Rafah Archives - Page 3 of 14

Gaza Relief: Bread Soaked in Blood

CrossFireArabia
June 18, 2025

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is directly responsible for the escalating Israeli crimes against starved Palestinian civilians near aid distribution points in central and southern Gaza

The foundation’s operational model involves luring civilians to specific locations coordinated with the Israeli army, where they are subjected to killing, injury, and cruel and degrading treatment. These points have effectively become death traps used as tools in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian population for over 20 months.

On Tuesday morning, at least 80 Palestinians were killed and 200 others injured by Israeli fire near a US-backed aid distribution point in eastern Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, as they approached the site to collect aid.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls for an independent international investigation into the foundation’s role and for its officials to be held criminally accountable for the crimes they facilitated—whether through planning, enabling, or remaining silent.

Euro-Med Monitor further urges donors to immediately halt all financial or logistical support to the foundation and to blacklist it among entities complicit in grave violations of international law.

The foundation’s continued operation of these sites—despite documentation of over 380 deaths in just three weeks—cannot be seen as incidental or isolated incidents. Rather, it constitutes direct involvement in the crime of starvation and the systematic targeting of civilians, a flagrant violation of humanitarian neutrality, and a clear contribution to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and complicity in genocide.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a press statement that Israel has killed around 385 Palestinians and injured over 3,000 others since it imposed its aid distribution mechanism in the Gaza Strip on 27 May until 16 June. The Monitor explained that the mechanism relies on luring thousands of starving civilians each day to two main distribution centres—one near the “Netzarim corridor” in central Gaza and the other in Rafah, southern Gaza. Civilians are forced to walk long, exposed routes stretching for several kilometres, only to come under direct fire from military vehicles, drones, helicopters, and artillery shells. Large numbers are killed or wounded, while only the lucky few who survive the deadly journey reach the distribution points to receive a meagre amount of food that fails to meet even the minimum survival needs.

The Israeli army usually ignores the crimes it commits against starved civilians near aid distribution points. In the rare instances when it issues statements, it offers vague and generic narratives, often citing the presence of “suspects” near the forces—claims that are never substantiated with credible evidence. On the contrary, field data indicates that the victims are civilians, including women, children, and the elderly.

The investigations the Israeli army claims to open are even rarer than its public statements. These investigations are often superficial, left incomplete, their findings withheld, or they result in no real accountability. This reflects a systematic policy aimed at concealing evidence and ensuring impunity for perpetrators—a policy that spans decades of documented Israeli violations that have faced no serious accountability, including those committed as part of the ongoing crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Euro-Med Monitor holds the international community responsible for allowing the continuation and escalation of systematic crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against starved civilians near the so-called aid distribution centres in central and southern Gaza. The failure of influential states to take deterrent measures—and their inability to exert any meaningful pressure to stop Israel’s crimes, including the continued operation of its inhumane aid distribution mechanism—has effectively provided political and practical cover for Israel to persist in using these centres as sites of mass killing and for carrying out practices that violate Palestinians’ most basic rights and demean their human dignity.

Israel, which is using starvation as a central tool in committing the crime of genocide, cannot under any circumstances be considered a legitimate party in any humanitarian operation

Relevant states and UN bodies have effectively abandoned their legal and moral obligations to protect civilians and prevent the worsening of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. They have refrained from taking firm measures—not only to hold Israel accountable for killing starved civilians but even to protect the UN-led aid delivery mechanism, which Israel has deliberately undermined through siege and armed force, in blatant and dangerous defiance of the international system and the principles it was founded upon.

International reactions have often been limited to ineffective verbal condemnations, falling far short of any meaningful action. This has enabled Israel to continue committing its crimes without real cost, leaving civilians to face death—either from starvation or from gunfire—as they follow the same path drawn by the occupying power under the guise of “humanitarian aid.”

Continuing to allow Israel to carry out such serious crimes against Palestinians in Gaza—killing and injuring hundreds daily as they attempt to access limited food aid—entails international legal responsibility for states with the capacity to influence events, particularly those that continue to provide political or military support to Israel.

The failure to take effective measures—such as imposing sanctions or exerting genuine pressure to halt these crimes—constitutes, under international law, direct contribution to the crime or responsibility for failing to prevent it despite having the proven ability to do so. This establishes legal liability for those states as parties that have, through action or inaction, contributed to the continuation of the crime.

