Amnesty International has accused the world’s most powerful governments, including China, Russia and the US, of leading the global disregard for international rules and values enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights amid wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

The war in Gaza, which began on October 7, was a “descent into hell”, Amnesty’s Secretary-General Agnes Callamard wrote in her preface to her organisation’s annual report, noting that “the ‘never again’ moral and legal lessons [of 1948] were torn into a million pieces”.

Callamard said Israel’s “campaign of retaliation” following the October 7 attack by Hamas had become a “campaign of collective punishment”.

And as Israel continues to disregard international human rights law, the US and other countries, including the United Kingdom and Germany, were now guilty of “grotesque double standards”, Callamard said, given their willingness to back Israel’s war on Gaza while condemning war crimes by Russia in Ukraine.

Two US senators who voted against the enormous foreign military assistance bill cited Israel’s war on Gaza as the reason.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders said American taxpayers “should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people”.

“Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu’s war machine,” Sanders said in a statement.

Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat, offered similar reasons for his no vote. “Sending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government the munitions it is using to destroy Gaza is wrong and inconsistent with our foreign policy goals.”

Israeli minister praises ‘unbreakable’ relationship with US

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the country’s government has admitted defeat in its efforts to keep international funding away from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

This news comes after Germany announced today that it would restore its funding to the agency, which it froze in January amid allegations by Israel that UNRWA staff had participated in the October 7 attacks on Israel. This week, a report from Catherine Colonna, former French foreign minister, discredited the Israeli allegations.

“Political sources in Israel have acknowledged in talks with foreign diplomats in recent days that Jerusalem had not succeeded in influencing the report in the way it had hoped,” Haaretz reported.

“An Israeli source involved in the diplomatic effort to halt funding to UNRWA told Haaretz that the failure was not in the field of public relations and communications, but rather stemmed from the lack of a convincing alternative to UNRWA,” it added.

Yesterday, Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s campaign to discredit and defund the organisation had led to it facing an “unprecedented” crisis. UNRWA plays a vital role in distributing desperately needed aid inside Gaza, where thousands are facing famine.

The move comes as an independent probe earlier this week said that Israel did not provide any evidence after alleging that some UNWRA staff had collaborated with Hamas during the October 7 attack. The review, headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, made some recommendations on toughening up safeguards in certain areas.

“Against this background and in support of these reforms, the Federal Government will shortly continue its cooperation with UNRWA in Gaza, as Australia, Canada, Sweden and Japan, among others, have already done,” a statement from the Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development read.

“By continuing our acute cooperation, we are supporting UNRWA’s vital and currently irreplaceable role in providing aid to the people of Gaza, as other international aid organisations are also currently dependent on UNRWA’s operational structures in Gaza.”

Israel’s accusations had led to 16 donor countries  suspending or pausing funding to the refugee agency, leaving it with a funding gap of some $450m.

The league’s Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit says an independent review of the UN Palestinian refugee agency shows Israel’s allegations were baseless and part of a “systematic campaign” to close it down.

Aboul Gheit urged all countries that suspended funding to urgently resume financial assistance to UNRWA, calling it a “humanitarian necessity and a moral duty”. He specifically urged UNRWA’s largest donor, the United States, to reconsider.

The independent probe earlier this week found Israeli provided no evidence for its allegations that some UNWRA staff collaborated with Hamas during the October 7 attack.

Biden signed it into law that UNWRA can't be funded anymore until 2025 at least

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-government-funding-deal-includes-ban-on-u-s-aid-to-unrwa-until-2025-sources/
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/25/u-s-bans-unrwa-funding-for-one-year/

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), along with the UN children’s fund (UNICEF), have completed a joint aid delivery mission to Jabalia in northern Gaza, according to the UNRWA.

The delivery on Tuesday brought “life-saving medical and water-purification” supplies to residents of Jabalia, said the UNRWA, where aid shortages are among the worst in the enclave.

While aid delivery to all of Gaza has been challenging, getting supplies into the north has been especially strained due to tight Israeli movement restrictions and military operations.

The mosque, considered one of Islam’s holiest sites, will be shuttered to Muslims today and tomorrow as Israeli forces reserve the complex for Jewish settlers marking Passover, reports the Wafa news agency.

