White House working to get trapped US doctors out of Gaza
The Biden administration is working to get a group of American doctors out of Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing.
The Palestinian American Medical Association, a US-based non-profit, said its team of 19 healthcare professionals, including 10 Americans, had been denied exit from Gaza after a two-week mission providing medical services at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, a city near Rafah in southern Gaza.
Israel seized and closed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 7, disrupting a vital route for people and aid into and out of the besieged coastal enclave.
“We’re tracking this matter closely and working to get the impacted American citizens out of Gaza,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Jean-Pierre said the United States is engaging directly with Israel on the matter.
The Biden administration has been warning Israel against a major military ground operation in Rafah, but Jean-Pierre said efforts to get the doctors out are continuing regardless of what happens there. “We need to get them out. We want to get them out and it has nothing to do with anything else.”
What's the problem, there is no humanitarian crisis (Netanyahu), there is no genocide (Biden), nothing to worry about...
Israel carried out 80 attacks on aid in Gaza since January
The research group Forensic Architecture said it has identified at least 80 separate attacks by Israeli forces targeting humanitarian aid in Gaza since January.
The attacks include at least 37 against civilians seeking aid, all near the Israeli-controlled checkpoints on Salah al-Din Street and al-Rashid Street in northern Gaza. “The frequency and widespread nature of these attacks suggests that Israel is systematically targeting aid,” the group said.
South Africa seeks halt to Israel’s Rafah offensive at World Court
South Africa will ask the top UN court to order a halt to the Rafah offensive as part of its case in The Hague accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip.
The hearings at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, come after South Africa last week asked for additional emergency measures to protect Rafah, a southern Gaza city where more than 1.5 million Palestinians had been sheltering.
On Thursday, South Africa will present its latest intervention-seeking emergency measures starting at 3pm (13:00 GMT). Israel, which has denounced South Africa’s claim that it is violating the 1949 Genocide Convention as baseless, will respond on Friday.
‘It’s Bisan from Gaza, and this is a second Nakba’
Bisan Owda has met with three survivors from the Nakba who shared firsthand accounts of their struggles in 1948 and today.
They spoke about their life before the establishment of Israel and how they’ve now been displaced twice in their lifetimes.
About 15,000 Palestinians were killed during the Nakba in 1948. Since October 7, Israel has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and 1.7 million people have been displaced — more than double the number of Palestinians displaced in 1948.
‘Our Nakba is the worst ever’
With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the fighting in Gaza and the death toll soaring, some suggest the situation today is worse than the “catastrophe” of 1948.
“Our Nakba … is the worst ever. It is much harder than the Nakba of 1948,” said Mohammed al-Farra, whose family fled their home in Khan Younis for the coastal area of al-Mawasi.
At least 600,000 have fled southern Rafah since Israel intensified its military operations this month. About 1.7 million have had to leave their homes and shelters since the war began in October.
The death toll, meanwhile, has surpassed 35,000, mostly women and children.
