Urgent health update: Consequences of war on Gaza, West Bank/East Jerusalem, and Lebanon 12/7/24

Israeli air, land, & sea bombardment continues across Gaza, causing further civilian casualties, displacement, & destruction of houses & other civilian infrastructure. The siege of northern Gaza has choked off all humanitarian aid leaving between 65-75,000 people without access to food, water, electricity or reliable health care, as forced evacuations and intensified attacks increase casualties. Constant Israeli violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon and the expansion of the war to the West Bank, Syria and Yemen constitute a regional health and human rights emergency.

Guterres: The nightmare in Gaza is not a crisis of logistics

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent a statement to a 12/2 Cairo ministerial conference on the humanitarian response in Gaza:

“…More than 44,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — have been reportedly killed. Virtually the entire population of Gaza has been displaced — often multiple times… Famine is imminent. Meanwhile, the health system has collapsed…

“In North Gaza, the situation is growing more perilous by the day. In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, militarized Israeli security operations, settlement expansion, evictions, demolitions, violence and threats of annexation are inflicting further pain and injustice…

“Let’s be clear: The nightmare in Gaza is not a crisis of logistics. It’s a crisis of political will and of respect for fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”

Guterres proposed 3 areas of action: 1) Demand that all parties comply with obligations under international law. 2) Defend the humanitarian aid system and UNRWA. 3) Intensify efforts for a political solution to end this nightmare.

Regarding UNRWA: “If UNRWA is forced to close, the responsibility of replacing its vital services — and meeting the core needs of Palestinians in Gaza — would rest with Israel as the occupying Power. Not the United Nations. Not the international community. But Israel — and Israel alone. So I appeal for the urgent and full support of lifesaving humanitarian relief for the Palestinian people through UNRWA. There is no alternative.”

Read the full text here:

Fletcher: To alleviate the suffering, rebuild lives, and restore dignity

Also at the 12/2 Cairo meeting, Tom Fletcher, Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, sent remarks outlining the needs and requesting support:

“For more than 50 days, people in North Gaza have been under siege. North Gaza has effectively been inaccessible to the UN. Our requests for access have been repeatedly and systematically denied by Israeli forces with devastating consequences: families are trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded cannot reach hospitals, and basic supplies—water, food, medical care—have run out. Others have been forced to flee to areas that are no safer, facing the same brutal conditions… We estimate that at least US $6.6 billion is needed to address the humanitarian crisis affecting 3.3 million people in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Read the full text here:

Killing aid workers must stop

Also at the Cairo 12/2 meeting, Muhannad Hadi, Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, protested the Israeli slaughter of aid workers:

“Yesterday, another four humanitarian workers in Gaza were killed by Israeli airstrikes. Three World Central Kitchen staff members were killed when their vehicle was struck at a distribution site in Khan Younis. The fourth, a staff member of Save the Children, was killed in a separate air strike in southern Khan Younis. Since October 2023, more than 330 humanitarian workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip… The continued killing of humanitarian workers is an unacceptable violation of international law and further intensifies the catastrophic humanitarian situation. I continue to call, urgently and unequivocally, for accountability and an immediate ceasefire to end this suffering.

Read the full text here:

MEDICAL JOURNALS

Palestinian surgeon was assaulted before dying in Israeli detention. BMJ 2024; 387 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2672 (Published 28 November 2024) British Medical Journal

Are hospitals collateral damage? Assessing geospatial proximity of 2000 lb bomb detonations to hospital facilities in the Gaza Strip from October 7 to November 17, 2023, October 10, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003178, PLOS Global Public Health. PLOS Journal

REPORTS

Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in a new report, writing that it "found sufficient basis" to make such a conclusion, and that "in looking at the broader picture of Israel's military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion. Here. Here. Here.

WHO impact of 585 attacks on health care in the Gaza Strip. Here.

WHO impact of 658 attacks on health care in the West Bank. Here

The report that historian Dr. Lee Mordechai has compiled online – 'Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War' – constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment comprised of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society in general. Here.

I’m one of the last doctors in this Hospital in Gaza. I’m begging the world for help. A report from Kamal Adwan Hospital. Here.