Israeli troops have ramped up restrictions and closed checkpoints leading to the religious site, which is known to Israeli Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Access to the religious complex is a flashpoint issue in occupied Hebron, where some 700 Jewish settlers live, with Israeli forces closing it to Muslims for about 10 days each year coinciding with Jewish holidays, according to Wafa.

Egyptian authorities have arrested activists at a protest held in solidarity with Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.

Lawyer Khaled Ali said at least 18 activists, mostly women, were detained when police broke up the protest outside the regional office of the UN Women agency in Cairo’s Maadi district on Tuesday. There was no comment from the government.

Protesters called for the protection of women in Gaza. Although Egypt’s government has condemned Israel’s campaign in Gaza, it has largely banned public demonstrations against the war. Criticism of the country’s ties with Israel, with which it signed a peace accord in 1979, is highly sensitive.

Mary Lawlor, a special rapporteur on human rights defenders for the United Nations, says the protesters who were detained by Egyptian authorities yesterday in solidarity with the women of Gaza and Sudan should be released.

We reported that a number of lawyers, journalists and civil society leaders who gathered outside the office of UN Women in Cairo were detained

Human rights lawyer Mai El-Sadany said in a post on X that at least 16 are being questioned by Egyptian security services.

The Israeli military says it deployed air strikes against Hezbollah infrastructure throughout southern Lebanon, including in the areas of Tayr Harfa, Markaba, Aita al-Shaab, and Marwahin.

The attacks hit a launch site that Hezbollah used to fire rockets at Israel yesterday, said the military, while also hitting several military compounds and an observation post.

A missile attack on the northern Israeli village of Avivim has damaged two homes but caused no civilian casualties, reports Israel’s Arutz Sheva media, citing the region’s council.

Following the attack, Israel’s military has announced it is in the process of striking Hezbollah military targets in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli military has carried out more than a dozen simultaneous air attacks on southern Lebanese towns, reports Lebanon’s An-Nahar media. The strikes have taken place near the southern towns of Ayta ash Shab, Ramyah, Jabal Blat, and Khallet Warde.

The reported attacks come after an Israeli military statement said its forces were in the process of striking Hezbollah targets. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Marjayoun in southern Lebanon, said the strikes were part of a “pattern of sporadic escalation” along the border.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has said half of Gaza’s population – estimated to be some 2.3 million people – are starving.

While WFP is providing food assistance to more than 1 million people in Gaza each month, the need was so acute that such efforts amount to “a drop in the ocean of needs”, the agency said in a post on social media.

The UN’s food relief agency also said a humanitarian ceasefire was needed immediately.

‘We are getting closer by the day to a famine situation’: WFP

_{Displaced Palestinians living in makeshift shelters light a fire to boil a kettle}

Hepatitis, meningitis spreading in Gaza: Health Ministry

Lack of medication endangering lives of patients with blood diseases

The United Nations called for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-ravaged Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman with the UN’s human rights office, demanded independent and transparent investigations into the deaths, saying “given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators”.

Credible investigators must have access to the sites, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, adding more journalists need to be able to work safely in Gaza to report the facts.

Earlier, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said he is “horrified” by the destruction of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, and reported mass graves in and around the facilities after the Israelis left.

US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel has described reports of mass graves at Gaza hospitals as “incredibly troubling” and said US officials asked the Israeli government for information. Asked by a reporter if he believes the Israeli government is “a credible source” for information on the mass graves, Patel responded: “We do. We do.”

Gaza’s civil defence agency says more than 300 bodies have been found buried in the courtyard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis after Israeli forces withdrew from the facility last week.

The Israeli military said its forces exhumed bodies that Palestinians had buried earlier as part of its search for the remains of captives taken by Hamas on October 7. It said bodies were examined and the ones not of captives were reburied.

“Obviously scenes of mass graves in general are deeply concerning, but I don’t have anything that can confirm the veracity of those,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

EU joins calls for probe into mass graves at Gaza hospitals

As the day progresses, we are finding out more shocking details and revelations about the mass grave at the courtyard of Nasser Hospital. Many of the bodies retrieved inside plastic bags have been largely [decomposed] to the point they are not recognisable at all. Their identities are lost.

