The UN special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has called on Israel to investigate multiple allegations of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees since October 7.

Edwards said in a statement that she had received allegations of people being beaten up, kept blindfolded in cells and handcuffed for long periods.

She also received reports of some detainees being deprived of sleep, threatened with physical and sexual violence, insulted and exposed to humiliating acts, including “being photographed and filmed in degrading poses”.

“I am particularly concerned that this emerging pattern of violations, coupled with an absence of accountability and transparency, is creating a permissive environment for further abusive and humiliating treatment of Palestinians,” Edwards said.

“Those responsible at all levels, including commanders, must be held accountable, while victims have a right to reparation and compensation.”

The UN says without a huge amount of aid quickly entering Gaza, hunger and chaos will rapidly break out among the desperate and terrified population.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns “if aid does not begin to enter Gaza in massive quantities, desperation and hunger will spread,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

He highlighted the closure of the Rafah crossing and limited functionality of the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing in southern Gaza “have choked off the flow of life-saving supplies”. The World Food Programme has already announced it cannot distribute food in southern Gaza anymore.

Dujarric said Gaza’s hospitals lack fuel and medicine because of the continued closure of the Rafah crossing. It has been closed since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of the crucial transportation route on May 6.

Children in Gaza increasingly face death from hunger and dehydration, UNICEF warns.

“Children in Gaza continue to pay a catastrophic price from blocked aid routes and intensified military operations and fighting in Rafah and beyond, which have paralyzed the only pediatric hospital in north Gaza able to provide nutrition services,” Executive Director Catherine Russell wrote.

“No child should die from starvation,” she said.

More than seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins and most of the people who live there have been displaced during a crippling blockade on food, clean water and medicine.

Philippe Lazzarini says when it comes to the Israeli-controlled Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) land crossing into Gaza, “the private sector for the time being is being prioritised”.

At the inspection process, private sector cargo vehicles are inspected “before any other trucks” carrying aid to the desperate people of Gaza, a development that’s occurred over the past two weeks, he said.

While private goods are “welcome in the Gaza Strip”, most Gazans are starving after seven months of war and cannot afford goods at the current market prices.

“We need a combination of both humanitarian aid and market,” said Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The number of aid trucks entering Gaza through the southern crossings of Rafah and Karem Abu Salem has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, aid agencies say. The Israeli military takeover of the vital Rafah crossing into Gaza has compounded the problem.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has lauded an initiative by the Slovenian Permanent Mission to the UN to support UNRWA‘s vital role in providing assistance to generations of Palestinian refugees.

In a post on X, he also stated that all EU donors have now resumed funding of the UN agency.

I commend the initiative in favour of @UNRWA, an indispensable lifeline in Gaza and in the region.

All EU donors have now resumed their support to the Agency, still in critical financial situation.

We have to step up our support; the needs are only growing. https://t.co/wOHmu3RdQx

— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) May 23, 2024

Earlier this year, Israel claimed that 12 UNRWA members participated in the Hamas-led October 7 attack on southern Israel. The claims against UNRWA led to a massive funding deficit as several donor countries announced cuts. A review headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna later revealed that Israel had failed to support its claims about the UNRWA staff.

UK complaint alleges politicians’ complicity in Israeli ‘war crimes’

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/23/criminal-complaint-alleges-uk-politicians-complicity-in-israeli-war-crimes

US President Joe Biden completely dodged a question about the International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over the war on Gaza. It was the very first question by one of the American reporters who asked, “Is Israel using starvation as a weapon of war?”

The president tried to avoid it, so the reporter asked it again. He didn’t answer that part of the question. What he did say was the White House believes the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction, and Hamas doesn’t have “any equivalence” to Israel’s leaders.

The president ruffled through his notes like he wasn’t prepared for this kind of question. He didn’t respond about Israel using starvation as a weapon of war, and I think that is going to be focused on by the American media.

Gene Block is one of three university administrators who have testified at a hearing of the Education Committee in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives on the protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that have unfolded on American campuses over the past two months.

“With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk,” Block told the committee.

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) was the site of an April 30 attack by Israel supporters against a pro-Palestinian protest encampment that resulted in some of the most violent scenes of the recent protests.

The university on Wednesday removed the head of its campus police for his handling of the protests, which included police inaction during the attack and arrests by state and local police of 210 people the next night.

“The recent images from UCLA are appalling. What is more appalling is that it was completely preventable,” said Ilhan Omar, a Democratic congresswoman on the committee.

“You, the UCLA leadership and law enforcement stood by for hours as the mob of agitators gathered near the encampment with the clear intention to cause violence,” she continued.

Block disputed the assertion.

Janet Yellen says she is concerned by a threat by the Israeli finance minister to cut off Palestinian banks from their Israeli correspondent banks, a move that would close a critical lifeline for the Palestinian economy.

Yellen told a news conference ahead of a G7 finance ministers meeting beginning on Friday that the US and its partners “need to do everything possible to increase humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, to curtail violence in the West Bank, and to stabilise the West Bank’s economy.”

She said she would bring up the issue at the meeting of the Group of Seven industrial democracies in the lakeside resort town of Stresa in northern Italy.

“I expect other countries to express concern about the impact of such a decision on the West Bank economy. I think this would have a very adverse effect also on Israel,” Yellen noted.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said he will not renew a waiver that expires on July 1 which allows Israeli banks to process shekel payments for services and salaries tied to the Palestinian Authority.

More than 100 rights groups call on Biden to support ICC

US Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, told reporters two of the injuries included a sprained ankle and a minor back injury. He declined to offer details on the third.

