Israel using starvation to empty northern Gaza: UN rapporteur
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food says Israel has been using famine as a weapon of war to empty out parts of the Gaza Strip.
“Israel announced its plan to starve the Palestinian population on October 9 and it’s done so,” Michael Fakhri told Al Jazeera, referring to the order by then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant of a “complete siege” on Gaza.
“What Israel has been trying to do over the past year is clear: Empty out the north,” he said. “When I say empty, I mean Israel has been using starvation as a tool to kill people and to forcibly displace people.”
Fakhri said Israel was denying aid, restricting aid and destroying the food system to deny the Palestinians the ability to feed themselves.
“Israel was able to do this because of a decades-long policy of siege, of blockade, of controlling every calory entering Gaza, so what they did in October 2023 was like flipping a switch,” he said.
UN expert slams Israeli law authorising the jailing of Palestinian children
Francesca Albanese said Palestinian minors in Israeli custody are “tormented often beyond the breaking point” and that “generations of Palestinians will carry the scars and trauma from the Israeli mass incarceration system”.
The comments by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine came in response to Israel’s parliament passing a law on November 7 that authorises the detention of Palestinian children under the age of 14 if they are convicted of murder involving “terrorism or terrorist activities”.
“Up to 700 Palestinian children have been kidnapped each year for decades; held hostages by an unlawful occupation who saw in them a threat in the making,” Albanese wrote on X.
She added that international diplomacy has normalised the situation by “continuing to invoke the ‘resumption of negotiations’ between the ‘parties’ to ‘achieve a durable solution’.”
UNSC condemns attacks against peacekeepers in Lebanon
The UN Security Council (UNSC) urged all parties to the conflict in Lebanon to take “all measures to respect the safety and security” of peacekeepers in Lebanon.
The statement came in response to several attacks that have wounded peacekeepers with the UN mission, known as UNIFIL, and impacted its positions, including on October 29, November 7 and 8.
The council did not assign blame for the attacks.
UNSC members “recalled that peacekeepers must never be the target of an attack ” and reiterated their full “support to UNIFIL, underscoring its role in supporting regional stability”.
In recent weeks, UNIFIL – which monitors hostilities along the Blue Line separating Israel and Lebanon – has accused Israeli forces of deliberately attacking its bases, including by shooting at peacekeepers and destroying watchtowers. This includes an incident on November 7 in which Israeli forces used bulldozers and excavators to destroy part of a UNIFIL post in southern Lebanon.
Austria meanwhile said eight of its peacekeepers were injured in a rocket attack, most likely fired by Hezbollah fighters, on October 29.
UN sounds alarm at Israel’s ‘severe violations’ at key buffer zone with Syria
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/middleeast/un-israel-violation-golan-heights-syria-intl/index.html
The United Nations has accused Israel of “severe violations” of a 50-year-old agreement with Syria, saying it has engaged in “engineering groundwork activities” that encroach on a key buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
“Violations of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement have occurred where engineering works have encroached into the AoS (the area of separation),” the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has maintained the ceasefire between Israel and Syria since 1974, said in a statement Tuesday.
Satellite imagery from Planet Labs and the European Space Agency shows that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been conducting excavation activity near Jubata Al Khashab, Syria since mid-August. A large earthen berm, roughly 40 feet (12 meters) wide, is being dug.
The trench now stretches almost five miles (eight kilometers).
Work on extending the trench even further is continuing, according to recent satellite imagery. In a Planet Labs image taken on November 5, an excavator and other vehicles can be seen working.
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