The suffering of disabled people in the war on Gaza — the blind, deaf, physically and cognitively impaired — has been compounded by steep shortages in devices to aid them, like wheelchairs and hearing aids, and in damage to roads, sidewalks and homes with accessible features. Here.

Targeted aid killings: How Israel starved a population and sowed chaos in northern Gaza. A new investigation reveals the chilling military strategy behind Israel’s attempts to starve northern Gaza. Experts say Israeli attacks, which used targeted killings to promote social disintegration, show “a pattern of apparent war crimes." Here.

PODCASTS

Heba Al-Nashef, a Canada-based midwife and clinician, joined The Electronic Intifada Podcast to talk about the impact that Israel’s 14 months of attacks on Gaza have had on women and newborns in particular, and how medical providers are forced to improvise care under genocidal conditions. She worked for six weeks at Al Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, Gaza earlier this year. Women who have given birth, including those who delivered their baby via cesarean section – abdominal surgery that needs careful post-operative care – are forced to leave the hospital quickly and return to their makeshift tent shelter or a school that they have been displaced to, “in really unhygienic conditions.” Here.

Targeting Health: Detention, torture, and attacks on Palestinian healthcare workers, FXB Harvard. Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights hosted a panel discussion on the impact of attacks, torture, detention, siege, and direct targeting of health workers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Joined by Dr. Osaid Alser, a physician and global surgery researcher from Gaza, Palestine, and Milena Ansari, the Israel and Palestine Assistant Researcher at Human Rights Watch. Here.

Report from the operating room on the dire realities at Kamal Adwan Hospital. Here.

GAZA

(Numbers are cumulative through 12/03/24, per OCHAOPT & Palestinian Ministry of Health. Find more details here:

Killed: 44,664+ (253 this week) as of 12/7

Injured: 105,976 (708 this week) as of 12/7

Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza: 380 (2 this week)

Israeli soldiers injured in Gaza: 2,463

Hostages in Gaza: 100

Israeli attacks

• 11/30, 3 World Central Kitchen staff were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in Khan Younis, forcing the organization to pause its operations. The same day, a Save the Children staff member was killed in a separate airstrike in Khan Younis while returning home from a mosque. 11/27, UNRWA reported 2 additional staff had been killed, bringing the UNRWA fatality toll to 249. Since October 2023, at least 343 humanitarian workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including 253 UN staff.

• 11/28, >75 killed in strikes on residences in Beit Lahiya. Palestine Civil Defense described conditions in North Gaza a “total catastrophe” with people trapped under rubble for days until they die from injuries or from lack of food and water. >2,700 people are estimated to have been killed in North Gaza since 10/6 October, half of whom have not been retrieved, and >10,000 injured.

• 11/26-29, 42 killed (2 children) and many injured in Gaza City.

• 11/28, 9 killed and others in Deir al Balah.

• 11/29, the head of the ICU at Kamal Adwan Hospital was killed by an Israeli airstrike.

• 11/30, 12 killed and others injured at an aid distribution point in southern Khan Younis.

• 11/30, 40+ killed or injured in an IDP shelter in Tal Az-Za'atar, North Gaza. Many remain trapped under the rubble.

• 12/1, 25 killed in Beit Lahiya.

• 12/1 ~15 Palestinians killed including two children, when a missile hit a tent encampment in Khan Yunis

• 12/1 4 humanitarian workers in Gaza were killed by Israeli airstrikes. 3 World Central Kitchen staff members were killed when their vehicle was struck at a distribution site in Khan Younis. The fourth, a staff member of Save the Children, was killed in the same air strike, its second staffer killed in the Strip since the war began.

• 12/4 20 killed in attack on al-Mawasi Camp

• 12/5 15 killed in attack on residential building in Beit Lahiya

• 12/6 29 people killed in air strikes on Kamal Adwan Hospital, Health Ministry says Israel targeted at least one ambulance at the hospital, and a rights group says the Israeli army used human shields in an attempt to evacuate patients and medical staff.

