Monday was the twenty-fourth consecutive day of the Israeli occupation forces’ aerial, ground, and naval bombardment of northern Gaza. The siege has included blocking supplies of food, water, medicine, and fuel, destroying homes, demolishing entire residential blocks, attacking hospitals, and assassinating individuals trying to escape.
Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its siege of northern Gaza.
In Gaza, at least 41 Palestinians were killed and 113 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the health ministry reported.
In Lebanon, at least 20 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday, according to Lebanese media. Three of the dead were paramedics.
Medical Teams Needed in North Gaza Hospital After Israeli Raid, Health Ministry Says
UNRWA Outlawed – US “Concerned”
Israeli lawmakers vote to ban UN agency for Palestinian refugees
The Israeli Knesset on 28 October passed two laws banning the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from operating inside Israel, Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and occupied East Jerusalem.
In a 92-10 vote, the Knesset approved the first law, which says that the UN agency cannot “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly.” Moments later, lawmakers voted 87-9 for the second law, which states that no Israeli government official or agency may contact UNRWA, effectively prohibiting Israeli officials from providing services or dealing with UN employees.
Ahead of the Knesset vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the bills a “catastrophe.”
UNRWA was created over 70 years ago to provide essential services — education, healthcare, and emergency aid — to Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries following the Nakba and colonization of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers.
U.S. “Deeply Concerned” New Israeli Laws Will Worsen Gaza Crisis
The Biden administration is “deeply concerned” that two bills passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday will exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and harm Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a State Department spokesman told reporters – at a time when than 1.8 million people across Gaza are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.
The U.S. and other Western countries pressed Israel not to move forward with the bills against the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Their passage will likely increase pressure on the Biden administration to suspend military assistance to Israel.
Israel has long opposed UNRWA, and has claimed some of the agency’s staff took part in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA has repeatedly denied allegations of the agency having widespread links to Hamas, and a UN-appointed independent commission in April said Israel “had yet to provide supporting evidence” of its claims.
Two weeks ago Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli leaders demanding Israel take steps within 30 days to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel being affected. The letter also expressed their concern about the UNRWA bills, as well as a warning of policy implications should those bills pass.
The two bills will take effect in 90 days, during which time Netanyahu said Israel will “work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security.”
US president Joe Biden said on Monday, “We need a cease-fire. This war should end.”
Israel’s Netanyahu Rejects Egyptian Cease-fire Initiative in Gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an initiative proposed by Egypt on Sunday for a short-term cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the proposal, according to Israeli media.
“We proposed a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip for two days to exchange four (Israeli) hostages for some (Palestinian) prisoners, and then negotiations would take place over 10 days to turn the cease-fire into a permanent truce,” al-Sisi said during a joint press conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in the capital Cairo.
Despite the support of most Israeli ministers for the Egyptian proposal, Tel Aviv decided to reject the deal due to opposition from Netanyahu, who emphasized that “negotiations will take place only under fire,” according to Israel’s Channel 12.
Jailed Palestinian Leader Marwan Barghouti Brutally Assaulted at Israeli Prison
Prominent Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti was injured in a “brutal assault” in Megiddo Prison in northern Israel, according to prisoners’ affairs groups on Monday.
Barghouti suffered injuries after the assault in his solitary confinement on Sept. 9, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a joint statement.
Barghouti was detained in 2002 by the Israeli forces and is currently serving a life-term sentence over charges of “directing armed groups that killed and injured Israelis” during the second Palestinian intifada.
The Israeli army has detained over 11,400 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of its deadly war on the Gaza Strip in October last year, according to Palestinian figures.
The figure doesn’t include all those arrested from the Gaza Strip whose numbers are estimated to be in the thousands.
[NOTE: Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian politician, activist and militant leader, has been shut away from the outside world for over 20 years, but he is more popular with Palestinians than any other politician. A poll published in March 2024 by Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian researcher, suggested that if there were an election Barghouti would win more votes than both his nearest rivals combined.]
South Africa Submits 750 Pages of Evidence in Genocide Case Against Israel
Image: Mr. Vusimuzi Madonsela presents on behalf of South Africa at the public hearings in the case South Africa v. Israel at the International Court of Justice, May 16, 2024. (photo)
South Africa’s legal team on 28 October submitted hundreds of documents to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) offering “undeniable evidence” of genocidal intent and actions by the Israeli army.
“The evidence will show that undergirding Israel’s genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself, and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide,” a statement from Pretoria says, adding, “South Africa’s Memorial is a reminder to the global community to remember the people of Palestine, to stand in solidarity with them, and to stop the catastrophe.”
Officials say that the submission, also called a memorial, is presented in more than 750 pages of text, in addition to over 4,000 pages of annexes.
UN Official Calls on ‘All States Not to Provide Weapons, Munitions to Israel’
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in counter-terrorism, Ben Saul, criticized on Monday Israel’s military actions in Gaza and called on all nations to stop supplying weapons, citing violations of humanitarian law.
Speaking at a news conference in New York, Saul highlighted “a pattern of deliberate indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks harming large numbers of civilians” by Israel.
Saul described Israel’s use of “high explosive munitions in densely populated areas, which by nature cannot distinguish between civilians and military targets,” and its use of starvation as well as denial of aid relief as a “weapon of war.”
Highlighting concerns over Israel’s actions violating international norms, Saul reaffirmed call “on all States not to provide weapons or munitions to Israel, because that would breach the obligation of other states to ensure respect for humanitarian law.”
“Unfortunately, Israel hasn’t taken the message from the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, many governments, the General Assembly, and the Human Rights Council,” he said.
Saul further clarified the distinction between legitimate resistance and terrorism, saying that under international law, people facing occupation or colonialism have a right to resist.
He stressed that “this right to resist has to be exercised in accordance with international humanitarian law,” adding that “national liberation and self-determination is a just cause, but…you can’t murder civilians or deliberately attack civilians or take hostages.”
Saul said that “these are red lines in international law for everybody,” underscoring the importance of upholding these standards in all conflicts.
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The Israel Ministry of Defense recently received a cargo plane from the United States, carrying the initial shipment of armored vehicles designated for use by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). They are being transferred to the IDF to replace vehicles damaged during the war. (Israel_MOD)
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‘Largest’ Cultural Boycott Against Israeli Institutions Launches: Statement
More than 1,100 authors – including winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award – have launched “a mass boycott of Israeli publishers complicit in the dispossession of the Palestinian people”, a coalition of solidarity groups has said in a press statement.
The declaration is the biggest cultural boycott against Israeli institutions in history, it said, adding that “signatories have stated that they cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement”.
See the letter and list of signatories here.
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Featured image: Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]