Since Israel imposed its own mechanism for the distribution of humanitarian aid, Euro-Med Monitor has documented the involvement of Israeli occupation forces—alongside local gangs operating in coordination with them and personnel from the American security company managing the distribution sites—in the killing of Palestinian civilians as they approached the centres, despite posing no real threat to Israeli forces or security personnel.

Even in cases where an alleged threat exists, international law does not justify the use of lethal force. Security forces are bound by international legal standards to adhere to the principle of proportionality and gradual escalation in the use of force, and are only permitted to resort to deadly force as a last resort—and only in situations where there is an imminent and real threat to life. Such conditions were absent in the documented cases, making these killings a grave and explicit violation of international law.

The deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians—through killings and injuries as they attempt to access food—combined with the use of starvation as a weapon, constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. These are war crimes under the Rome Statute, including wilful killing, targeting civilians, and using starvation as a method of warfare—all of which are categorically prohibited during armed conflicts.

The pattern of these violations—characterised by their widespread and systematic nature against the civilian population—meets the legal threshold for crimes against humanity, particularly the crimes of murder, persecution, and inhumane acts causing severe suffering or serious injury to mental or physical health, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.

Placing these crimes within their broader context—including the systematic destruction of means of survival, obstruction of humanitarian aid, and the imposition of deadly living conditions on civilians, alongside public statements made by various Israeli political and military officials—reveals a clear and declared intent to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza. This amounts, under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to the crime of genocide—specifically through the deliberate killing of members of the group and the imposition of living conditions intended to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part.

As the occupying power, Israel bears a legal obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid and the fulfilment of the basic needs of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. However, this duty in no way entitles Israel to manage or control the distribution of aid.

Aid distribution must remain exclusively in the hands of neutral and specialised humanitarian actors, and that any military or political interference by Israel in this domain constitutes a serious breach of international law and a deviation from the humanitarian purpose of relief work.

Israel, which is using starvation as a central tool in committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza with the aim of destroying them as a national group, cannot under any circumstances be considered a legitimate party in any humanitarian operation. Involving Israel in organising or overseeing aid delivery only serves to turn the aid itself into a means of annihilating the population and imposing coercive options on survivors—paving the way for their forced displacement as part of a colonial project aimed at erasing their presence and forcibly annexing their land.

The refusal of UN agencies and independent humanitarian organisations to cooperate with the Israeli mechanism—due to its lack of even the most basic humanitarian standards—should serve as a clear warning and an urgent call for the international community, especially influential states, to intensify political and diplomatic pressure on Israel. This should guarantee the immediate and unconditional flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, end the use of any mechanisms employed as tools of genocide, and take swift action to end the ongoing crime against Gaza’s population since October 2023.

Euro-Med Monitor calls for comprehensive and independent international investigations into the role of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in facilitating and executing serious crimes committed against Palestinian civilians. These investigations should address the individual responsibility of the organisation’s founders, directors, logistics coordinators, team leaders, and any other staff members—whether through planning, facilitating, directly contributing, or knowingly failing to prevent the commission of crimes.

We urge all states with territorial or universal jurisdiction to open immediate criminal investigations against all individuals affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its contracted private security firms, in order to hold them accountable for their role in crimes committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, particularly including wilful killings, starvation, and cruel or degrading treatment.

We further call for the initiation of civil lawsuits before national courts to demand compensation from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and all implicated entities and individuals for the severe harm caused to victims and their families, including deaths, physical and psychological injuries, and the forced deprivation of the rights to life, food, and dignity. Both criminal and civil accountability is essential to ensuring justice for the victims, ending impunity, and preventing the recurrence of such crimes under the guise of humanitarian work.

States and relevant entities must exert all possible pressure on Israel to force it to cease killing starving civilians, immediately end the operation of its inhumane aid distribution mechanism, and push for the urgent restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of Israel’s unlawful blockade on the Gaza Strip. This is the only viable path to halting the rapid humanitarian collapse and ensuring the unimpeded entry of aid and goods. Safe humanitarian corridors must be established under UN supervision to guarantee the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of Gaza, alongside the deployment of independent international observers to monitor compliance.

Euro-Med Monitor also calls on all states, individually and collectively, to uphold their legal obligations and take urgent action to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza in all its forms. It calls for all necessary measures to be taken to protect Palestinian civilians, ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, and guarantee accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. It also urged the enforcement of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister at the earliest opportunity, without prejudice to the principle that no immunity applies to international crimes.