• 12/7 4 people wounded in attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital

• 12/7 37 people killed in attacks across Gaza, including 26 in Nuseirat refugee camp

Health care and hospitals

Hospitals in the besieged Gaza Strip have lost 75% of their capacity, amid Israel’s devastating war, according to the director of hospitals at the enclave’s Ministry of Health Meanwhile, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned that “50,000 pregnant women are in danger,” with 4,000 deliveries expected in the next month alone.

• 12/1, after many denials, 6 staff from Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) Indonesia were deployed to Kamal Adwan hospital along with fuel and medical supplies. The hospital has 63 patients, 9 in the ICU, and remains under attack.

• The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, Dr. Hussam Abu Safeia, said the hospital is operating with only two inexperienced surgeons, adding that there are hundreds of wounded people at the hospital and that the hospital's supply of medications has almost run out.

• 12/7 Power cut off at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few remaining medical facilities in northern Gaza, after Israeli gunfire caused its generators to catch fire.

• 11/26, the ICRC and Red Crescent facilitated a patient transfer from Al-Awda hospital in Beit Lahiya to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

• Severe shortages of medical supplies and lack of food and water continue to limit healthcare across Gaza. At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, gauze and bandages are running out, forcing MSF teams to extend dressing change intervals and heightening infection risks. MSF teams at Nasser have been unable to set up a clinical bacteriology lab because the cold chain to operate it has been constantly “opened and damaged by Israeli officers at the crossing point." In Deir al Balah, the MSF field hospital struggles with a lack of painkillers and antibiotics, hindering pain management and the treatment of child respiratory infections. Lack of medications for hypertension leave many untreated and at risk of acute complications. According to WHO, of the estimated 350,000 people who live with chronic diseases in the Gaza Strip, about 225,000 have hypertension. According to UNRWA, at least basic 60 medications will run out by the end of 2024.

• 11/28, an Al Awda Hospital ambulance was hit while evacuating people in An Nuseirat refugee camp. The same day, quadcopters dropped small bombs at the reception and emergency ward of Al Awda Hospital, injuring 4 (2 staff). Twice on 11/30, Israeli forces fired bullets and shells at the Indonesian Hospital, injuring a doctor and destroying 3 generators, water tanks, and damaging the hospital's 3rd floor. Oxfam’s partner, Juzoor, reported its homeless shelter, food and medical storage facility, 1 of its health points was bombarded, “destroying equipment and burning medicines.”

• 11/27, 6 cancer and 11 trauma patients were evacuated by WHO from Gaza for treatment in the US and Jordan. As of 11/27, 352 patients have been evacuated since early May. Thousands remain on the waiting list. According to UNICEF, “at the current rate of medical evacuations, it would take 7 years to rescue 2,500 children in urgent need of medical evacuation.” An 11-year-old boy recently died of leukemia after 6 requests for evacuation were denied.

• Gazans with disabilities face ‘impossible times’ of chaos and war. A family fled carrying a 9-year-old girl for hours on their backs. Sisters with visual impairments pleaded for help as Israeli airstrikes fell. “It’s a nightmare,” one wheelchair user said. Here

• “Without hope, we cannot pass anything on to those families, to those children,” says Abu Jamei, who for the past 12 years has directed the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP). This year, supported by the charity War Child, the organization treated 3,000 people in its four community centres in Gaza. The 90 team members have also offered one-off psychological support to at least 30,000 people living in tents, shelters, schools and bombed-out buildings. Here.

Water and Sanitation

• Water supply remains limited and dependent on fuel supplies since the Israeli shut-off of electricity supply lines and the shut-down of the Gaza power plant in October 2023. Water production dropped by 9% in November. Fuel shortages caused a 43% drop in water production by groundwater wells. Fuel deliveries for water and sanitation facilities in North Gaza have been blocked since 10/1.

• Palestinian Water Authority stated that damage to Gaza's water sector >80% -- wells, pumping stations, desalination plants, distribution networks, and sewage treatment plants. 80 of 103 small desalination plants have been destroyed and 15 damaged. Only 2 of 3 major desalination plants are operational; the third plant was damaged and has been out of service since October 2023. Of 78 sewage pumping stations, 58 are destroyed and 18 damaged.