The $320m floating pier, built for delivering aid, is attached to Gaza’s shore. Aid groups have criticised the pier as a costly and ineffective distraction from the fact that land deliveries – currently blocked and heavily restricted by Israel – are the most efficient way to help the wounded and starving people of Gaza.



Kinda reminds me of the Canadian postal service, makes about as much sense :p

US comedian Dave Chappelle calls out Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza at UAE show

Hundreds of Harvard students walk out of commencement, chant ‘Free, free Palestine’

B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, has released video footage documenting how Israeli settlers “take over” land belonging to Palestinian shepherds as “part of a state policy to drive out pastoral communities”.

The rights organisation said it had documented some 20 incidents where settlers and Israeli soldiers “drove Palestinian shepherds out of pastureland” in the occupied West Bank’s South Hebron Hills.

“The State of Israel is working to drive Palestinian pastoral communities out of their homes in the West Bank in order to take over their areas of habitation, including farmland and pastureland,” the rights organisation said.

Since the October 7 attack on Israel, settlers involved in “violent acts” of land expulsion are part of Israeli “territorial defence” units and have been issued military weapons and uniforms.

“This makes it impossible to distinguish when they are operating under military orders and when they are acting independently while in uniform,” B’Tselem said.

Video footage demonstrates how Israeli settlers on “farms” take over Palestinian pastureland as part of state policy to drive out pastoral communities
Read more:https://t.co/JRlfZXJbwB pic.twitter.com/wYYii10KjA

— B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) May 22, 2024

Since Israel’s Rafah operation, only 150 trucks of aid reached Gaza in two weeks

The Israeli military has bombed an apartment complex in Gaza City, killing at least 10 people, the Wafa news agency reports. Women and children were killed in the strike on the apartment, which belongs to the al-Ayoubi family and is located in the Shabiyah area of ​​Gaza City, northern Gaza.

Children, women among more than 20 reported killed in latest Israeli attacks

The fiscal situation for the Palestinian Authority (PA) has deteriorated over the past three months amid Israel’s war on Gaza, “significantly raising the risk of a fiscal collapse”, the World Bank reports.

“The rapidly widening gap between the amount of revenues coming in, and the amount needed to finance essential public expenditure, is driving a fiscal crisis,” the World Bank said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he will no longer transfer tax funds to the PA, which runs the occupied West Bank, after Norway, Spain and Ireland said they will recognise a Palestinian state.

UNRWA chief says ‘another war’ rages in occupied West Bank

In the West Bank, another war goes unnoticed.
In the northern refugee camp of Nour Shams, @UNRWA staff told me about the impact of Israeli Forces’ regular operations on their daily lives.

What was once a bustling area with markets and life, lays in destruction now 👇
Houses… pic.twitter.com/rwRuD199iN

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) May 23, 2024

Fighting in Balata camp after another Israeli raid

An American soldier is in “critical condition” after suffering a noncombat injury while working on a US-constructed aid pier off the coast of Gaza, Reuters reports, quoting an anonymous US defence official.

Earlier we reported that the deputy commander of the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, told reporters that two other American soldiers had also suffered “very minor, routine injuries” while working on the pier.

The third soldier was injured on a ship at sea and medically evacuated to an Israeli hospital, the anonymous source said, without specifying the nature of the injury.

Some 1,000 US service members were involved in the construction of the pier, which went into operation last week, while it is estimated it will cost $320m for the first 90 days to operate.

The US-constructed aid pier off the coast of Gaza is starting to get more supplies to people in need, but conditions remain challenging, US officials said on Thursday. On Wednesday, 27 of the total 70 trucks that entered Gaza through all land and sea crossings came through the pier, The Associated Press reports, citing US statistics.

That, however, represents a fraction of the 150 daily truckloads of food and supplies that the aid pier is intended to handle at its full capacity.

Gaza as a whole needs about 600 trucks per day to stave off famine in the Palestinian enclave, according to the US Agency for International Development.

Some of the food supplies waiting to enter Gaza from Egypt have begun to rot as the Rafah border crossing remains shut to aid deliveries for a third week and people inside the Palestinian enclave face worsening hunger.

Rafah was a main entry point for humanitarian relief as well as some commercial supplies before Israel stepped up its military offensive and took control of the crossing from the Palestinian side. Egyptian officials and sources say humanitarian operations are at risk from military activity and that Israel needs to hand the crossing back to Palestinians before it can start operating again.

One truck driver, Mahmoud Hussein, said his goods had been loaded on his vehicle for a month, gradually spoiling in the sun. Some of the foodstuffs are being discarded, while others sold off cheap.

“Apples, bananas, chicken and cheese, a lot of things have gone rotten, some stuff has been returned and is being sold for a quarter of its price,” he said, crouching under his truck for shade.

"I’m sorry to say that the onions we’re carrying will at best be eaten by animals because of the worms in them.”

Power generators have been shut down because of the lack of fuel. The paediatric department for children at the Al-Aqsa Hospital is the first department that is experiencing power outages.

We are seeing children outside in the corridors of this department simply because the rooms inside are packed with patients and injuries from the bombing campaign that continues to pound across the central area of Gaza.

With the power outage at this particular department, the risk of losing lives, the risk of aggravating ongoing medical problems, is increasing by the hours.

The paediatric department is not the only one now experiencing power outages. The general surgery department on the upper floor is also experiencing power outages and putting lives inside the department at risk.

_{A patient surrounded by family members sits on a bed in a corridor lit by sunlight seeping through a window after a power cut at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, which has run out of fuel to power generators to keep the lights on in the packed medical facility on May 23}

‘Patients condemned to death’ as power cut at packed Al-Aqsa Hospital