Finally, Euro-Med Monitor urges the international community to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel in response to its systematic and grave violations of international law. This includes a comprehensive ban on the export or import of weapons, spare parts, software, or dual-use items; the suspension of all political, financial, military, intelligence, and security cooperation with Israel; the freezing of assets belonging to political and military officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; travel bans against those officials; the suspension of Israeli military and security companies from international markets and the freezing of their assets in international banks; and the suspension of trade privileges, customs benefits, and bilateral agreements that grant Israel economic advantages enabling it to continue committing crimes against the Palestinian people.

Analyses

Israel is Burning: Here’s Why!

CrossFireArabia
May 10, 2025

By Dr Marwan Asmar

(Crossfirearabia.com) – Israel is burning. Its war on Gaza is going nowhere, Israeli society is being torn-apart, and its remaining 59 hostages remain in the depth of the tunnels in Gaza unable to be found. Its like looking for a needle in a haystack because of the extensive hundreds of miles of underground! Many, except Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, people like US Envoy Steve Witkoff believe the hostages, 24 still alive, are likely to die if the war is not brought to an end.

After 18 months of bloodshed on the Gaza Strip with its endless destruction, Israel is nowhere near to reaching its objectivity of stamping out Hamas. The Islamist organizations remains just as strong, determined and willing for martyrdom as when the fighters unleashed themselves soon after 7 October, 2023.

Israeli media is completely delusional 😂. This is what they're reporting meanwhile we're seeing video footage of eliminated Israeli soldiers being wheeled out of Rafah daily. Stop lying…. you're completely losing the ground battle & Trump is now begging for a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/bRbSYC60zm
— Ortho PA (@Ortho_PA_) May 10, 2025

On the contrary all the Israeli government did by insisting on the continuation of the war on the Palestinian territory has created the wrath of many world nations, including the irritation of US president Donald Trump who has cut off contacts with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and who now feels the latter can no longer be trusted for a meaningful end to the fighting.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army which is back fighting on Gaza not of its own accord, is facing what can all be called the “Gaza malaise” of being entrapped in the Strip through ambushes, booby-trapped, once-standing houses and Palestinian resistance missiles, ammunitions and artillery.

Israel and its army – despite the killing of over 52,000 Palestinians, 100,000 injured with over 12000 remaining under the rubble – is facing the worst of times, bogged down, through its own accord in an enclave it is determined not to leave while shamelessly embarking on a spree of killing, murder and mass-bombing civilians under the intrepid eyes of the world and documented by international agencies. In fact, many experts, including Israelis, say this is the worst documented genocide which the Jewish state will not be able to live it down.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian resistance lead by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and a motley of other determined factions led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are wreaking havoc among Israeli soldiers and their killer machines of tanks, all over the Gaza Strip from its far north, center and its south.

Privately the Israeli army is complaining because of the orders they are following from extremist politicians like Netanyahu. And they have a right to be because they have literally bombarded every nook and cranny in Gaza, forcing its 2.1 million populations on a whirlwind pool of displacements not once, not twice but up to 10 times to squat from one place to another but to no avail.

How can civilians, mostly women and children living in tents – for this is what Gaza has been reduced to – be military targets with mass bombs dropped on schools and hospital. For this is what the Israeli army is, an impressive air force, thousands of tanks and mass bombs supplied by the Americans, British and many more countries have been reduced to.

There are no Palestinians fighters here, they don’t lounge among civilians in makeshift UN schools. The fighters are in bombed houses, Israeli-gorged out what used to be manicured-gardens and residential squares, in semblance of buildings that used to be ministries, ruined university halls, restaurants, shops and libraries and much more.

Israel has made sure these longer exist. However, the Palestinian groups have came to fight among the rubble of these places that are bombed and re-bombed time and again like a macabre scene never existed before.

In many of these places, different neighborhoods of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip to the north the bombed-out town of Beit Hanoon to Al Tuffah in Gaza City and Shuja’iyya to the east, near the wall that divided Gaza from Israel, the rubble and wreckage has become so bad that Israelis, for the most part, are no longer able to enter their tanks, bulldozers and other heavy machinery.

The soldiers have to go on foot with their machine-guns and backpack of bombs and other “vile little goodies”. Frequently, and today, much more so, they would be running from one place to another fearful of being sniped by Palestinian fighters.

Since Israel re-started its war on the Gaza Strip after 19 March, and as the Palestinian fighters geared for action weeks later, ambushes of Israeli soldiers were stepped in in the different areas of Gaza. These ambushes resulted in the death and injury – on a daily basis of many Israeli soldiers.