Aid

• 11/29, 2 girls and a woman suffocated to death in a crowd at a WFP bakery in Deir al Balah. WFP stressed: “the lack of food aid and the absence of the commercial sector are driving people into hunger.” As of 12/3, only 5 of 19 WFP bakeries are operational, 4 in Gaza City and 1 in Khan Younis. Bakeries remain closed due to flour and fuel shortages, overcrowding, and ongoing hostilities.

• In November, of 578 planned aid movements coordinated with Israeli authorities: 41% (237) were facilitated, 35% (204) were denied, 16% (93) were impeded, and 8% (44) were cancelled. These included aid missions to North Gaza, where 48 of 53 attempts (90%) were denied, and the 5 that were approved were so impeded on the ground that they could not be completed.

• 11/30. UNRWA chief, Philippe Lazzarini, stressed: Israel, as the occupying power, must ensure aid flows into Gaza safely.

• 12/1, UNRWA announced a pause in aid delivery through Kerem Shalom, the main entry point into Gaza, due to a breakdown in public order and safety that has made operations impossible: “ongoing siege, hurdles from Israeli authorities, political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid, lack of safety on aid routes and [the] targeting of local police.” Aid supplies are regularly stolen by armed gangs. The Gaza Government Media Office urged the UNRWA to reconsider its decision and called it to reverse its “shocking and unexpected decision.” “The Palestinian people are in dire need of this assistance, particularly as the Israeli occupation continues using starvation as a weapon of war against civilians, leading to widespread famine in Gaza—an act condemned by all international and humanitarian laws,”

• The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is getting worse, with a serious shortage of basic foodstuffs. Earlier this week, a mob stole food from an aid truck and masked men were filmed shooting a suspected food thief in the leg. The IDF rejects criticism, saying that the amount of food entering the Strip has increased and winter equipment has been allowed in.

Other

• The barter economy has increasingly taken hold in Gaza over the past few months as humanitarian aid and commercial goods deliveries have been strangled and banknotes made scarce. Food items are what are most commonly exchanged as their prices fluctuate wildly with the restricted food supply. But people also barter clothes, household goods, phones and other electronic devices – sometimes combined with cash – in order to obtain basic supplies.

• Israeli settler company specializing in West Bank outposts now at work in northern Gaza. In addition to the Israeli military conducting extensive demolitions, Drop Site News has uncovered that Israel has now contracted private companies specializing in settler construction to work in northern Gaza. One construction company confirmed it is hiring for operations in Beit Lahia, a town adjacent to the northern border of Gaza. This is the first time a private company has been documented working in the north.

• The use of private contractors to conduct demolitions has been documented previously in Rafah by the company Meshek Afar. And the Asia Construction Company claims to have worked on the Gaza pier, and on the road along the Philadelphi Corridor. In May, a construction worker, Liron Yitzhak, was killed in southern Gaza while doing work for an unnamed company

Evacuations and displacement

• 12/2, Israeli military issued an evacuation order affecting about 3 sq. km. in north Khan Younis and parts of Deir al Balah, affecting about 2,000 people. They moved mostly to Al Mawasi’s Al Qarara seaport area, where high tides recently displaced many families.

WEST BANK INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM

An updated poster-size map of the West Bank shows the 614 physical barriers, permit requirements and other restrictions controlling pedestrian and vehicular movement of the 3.3 million Palestinians living there, as well as the 350 illegal settlements housing 700,000 Israelis. Find it here:

This week, Israeli forces killed 5 Palestinians and injured 27 (7 children).

Killed since October 2023: 801+ (including at least 148 children) and injured: 6,597+

Find more detail here:

Israeli attacks

• 11/29, Israeli forces shot and killed a man who shot at an Israeli bus, injuring 4 settlers and 4 soldiers near Ariel settlement. Israeli forces withheld his body.

• 11/30, Israeli forces responded to 2 boys throwing stones at military vehicles in ‘Asira al Qibliya, near Nablus, with tear gas, flash bangs, and bullets. Both boys were hospitalized.

