The next stage of the Gaza genocide has begun
Jamal’s nine-year-old body is paralysed. He experiences constant, uncontrollable, violent spasms. He cannot sleep through them, nor can his mother. To keep the spasms under control, a drug called baclofen is required. It relaxes the muscles and stops the shaking. Suddenly halting the use of baclofen can have serious health consequences.
Jamal’s mother, my cousin Shaima, wrote to me from the family’s tent in the al-Mawasi displacement camp in Gaza a week ago. It was her son’s seventh day without the medicine. The violent, neurological spasms that seize Jamal’s limbs leave him screaming out in pain.
Baclofen is unavailable anywhere in Gaza: not in hospitals, not in clinics, not in Ministry of Health warehouses, and not even through the Red Cross. Shaima has searched all of them. It is one of the many medicines blocked by Israel, along with painkillers and antibiotics.
Jamal now endures dozens of spasms each day. There is no alternative medication or substitute. There is no relief, only pain.
Jamal’s story is not to be told if the likes of former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are to have their way.
Cold, wet weather worsens conditions of displaced Palestinians in central Gaza
Israeli forces shoot Gaza City resident dead, child succumbs to injuries in Khan Younis
A Palestinian person has been shot dead by Israeli forces in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, according to the Wafa news agency.
Also this evening, a Palestinian child, Muhammad Shehadeh Abu Hudaid, succumbed to his injuries sustained several days ago in an Israeli bombing of the al-Mawasi area near the enclave’s southern city of Khan Youni, Wafa reported.
Palestinian women describe ‘journey of horror’ crossing back into Gaza
Palestinian women among the few people let back into Gaza after Israel’s delayed reopening of the Rafah crossing under last year’s “ceasefire” have described being blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated by Israeli forces as they tried to get home.
Their journey from Egypt on Monday through the frontier post and across the “yellow line” zone controlled by Israel and an allied Palestinian militia group, involved lengthy delays and the confiscation of gifts, including toys, one of the women said.
“It was a journey of horror, humiliation and oppression,” 56-year-old Huda Abu Abed told the Reuters news agency by phone from the tent her family is living in at Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Her account was supported by that of another woman Reuters interviewed.
In response to a Reuters request for comment, Israel’s military denied its forces had acted inappropriately or mistreated Palestinians crossing into Gaza, without addressing the specific allegations made by the two women interviewed.