While the Israeli army – and it has been so throughout this war – trying to massage and downplay the number of Israeli dead, this has not worked because of the Israeli media, the internet and power of satellite television which meant that the image and the picture – even by Israeli soldiers themselves – has been instant and at the ready ready to be posted online.

As to the intensity of the fighting when satellite television provide pictures of helicopters, both like a scene of the ambush, the booby-trapped house and landing on top of Israeli hospitals, in Tel Aviv for instance, experts said one can be sure the number of Israeli dead and injured is large because Israeli soldiers on the ground on Gaza have with them medical teams to deal with immediate emergencies.

If helicopters to be transported to hospitals are brought in, they argue the number of ‘critically’ wounded and dead is sure to be much higher and that means the resistance is meting out powerful blows at the Israeli soldiers thousands who have been protesting in this latest military campaign that they don’t want to go back to fighting in Gaza in a recent memo signed by 200,000 rank-and-file soldiers and some even prepared to go to prison for disobeying orders.

The dismay among the Israeli soldiers have been highlighted by the booby-trapped housing. In one case recent case in Al Jenienah neighborhood in Rafah, a group of Israeli soldiers with their dogs walked into what appeared to be a booby-trapped disused building and which exploded immediately bringing in the transport helicopters. The place just blew up.

Such a situation is being repeated daily on the streets of Gaza, a strip proving a tough fight that can’t be conquered nor subdued. Just to go back to Shuja’iyya, a wrecked place which the Israeli army entered many times, and which history will associate with Palestinian courage, as its name in Arabic, as of Saturday morning a military transport vehicle was just blown up.

All the Israeli army first said that there has been a serious security incident there, with helicopters hovering at the scene on top of Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv. Later on the only owned up to two soldiers being killed and seven injured.

2 Israeli soldiers killed, 3 wounded in Gaza https://t.co/s3MUoiE3Ht
— Daily Finland (@DailyFinland) May 9, 2025

Brigadier-general Fayez Dwairi speaking on Al Jazeera says that the number of Israeli dead is likely to be between four and 12 depending whether we are talking about a Merkava tank and or a military vehicle that also carries 12 people. He points out the Israeli tanks is the only one in the world that has four operatives but has room for six additional soldiers.

Hence this is the battle Israel is currently waging. If Netanyahu insists that the war will continue then his army is likely to continue to face a vicious circle of death and mayhem as the Palestinian Israeli fighters will continue to mushroom.

Today the Palestinian resistance is still at the ready for with Gaza destroyed and mass wreckages that wrecks of death, they have nothing to look forward but to continue fighting especially against an Israeli government and army determined to fight Hamas and the other Palestinian factions till the end

This analysis is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

Opinion

The Gaza Death Trap

CrossFireArabia
May 6, 2025

While everyone waits for the full-blast war on Gaza which Israel promises to continue, Tel Aviv must know this will not be an easy matter not least of all by the Benjamin Netanyahu government whose ministers are split over allowing the army to resume its “fighting” position in Gaza.

Not everyone holds the view of extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He wants to resume, or continue, a large scale offensive on Gaza and reoccupy the enclave forever! For these opposing ministers as well as a large number of army soldiers and officers are not in favor of going back to fighting in Gaza because (a) of the bloody situation and danger soldiers were subjected to since 7 October, 2023, and because they want the rest of the remaining hostages – 59 and about 24 still thought to be alive – to be returned.

They fear – and reflecting major sections of society who have been demonstrating daily in Tel Aviv and other major Israeli cities under the of banner “bring them home,” – that increasing the wheels of war on Gaza would be signing the death warrants of the remaining hostages, originally marked at 250 and over 40 of them killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing of the different areas of enclave over the past 17 months or so of fighting.

In the eyes of Smotrich, and he doesn’t mince his words, the return of the hostages is now secondary and what is crucial is to destroy Hamas and end its presence in the Gaza Strip.

But this is not happening. Since the resumption of the Israeli war on Gaza on 19 March, 2025 the resistance led by the Islamic organization and the other Palestinian factions have also resumed their fighting. While it is true, Hamas was slow in getting back to the war, preferring to give the ceasefire and peace talks a chance, and which led many to say the resistance are finished, this was far further from the truth.

Fighting again

Exactly one month later after 19 March, the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, re-started their fight against the Israeli army and the targeting of its soldiers; the Zionist army had maintained an active presence in the different areas of the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire took effect on 19 January, 2025 when the newly-elected US president was installed in the White House.

