The International Commission “Hashd” Continuing to commit massacres against Palestinian families, destroying homes and service facilities, especially hospitals, rendering them unusable, targeting civilians, and imposing retaliatory collective punishment

 Date: 23 Nev, 2023

Time: 13:00 local time

Original Language: Arabic

Press Release

The International Commission “Hashd” Continuing to commit massacres against Palestinian families, destroying homes and service facilities, especially hospitals, rendering them unusable, targeting civilians, and imposing retaliatory collective punishment.

For 47 consecutive days, the Israeli occupying forces continue their genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, resulting in 14,532 martyrs, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women, and more than 35,000 Palestinians, 75% of whom are children and women, being injured. More than 7,000 people are missing under the rubble of their homes. Meanwhile, the Israeli forces have detained over 500 citizens, including the wounded, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, doctors, paramedics, and children at their checkpoints in Gaza. They were subjected to field investigation and later transferred to unknown locations, with no information available about them to date. Additionally, 1.7 million Palestinians were forcibly displaced, with one million taking refuge in UNRWA schools, 54 of which were targeted in the bombing, resulting in the death of 192 citizens and the injury of hundreds, mostly women and children.

The Israeli occupation forces continue to expand their ground operations, implementing a scorched-earth policy in targeted areas, completing the destruction of most civilized areas in northern Gaza and Gaza City. They destroy homes, residential neighborhoods, civilian structures, besiege and bombard hospitals, using indiscriminate artillery shelling that targeted civilian homes and led to the killing and injury of hundreds of citizens. Aerial bombardment and naval bombardment have also caused further massacres against targeted families. The disproportionate and excessive military attack has expanded the circle of destruction to residential buildings and civilian structures, with nearly 60% of residential units being destroyed, including the total destruction of 44,000 housing units. About 230,000 housing units suffered partial destruction. Additionally, 26 hospitals and 55 health centers were destroyed, and 100 government offices, 83 mosques, and 173 mosques were damaged. Schools and university buildings, hundreds of commercial and economic establishments, media institutions, law offices, unions, and dozens of civil service facilities were damaged or destroyed. Streets, electricity grids, sewage systems, agricultural land, and animal and bird farms were destroyed. Telecommunications and internet services remain cut off in large parts of Gaza. The Israeli aggression is accompanied by the continued Israeli closure of all crossings, cutting off water and electricity supplies, allowing only conditional entry of a limited number of trucks carrying aid that is insufficient to cover 10% of the current deficit in all essential supplies. This has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza residents, who are forced to collect wood and paper daily to make bread for those who have food supplies, and to queue for long hours to meet basic needs or obtain any water.

The increasing number of respiratory diseases, typhoid, and other epidemics, along with the spread of environmental pollution due to the halt of most municipal services, exacerbates the catastrophic and unsustainable lives of children, women, and civilians in Gaza, especially in northern Gaza and Gaza City, which is under a ground invasion preventing humanitarian aid and fuel from reaching its residents.

The International Commission to Support Palestinians Rights (Hashd)affirms that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip is an unlawful military and aggressive act. It holds the Israeli authorities, the United States, and Western supporting countries responsible for the consequences of their continuous aggression, genocidal war, and collective punishment against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Hashd warns of the dangerous humanitarian conditions experienced by civilians in Gaza, including displaced people due to the scarcity of water, lack of relief and food supplies, absence of health services, overcrowding in schools, homes, and hospitals, and the failure to retrieve the bodies of the missing under the rubble.

It condemns collective sanctions and the Israeli blockade as clear violations of the rules of international humanitarian law prohibiting the occupation state from punishing civilians. Hashd condemns arbitrary detention at military checkpoints in the sector and the torture of prisoners, with no information about them or their detention locations. It calls on the International Red Cross to activate its role in protecting civilians and detainees, reassuring their families about them. Hashd registers and demands the following:

• The International Commission “Hashd” :It calls on the international community, its various organizations, and the high contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions and the free world to continue international and regional movements and popular pressure on the Israeli occupation state to stop genocidal crimes, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, collective punishment, and to end the aggression, lift the siege and collective punishment on the Gaza Strip. It calls for the implementation of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions to stop the war and take effective action to open humanitarian corridors to ensure the evacuation of the wounded, the entry of medical supplies and humanitarian aid, and the necessary fuel to operate the power plant and hospital generators and other life-saving services. It urges the provision of international protection for civilians, especially children, women, journalists, medical teams, hospitals, and monitoring the conditions of those detained in Israeli occupation prisons to ensure compliance with the provisions of international humanitarian law.

End

The International Commission to Support Palestinians Rights (Hashd)