Families gathered at the hospital’s courtyard trying to find [the bodies of their] children or other relatives, whom they have been searching for over the past 70 days, are unable to recognise them. There have only been a few cases of parents being able to recognise the bodies of their children from the clothes they were wearing.

Tragedies keep unfolding across the hospital’s courtyard, where the fourth mass grave has been discovered within the past 12 days.

The offensive in Rafah will happen “very soon”, the widely circulated Israel Hayom newspaper said, citing a decision by the Israeli government. Several other Israeli media outlets published similar reports.

Preparations are under way to evacuate war-displaced Palestinian civilians sheltering there, the reports said.

Israel says the southern city is the last stronghold of Hamas in Gaza. It is also the place housing more than a million Palestinians who fled other parts of the Gaza Strip during the 200-day war.

Israel has been signalling an invasion of Rafah in recent weeks, but the operations have been stalled by disputes with the US. US officials say there must be a plan to safely evacuate civilians before any such incursion.

Satellite imagery analysed by the AP, meanwhile, found a new tent compound under construction near the city of Khan Younis, prompting speculation that Palestinians could be moved there before the looming Rafah operation.

“Everybody seems to be on a countdown to war across the largest displacement camp on Earth, which is Rafah,” said Norwegian Refugee Council boss Jan Egeland.

A ground assault on Rafah would be an “apocalyptic situation”, Egeland warned, adding humanitarian groups “are completely in the dark on how to mitigate this countdown to a catastrophe”.

Israel’s military plans to transfer two combat brigades from northern Israel to carry out operations in Gaza.

The army said in a statement that the 2nd Reserve Brigade of the 146th Division and the 679th Reserve Brigade of the 210th Division will be deployed from along Lebanon’s border in northern Israel to the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli infantry brigade typically consists of 2,000 to 5,000 soldiers.

The statement didn’t clarify the nature of the operations forthcoming in Gaza, but the transfers come amid threats of a ground offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians are sheltering.

Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said clearing Rafah of what his government says are four Hamas battalions is necessary for “total victory”.

Nine Israeli military outposts have been established near Gaza during the war, according to satellite images verified by Al Jazeera, as experts warn that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could be imminent.

Thick black smoke could be seen rising in northern Gaza where famine has reportedly set in because of restrictions on aid by Israeli forces.

Shelling was intense east of Beit Hanoon and Jabalia and continued in areas such as Zeitoun – one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs – with residents reporting at least 10 strikes in a matter of seconds along the main road.

“The bombing from tanks and planes didn’t stop,” said Um Mohammad, 53, a mother of six living 700 metres from Zeitoun. “I had to gather with my children and my sisters who came to shelter with me in one place and pray for our lives as the house kept shaking.”

Just west of Beit Hanoon in Beit Lahiya, an air strike hit a mosque, killing a boy and injuring several others. A medic was killed in shelling near the town stadium, civil defence officials said.

Israeli air strikes continue across the Gaza Strip causing further civilian casualties and leaving a trail of destruction.

Three people were killed in an attack on a home in Rafah with several others wounded. The pattern we’ve been seeing at overcrowded hospitals with few staff and supplies is injured people receiving little medical intervention. So the likelihood of the number of deaths rising is very high.

At the Nuseirat refugee camp – which has been targeted relentlessly over the past few weeks – five people from one family sheltering inside a home were killed. Meanwhile, the Israeli military continues to strike public facilities and homes in Deir el-Balah and the Bureij refugee camp.

In northern Gaza, Israeli forces are attacking the city of Beit Lahiya, giving people as little as five minutes to evacuate from their homes before they find themselves caught in the line of fire from artillery.

The Israeli military has announced pulling out of the northern city of Beit Hanoon after it stormed it yesterday with a large number of ground forces. But it has left trails of destruction on all remaining buildings, including schools and public facilities, to the point that the city has been turned into a wasteland.

Air raids also continue to pound the city of Jabalia, targeting more residential homes and UNRWA facilities. There are reports of many people being injured and transferred to a nearby, privately owned clinic in preparation to move to Ahli Arab Hospital.

While Israeli officials signal that a ground invasion of Gaza’s southern Rafah region is imminent, an Israeli defence official was reported as stating that thousands of Palestinian fighters remain operational in the north of the territory.