After much waiting and the gradual realization that Israel was no longer interested in the ceasefire nor in ongoing talks in Doha and Cairo, Hamas and Islamic Jihad reignited their war tactics on the Gaza battlefield. They realized Netanyahu, as prime minister of an extreme right-wing government, was no longer interested in maintaining a ceasefire.

Analysts maintained that Netanyahu was encouraged by Trump’s conflicting and dangerous stance on Gaza on top of which was the dramatic and subsequently abhorred idea of expelling the 2.1 million population of Gaza to build the Strip as the newly-plushed Middle East Riviera.

Although he quickly backed down due to Palestinian, Arab and even world pressure, Netanyahu interpreted this hugely-wrongful idea as greenlight to continue to hammer Gaza from the air and reimpose the starvation policy of its population.

Although the people got the backend of the Israeli willful mad firepower while shutting down the curtain on aid entering the 364-kilometer enclave, Hamas and the other Palestinian groups begun to regroup and re-started its military operations against the Israeli army in Biet Hanoon in the northern Gaza Strip to Gaza City in the center, Shujaiyia to the west, Khan Younis lower down and Refah, further south on the border with Egypt.

Like before, since 7 October, 2023, the resistance has now embarked on the increasing use of ambushes and booby-trap operations of luring Israeli soldiers and targeting Israeli tanks, armored vehicles and bulldozers while firing at them through locally-made, cheap but effective and deadly missiles that resulted in many of these soldiers being killed and badly-injured – numbers in the thousands – while many of the tanks and bulldozers either blown up and/or put out of action.

Towards the end of April onwards, this strategy was reactivated at full length and on different days sniping Israeli soldiers and targeting armoury would rise in multiple and different operations through the Gaza Strip. What is today of major worry to the Israeli army is that these geographical areas which were supposed to be “cleaned up” from Palestinian operatives are becoming active once again which means that for the Israeli army its back to square one.

The Israeli army had literally destroyed many of the major cities, towns, neighborhoods, villages of Gaza not once but many times. They entered places like Khan Younis, Jabalia, Shujaiyia, Nuseirat, Rafah and many more multiple times and declared them free from Palestinian resistance groups but these fighters just continue to emerge as seen recently and to the chagrin and frustration of the Israeli army.

Such frustration has led Israeli politicians like Netanyhu, and arch anti-Palestinian politicians like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security and hated by some Israelis for his extreme rightwing views to call for the re-occupation of Gaza, something that Netanyahu is actively contemplating. The prevailing view that once the army gets into Gaza once again, and on a mass scale, they can never leave! There are many in the army who have long rejected such an idea because they know of the “bloody situation” their soldiers would face.

However, the Israeli government and its army continues to operate under a set of illusions it is refusing to budge away from simply because Hamas and the Palestinian resistance presence is still operating in Gaza and in a robust mode to fight and kill Israeli soldiers and destroy their tanks and military hardware.

This is in addition to the fact the Israel and its army is getting nowhere near to freeing the rest of the hostages and who are likely to die if Israel embarks on a bigger war on Gaza and which Netanyahu and his extremist government are determined to do despite the warnings of the Israeli army which admits the rest of the hostages could die in any bigger military offensive.

Trump in region

Throughout this war there was always one external factor that played a permanent role in fuelling the Israeli genocide of Gaza and that was the United States through its provision of military support to Tel Aviv first under the Joe Biden administration and now under Trump.

If he could be persuaded to stop the supply of weapons to Israel, Netanyahu will finally stop the war on Gaza. Trump is on record, especially when he was running for the White House he would stop the war in Ukraine and Gaza. But will he? First of all, the Israeli lobby is entrenched in the US government.

However, there is one important factor that can pressure the Trump administration and that is the Arab countries. Trump is soon visiting Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. If enough pressure can be applied from these quarters then surely the US president can move on the Gaza issue and halt any plans that Netanyahu is concocting for the enclave.

The Trump visit is being made in mid-May and its already played as a “bilateral” tour between the United States and these states whilest focusing on investment. And this is where their influence can be made with investment, economics and politics moving on one pedestal.

So the ball at the present time is in the hands of the Arab Gulf countries!

This comment is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

Features

Gaza Kids ‘Go to Bed Starving’ Amid Israeli Blockade

CrossFireArabia
April 29, 2025

The biggest UN aid agency in Gaza on Tuesday condemned the two-month Israeli blockade that has left families eating barely enough to survive amid daily bombings – and the sick and injured without lifesaving medical help.