• 12/1, Israeli forces killed 4 outside Sir village (Jenin) and withheld the bodies. Medical teams were prevented from reaching them.

• 12/3, an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in Aqqaba (Tubas) killed 2 and injured 1. Israeli forces then raided the Turkish Hospital, where the 3 had been transported, and opened fire in the ER and other areas. At least 5 staff, including doctors, were detained and interrogated as Israeli forces searched for the injured man, who had been transferred to another hospital upon arrival.

Settler Attacks

This week, settlers carried out 45 attacks against Palestinians, causing injuries and/or property damage. Since 10/7/23, OCHA documented 1,699 attacks by settlers against Palestinians. Since 10/7/2023, settler attacks and access restrictions displaced 300 Bedouin households (1,757 people, 855 children).

• 11/30, armed settlers raided Ni’lin (Ramallah, Area C), intimidating Bedouin families. Later they returned with dogs, which attacked and injured livestock. 12/2, the recurrent threats and attacks forced 3 households (14 people, 8 children and 2 elderly) to relocate.

• Between 11/27-29, Israeli settlers vandalized more than 700 Palestinian-owned trees, mostly olive, in the villages of Yasuf (Salfit), Turmus’ayya (Ramallah) and Zif (Hebron).

• 12/1, masked armed settlers assaulted villagers in Umm Safa (Ramallah) with metal sticks and a rifle, injuring 2. They also damaged a car, bulldozer, and equipment. After the attack, Israeli forces fired live ammunition, tear gas and sound grenades at gathering Palestinians.

• 12/1, masked armed settlers raided Madama village, south of Nablus. When villagers defended themselves, Israeli forces intervened with live ammunition, tear gas, and sound grenades, injuring 6 Palestinians (2 children).

• 12/3, Israeli settlement guards shot and killed a boy throwing stones at vehicles near his home in Silwan (Jerusalem). The guards fired toward Palestinian houses, injuring the boy who was later arrested by Israeli forces. After he died, his body was withheld.

• 12/4, dozens of settlers set fire to homes and vehicles in Huwwara and Beit Furik (Nablus), injuring a man and members of the Israeli forces.

• During Oct-Nov, 260 settler attacks related to the olive harvest caused casualties, property damage or both in 89 communities, a 300% increase compared to preceding years. 57 Palestinians were injured by settlers, 11 by Israeli forces, over 3,100 trees were destroyed, and crops and tools were stolen. 60% occurred in the northern West Bank, mainly Nablus; 20% in central West Bank, mainly Ramallah; and 18% in the south (Bethlehem and Hebron).

Demolitions

This week, Israeli authorities demolished 27 Palestinian-owned structures for lack of Israeli-issued building permits, displacing 11 (7 children). Since 10/7/23, Israeli authorities destroyed 1,930 Palestinian West Bank structures, displacing 4,703 Palestinians (1,987 children).

• 11/27, Israeli forces demolished a house in Idhna village (Hebron, Area B) that had belonged to a man killed after he killed 3 police officers on 9/1/24. This year has seen 33 demolitions on punitive grounds, considered to be collective punishment and illegal under international law.

• Feb. 2024, Israel requisitioned 7.4 acres of Palestinian-owned land in Sinjil and Turmus’ayya, north of Ramallah, to construct a “fence” along Road 60. The wall (1,500m long x 4m high) will restrict access to agricultural land and homes. 13 houses lie in the path of the fence/wall, which will isolate ~2,000 acres of agricultural land. Israel requisitioned another 3.7 acres in Aug. and in Sept. began levelling land, demolishing 1 house, uprooting 200+ trees, destroying retaining walls, and bulldozing cultivated vegetable fields. Petitions to the Israeli Civil Administration against the construction plans were dismissed.

LEBANON

Updated on 12/04 by Lebanese Health Ministry:

Since 10/8/23, Israeli forces killed 4,047 and injured 16,638. This includes the 86 killed and 118 wounded since Israel signed the “ceasefire” agreement which it immediately violated 52 times, according to the French government.

