Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – UNICEF’s Executive Director, Catherine Russell, said this week that “Children in Gaza are caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day.”
There are some 3,000 new cases of diarrhea among the Strip’s children every single day now.
In addition, the UN’s World Health Organization reports that the Israeli army has attacked hospitals and other important medical facilities 600 times in the past three months. Some 613 persons have been killed in these attacks, including premature babies and 770 were wounded. In international law, health facilities may not be targeted by military operations unless the enemy is actively firing from them or using them to advance the war effort. Zero credible evidence has been presented by the Israeli government for its outrageous claims that hospitals were Hamas command centers, and the Washington Post‘s investigation has knocked down that claim definitively for al-Shifa hospital. Critics allege that crippling the hospitals in the north was aimed at preventing Palestinians from living there and turning it into a no-man’s land to function as a buffer zone.
Half the population of Gaza consists of children, about 1.1 million of them. WHO now says that they are faced by severe risk of dying from three main causes:
1. Being caught in Israeli fire as the Israeli army continues its assault
2. Malnutrition or even starving from lack of food
3. Disease outbreaks, including diarrhea, cases of which are spiking. Infants and toddlers die swiftly from the dehydration caused by diarrhea. Because Israel has destroyed water pipes and the purification facilities can’t function, and because there is no fuel to boil water with, parents or guardians can only give these children dirty water for the most part, which causes more diarrhea and increases rather than lowering the risk of death from dehydration.
Israeli bombardment, shelling and sniping have killed over 8,000 children in Gaza and over 22,000 individuals, 70% of them women and children and almost all innocent noncombatants.
WGN “Israeli Strike kills 12 people, mostly children, in Gaza area declared safe zone by Israel”
1.9 million people in Gaza — again, roughly 950,000 of them children — have been made homeless, and some have had to move to seek shelter several times. In the north, 150,000 have sought shelter in facilities of the UN Relief and Works Agency, which have been repeatedly attack by the Israeli military. In the south, about half a million people are in the vicinity of such shelters.
Many people are sleeping in the rough in the cold and sometimes rainy winter, which also weakens children’s immunity. Some have taken shelter in areas designated as “safe” by the Israeli generals, but then have come under bombardments anyway.
Before the war Gaza, under an economic siege by Israel that created an employment rate of 54%, required 500 trucks of supplies and aid per day. Now it is less than 200 per day, which is creating food insecurity.
The delivery trucks are sent back if they fail inspections even for minor reasons and have to be entirely repacked.
UNICEF reports that “Most families said their children are only getting grains – including bread – or milk, meeting the definition of “severe food poverty”.
The Republicans in the US Congress and statehouses who say they care so much about unborn children are really concerned when UNICEF says it “is particularly worried about the nutrition of over 155,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as more than 135,000 children under two, given their specific nutrition needs and vulnerability.”
Right?
Martin Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said Friday that the Palestinians of Gaza face “daily threats to their very existence.”
He added, “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded (and) famine is around the corner.”
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