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Gaza deaths are ‘vastly underestimated’: Intensive care doctor
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who had been to Gaza both before and during the war, believes the death toll in the Gaza Strip is much higher than the 40,000 confirmed so far.
She told Al Jazeera that she personally knows Palestinians who have missing family members, who they hope are somewhere in the north or have been detained by Israeli forces. There are others who are under the rubble but cannot yet be recovered.
“The census mechanism for the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, so I’m not even sure how you could be able to estimate the number of true deaths under current circumstances. I know historically that the estimates from the Ministry of Health have been accurate, and if anything, they are underestimates,” Haj-Hassan said.
‘We rarely hear that there has been an attack without child casualties’: UNICEF
Salim Oweis, communication officer for the regional office of UNICEF who travelled across Gaza last week, says the horrific conditions there are challenging to describe.
“What I saw is beyond describing – even TV screens don’t do it justice,” he told Al Jazeera. “Not only are buildings destroyed, but whole neighbourhoods and streets in places like Khan Younis or Gaza City.”
He said living conditions in displacement camps and shelters are unbearable, and even spending a short time there was a struggle due to the heat, sand and the crowded nature.
“In Deir el-Balah, the amount of displaced people is horrific; it feels like everyone has been displaced. We’re talking about 90 percent of the population which has been displaced at least once,” Oweis said.
He added that during many of Israel’s attacks, children are among the victims.
“We rarely hear that there has been an attack without child casualties,” Oweis said. “Children are almost half the population of Gaza, which was densely crowded even before this war.”
‘Blood is on our hands,’ US peace group says as Gaza marks 40,000 deaths
The US-based peace organisation Fellowship of Reconciliation has criticised the Biden administration for paying “lip service” to ceasefire talks days after approving an additional $20bn in weapons sales to Israel as Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“The blood is on all our hands around the world, but especially on ours here in the US, where we are supplying the tools of destruction and death,” Executive Director Ariel Gold told Al Jazeera from New Jersey.
“As much as this is Israel’s war and tragedy, this is America’s war and tragedy,” she added.
Gold expressed hope that a new US administration led by Vice President Kamala Harris after November’s election would break from Biden’s policy of unconditional support for Israel.
“We are seeing very large shifts in public opinion towards Palestinian rights. The question is whether those shifts are large enough and will come soon enough to save lives,” she said.
Fanatics in Israel not interested in ceasefire talks
Most parties in the Gaza conflict want a ceasefire, but fanatics in Israel are not interested in one because they want to annex whatever they can and kick out as many Palestinians as possible.
Since the beginning of this war, we said that Israel was going to use this conflict to change the reality on the ground, and that’s what it has done.
The US cannot be considered a mediator in the ongoing negotiations, it’s an ally and a partner of Israel. Israel keeps committing violations of international law and the US only expresses concern, but nothing changes.
International law has rules that need to be respected, but the US has refused to apply them to its ally and hence, we’re stuck.