• The latest ceasefire went into effect and though it is called a "ceasefire" and calls explicitly for the ceasing of all military acts, the Israeli forces in and south of Lebanon continued to launch assaults against targets that it claimed held Hizbullah fighting units-- and also against many of the large stream of Lebanese citizens who were trying to return to their home villages in the south.

ISRAEL

• “It is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years,” the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said . (While these remarks were covered by the Israeli press, they strangely didn’t seem to be deemed newsworthy by a lot of the US press.) Israeli settlers are already preparing to occupy the strip and build new houses next to mass graves.

• In an interview with Israeli Army radio, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that "ideas like settlement in the Gaza Strip are welcome," and that "conquering Gaza is definitely an idea. But I must admit, that's not enough for me; I also want to encourage migration. I think we should allow [Palestinians] to migrate voluntarily to their countries."

• Israel plans to relocate thousands of Bedouins to mobile home parks. Opponents of the Israeli government's plan say it will enable the rapid eviction of Bedouin citizens and turn the northern Negev desert into a 'region of displaced people living in inadequate conditions.

• Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem released a new report on IOF soldiers routinely abusing Palestinian residents in the West Bank city of Hebron.

• Former Israeli Defense Minister (2013-2016) Moshe Ya’alon accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza during an interview with the Israeli channel Democrat. He also condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for steering the country toward “ruin.” “We are being dragged into occupation, annexation, ethnic cleansing—look at the north of the Strip—displacement, and Jewish settlement.”

• Two Israeli teenagers were sentenced to 30 days in military prison this week for refusing mandatory conscription in protest of the war and the occupation. Iddo Elam and Soul Behar Tsalik, both 18-year-olds from Tel Aviv, became the seventh and eighth refuseniks to publicly oppose the draft for political reasons since 10/7.

• A 45-year-old Palestinian detainee has died in Israeli detention, becoming the 45th detainee to die in custody since 10/7 last year. According to the Prisoners Media Office, Mohammed Walid Hussein Ali, from the Nour Shams Camp in the occupied West Bank town of Tulkarm, was detained on 11/28. A father of one young child and his wife pregnant with another, Ali had previously spent 20 years in Israeli detention.

• Israeli arms makers break records for weapons sales amid Gaza war. Aggregate revenue of those companies increased 15% annually to $13.6 billion last year, placing the country eighth worldwide in terms of total arms revenue share, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said. Here.

US

• Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, was perhaps the most significant Democrat to back Bernie Sanders' vote last week – and his chances of getting reelected in 2026 just became that much harder

• Big public universities have historically been at the forefront of catalyzing activist movements. Now, these institutions are using legal action, disciplinary efforts, and campus rule changes to chill speech and dissent. As a result, students may be risking their physical, academic, and long-term professional prospects simply for exercising their right to be heard. At some of the country’s largest and most prestigious public universities — UNC–Chapel Hill; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and the University of California, Los Angeles — first came the mass arrests, then came crackdowns on rules intended to suppress free speech and protests.

INTERNATIONAL

• The recent controversy surrounding events at an Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer match in Amsterdam reveals a troubling pattern in how antisemitism is reported in mainstream media. What began as comprehensive coverage of a complex incident quickly transformed into a simplified narrative, raising serious questions about media responsibility and ideological frameworks. Mondoweiss

• Blocking humanitarian medical aid in Gaza is a death sentence. As healthcare workers who have recently participated in medical missions to Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, we are greatly alarmed by Israel's decision to bar at least eight medical organizations to Gaza. The medical community must speak out.

• In Ottawa, over 100 Jewish activists began a sit-in inside a Canadian parliamentary building to demand Canada stop arming Israel. Rachel Small, a member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition and a member of the sit-in, says that the Canadian government’s claims that it is halting arms shipments to Israel are obfuscating the fact that Canadian weapons are still being transported via the US.

SOURCES

OCHAOPT, Palestine Chronicle, Haaretz, The Guardian, Mondoweiss, +972, New York Times, Democracy Now, The Intercept, Drop Site, Middle East Eye, The National News, Drop Site News, The New Humanitarian

###