US-based think tanks the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) note that their assessment on the continuing presence of Palestinian armed resistance in Beit Hanoon is consistent with an Israeli official acknowledging to US news media that “several thousand” fighters remain in northern Gaza.

Also on Tuesday, the 200th day of fighting, Palestinian armed groups carried out at least five “indirect fire attacks” at Israel with rockets launched from Gaza.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched two rocket attacks – including a combined attack with fighters from the Ansar Brigades – towards Israel’s Sderot city, while the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the National Resistance Brigades carried out an attack on Israel’s Zikim base.

PIJ and National Resistance fighters also fired rockets towards southern Israel’s Nir Am area, according to the ISW/CTP report.

At least 34,262 Palestinians have been killed and 77,229 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, its Health Ministry says.

The ministry added that 79 people were killed and 86 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period.


Palestinians wounded in Bureij camp rushed to hospital

The ambulance crew of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) picked up five people wounded in the camp and took them to hospital for urgent treatment.

As we reported earlier, Israeli forces have been carrying out air strikes and shelling homes in Bureij camp, located in the centre of the enclave, causing numerous civilian casualties.

Palestinians are fleeing their homes in northern Gaza just weeks after returning due to Israeli bombardments, which have once again resumed there. Many say it is just as intense as at the start of the war.

Residents in the suburbs of Gaza City in particular reported heavy shelling.

“We don’t know why this is all happening. Is it because we returned home and we finally got some aid through after months of starvation and the Israelis didn’t like that?” Mohammad Jamal, 29, a resident of Gaza City near Zeitoun, one of Gaza’s oldest neighbourhoods, told the Reuters news agency through a messaging app.

“It is as if the war started again, as if it is just happening. They burned up the place.”

Israel renewed its attacks in the area this week after some time of relative calm, having previously withdrawn many of its troops from the north of the Strip.

Palestinian civilians are fleeing their homes again in northern Gaza. Israeli shelling is focused for a second day on Beit Lahiya where the Israeli military ordered four neighbourhoods to evacuate, warning residents they’re in a “dangerous combat zone”.

People in the suburbs of Gaza City also reported heavy shelling.

Amjad Aleway, an emergency doctor in Gaza City, speaking in the ruins of al-Shifa Hospital, said: “The number of casualties is overwhelming, and we lack sufficient operating theatres to address them.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has released footage showing the shelling of a house near its headquarters in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

Palestinian news agency Wafa has said the two were killed during an Israeli air attack on a house west of Gaza City. Israeli jets bombed the home of the Hamid family near Shati (Beach) refugee camp, Wafa reported, killing Amna Hamid, and her son, 12-year-old Mahdi, as well as wounding six others.

At least three citizens were also killed, and dozens were injured, after Israeli forces shelled a house in the Nassr neighbourhood, also west of Gaza City.

Israeli forces also pounded the Ma’an and al-Mawasi areas in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, leading to the death of two citizens and the injury of several others, Wafa reported.

Palestinian group Hamas released on Wednesday a video of an Israeli-American man held captive in Gaza and seen alive in the footage.

We earlier reported that Hamas has released a video of an Israeli-American captive held in Gaza. Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said the nearly three-minute video of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin shows him openly criticizing Netanyahu.

In the video, he appears to say that the Israeli prime minister is “not doing enough, blames him for not getting the captives out”, Smith said.

“Remember, of course, when these videos are released, they are not speaking freely. They are being told what they can and cannot say by their captors,” Smith said. According to the footage, Goldberg-Polin said he is been “underground” for about 200 days, so there is “no fixed time on the video”, Smith said, adding that it is the first video of its kind in about three months.

“Israel calls the use of these videos ‘deplorable, psychological warfare’,” Smith said.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group resenting those held captive in Gaza and their families, has issued a statement responding to the video, saying that “time is running out” to ensure that all captives are returned.

“With each passing day, the fear of losing more innocent lives grows stronger,” the statement reads. “All the hostages must be brought home – those alive to begin the process of rehabilitation, and those murdered for a dignified burial. “This distressing video serves as an urgent call to take swift and decisive action to resolve this horrific humanitarian crisis and ensure the safe return of our loved ones”.

Mass protests have flooded the streets of cities around Israel on a weekly basis, demanding that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government do more to bring home the captives, and more recently for an end to the war in Gaza and for new elections in Israel.