an elderly couple in the Gaza Strip and an elderly man in the West Bank constitute grave crimes against elderly Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that require international investigation.
During the 330-day Israeli genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 2,122 elderly men and women have been killed. This represents roughly 2% of the 107,000 elderly people who live in the Strip and roughly 4% of all Palestinian deaths there since 7 October 2023. These crimes, which have been committed hundreds of times, are unjustified and particularly cruel to this defenseless civilian group, which Israel has been targeting ever since it launched its large-scale attack on the Gaza Strip.
Most of these elderly victims were crushed to death under the debris of their homes or shelter centres after Israeli aircraft bombed them on their heads, or during their forced evacuations in the streets or visits to markets to meet their basic needs. Shockingly, however, dozens of them were killed directly through field executions and liquidation operations.
Following the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Khan Yunis on Friday 30 August, the discovery of the bodies of the elderly man Wajih Misbah Shaath (71 years old) and his wife Sabah Shaath (65 years old) was documented by the Euro-Med Monitor field team. The Israeli army shot the couple in their Khan Yunis home, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Shaath’s sister-in-law provided Euro-Med Monitor with the following account of the execution of her husband’s brother and his wife, who were shot in the head: “My husband, my daughters, and I left Khan Yunis due to evacuation orders, but my husband’s brother Wajih Misbah Shaath, Abu Misbah, and his wife Sabah Shaath remained. Because of their advanced age, the difficulty of moving their belongings, the exhaustion of walking for extended distances every time the occupation issued new evacuation orders, and other factors, they decided to stay at home rather than endure the weariness of the displacement journey and the search for a safe place, which they had already gone through many times.”
She continued, “They stayed in the unlocked house because the doors were loose as a result of numerous previous attacks. We had been attempting to get in touch with them frequently since 26 August, but we had received no response. This worried us, so we reached out to friends, family, and acquaintances in the area to see if there was any update that would reassure us.”
Added Mr. Shaath’s sister in law: “My husband went home in the early hours of 30 August to see how his brother and his wife were doing after learning of the withdrawal of the Israeli army, only to discover that they had been killed by Israeli army bullets that struck them squarely in the head. Upon closer inspection, it was evident that the occupation forces had set off a hand grenade at the entrance of the house before raiding it and opening fire at the couple. Their bodies were discovered with bloodstains all over the floor of the room they were hiding in, empty bullet casings next to their blood, and bullet fragments scattered throughout the house.”
Numerous other horrific accounts of physical liquidations and field executions of elderly people over the age of 60 in the Gaza Strip have previously been documented by Euro-Med Monitor. During their second incursion into Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its surroundings during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, for example, Israeli forces executed and set ablaze the 92-year-old Naifa Rizk al-Sawda.
Maha Al-Nawati, the victim’s daughter, told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “After the Israeli army stormed Al-Shifa Hospital and invaded the surrounding area, they raided the residential building where my mother and married brothers live. As soon as they got inside, they separated the women from the men and told the men to undress. After searching and interrogating them, they ordered both the men and the women to evacuate towards the south. My 92-year-old mother was at home at the time. She suffers from Alzheimer’s and cannot walk, speak, eat, or do anything on her own. I think she probably would not have known how to respond if they had asked her about her name. ‘This is my mother, I will take her with me,’ my brother’s wife said to the soldiers. An Israeli officer responded, ‘No, you go, we will take care of her,’ and ordered her to leave my mother behind and evacuate right away.”
She added: “We had no information about her for about two weeks during the Israeli siege of the area and invasion of Al-Shifa Hospital. We had no knowledge about her fate during that time, nor did we know if they had left her alone inside the house or taken her with them to Al-Shifa Hospital. When the soldiers left the area, my sister and brother went to the house to look for her. As they searched for her, they climbed to the roof of the house, where they discovered my niece and her husband dead, with burned bones. Upon entering my niece’s flat, they discovered my mother lying on the bed in a fully burned-out room. Only a few of my mother’s bones were left, and her body was severely burned. It seems that they killed her or burned her alive inside the house.
In the West Bank last Friday, Israeli occupation forces executed the 82-year-old elderly man Tawfiq Ahmed Younis Qandil in the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin city, during the Israeli military attack that has been ongoing for five days in Jenin Governorate and other areas in the occupied West Bank. According to local medical sources, nine bullets fired by Israeli army snipers struck the elderly man, killing him. Ambulances carrying the man following the initial attack were also fired at.
These cases, along with other cases that have been well-documented, are but a sample of the systematic and deliberate executions and physical liquidations to which dozens of elderly Palestinians are being subjected in areas where Israeli occupation forces are conducting military operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
In addition to bearing a heavy price for the haphazard and out-of-proportion attacks carried out by Israeli forces—particularly in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of elderly people have been killed and thousands more injured—it will be difficult for survivors to recover because of their precarious health and lack of access to proper medical care.
Additionally, Israeli forces have arrested elderly Palestinians, both men and women over the age of 70. Many of those arrested have been subjected to abuse, torture, and denial of basic rights, without regard for their advanced age or health conditions. As a result, many of them have died in Israeli prisons and detention centres.
Tens of thousands of elderly people in the Gaza Strip are at serious risk of dying, as 69% of them have chronic illnesses, and the majority have not received any medical attention as a result of the Israeli army’s systematic and pervasive destruction of the healthcare system, as well as Israel’s arbitrary blockade of the area. Israel continues to prevent the entry of medical supplies, including medical devices and essential medicines, as well as sufficient and nourishing food, in an effort to deprive Palestinians of the necessities of life and subject them to intolerable living conditions meant to destroy them. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has provided data showing a marked increase in the number of deaths of members of this vulnerable group during the last 10 months when compared to the same period of time in previous years.
In addition to the protections guaranteed to civilians by international humanitarian law, the elderly are entitled to additional protection as a vulnerable group of people. This protection should include setting up organised recovery and safety areas and sites for them as well as making the necessary arrangements to safely transport them out of besieged or encircled areas. Yet amid the international community’s silence and complicity, Israel has violated these rights, turning all people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including women, children, the injured, the ill, and the elderly into targets.
International pressure must be applied immediately to compel Israel to stop all of its crimes against the Palestinian people, including the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip; to fully withdraw from the Palestinian territories that it has occupied since 1967; to hold it responsible for all of its serious human rights violations and crimes; and to guarantee compensation for all Palestinian survivors and victims’ families. Effective and decisive international intervention is needed at once to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip completely and ensure the safe, complete, and unhindered access of humanitarian supplies to all affected people and the provision of basic services and urgently required relief aid. Should those on the outside fail to take the necessary action, it will soon be impossible to stop the humanitarian crises in the Gaza Strip from getting even worse.