“The siege on Gaza is the silent killer of children, of older people,” said Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

“Families – whole families, seven or eight people – are resorting to sharing one can of beans or peas,” she told journalists in Geneva. “Imagine not having anything to feed your children. Children in Gaza are going to bed starving.”

Today, thousands of trucks carrying relief supplies continue to be denied entry to Gaza. “We have just over 5,000 trucks in several parts of the region with lifesaving supplies that are ready to come in,” Ms. Touma continued.

“This decision is crippling the humanitarian efforts…and threatening the lives and survival of civilians in Gaza, who are also going through heavy bombardment day in, day out.”

Rafah levelled

Destruction to the southern city of Rafah has left it “obliterated”, UNRWA said. Formerly the largest entry point for aid into the enclave via Egypt, aerial videos purportedly of Rafah show buildings levelled as far as the eye can see.

“Rafah is nothing like the city it used to be…In every direction there is only destruction,” the UN agency said.

Forced displacement orders have been in place for 97 per cent of the city, uprooting around 150,000 people.

Almost 12 months ago, the Israeli military moved in displacing 1.4 million people, leaving homes, health facilities and shelters damaged or destroyed.

Starting from scratch

Across Gaza, more than 90 per cent of the population have been displaced “not once, not twice, some people have been displaced 12 times or 13 times…so they have to start from scratch.”

Before the war erupted in October 2023, Gazans relied on 500 trucks a day to deliver the food and other basic goods that they needed. But no humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered since 2 March.

This is by far the longest ban on aid moving into the Strip since the start of the war in October 2023, following deadly Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel that killed some 1,250 people and left more than 250 taken hostage.

The blockade has emptied warehouses of food, medical supplies, shelter materials and safe water – fuelling a black market “where prices have increased from 10 to 20, sometimes 40 times…You cannot give anything to your children and you’re seeing your children starving”, Ms. Touma said.

According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) food prices rose 1,400 per cent increase in recent weeks compared to the ceasefire period from 19 January to 18 March 2025.

Last Friday, the UN agency delivered its last remaining stocks to community kitchens that provide hot meals of lentil soup and rice. The kitchens are expected to fully run out of food within days while another 16 closed over the weekend. In addition, all 25 WFP-supported bakeries have now closed.

“We’re likely to see more community kitchens closing down for the simple reason that they need supplies,” Ms. Touma explained.

Daily challenges for Gazans include finding food and fuel to cook, because of a lack of cooking gas. “Families are resorting to burning plastic to cook their meals,” UNRWA’s Ms. Touma said.

UN News

News

Israeli Soldiers Killed, Injured in 2 Separate Incidents in Gaza

CrossFireArabia
April 26, 2025

Israeli media reported, Friday night, Israeli soldiers were involved in two separate attacks in the Gaza Strip.

Hebrew media reported, citing military sources, that a deputy company commander and an Israeli soldier were killed during a clash in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.

Hebrew media reported that six Israeli soldiers were injured, one of them seriously, in a security incident in the southern Gaza Strip.

The media indicated that the soldiers targeted in southern Gaza were members of the Israeli Border Guard’s “Yamas” unit.

The Hebrew website Hadashot Bezaman reported that an Israeli helicopter landed at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, carrying wounded soldiers.

The Hebrew website Hadashot Hamot reported that two security incidents occurred involving Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.

Last Thursday, the Israeli occupation army admitted that an Israeli tank driver was killed and three others were wounded, two of them seriously, in a sniper operation and an anti-tank missile attack targeting an armored force of the occupation army in the buffer zone north of the Gaza Strip.

The occupation army announced, under the “publication permit” clause, that the dead soldier was Sergeant First Class Asaf Kafri, 26 years old, a tank driver in the 79th Battalion.

According to the occupation army statement, an officer from the “Yahalom” special engineering unit was seriously injured, in addition to a reserve soldier from the same battalion, and they were transferred to the hospital for treatment.

Hadashot Hamot TV reported that the incident occurred in the same spot where the soldier Nasasra was killed last week, raising questions within the Israeli military establishment about the reasons for the recurrence of operations in locations where heavy losses have previously been recorded.

It also indicated that the occupation police are closing the Sderot area for fear of infiltration incidents and preventing the movement of settlers for fear of being hit by sniper fire.

Scenes broadcast by Hebrew media showed Helicopter evacuation of wounded Israeli soldiers. These developments come as Israeli military operations continue in the Gaza Strip, amid mounting public pressure within Israel and growing criticism of the performance of the military and political leadership. Link copied successfully according to Shehabnews.