Date: 10 Feb 2024
Press Release and Urgent Appeal
The International Commission “Hashd” calls upon the international community to provide international protection for Palestinians and to act to halt the genocide and counter the declared Israeli intentions to launch a military attack on Rafah, which hosts 70% of the population of the Gaza Strip, to prevent a new catastrophe.
The International Commission “Hashd”: For 127 days now, Israeli occupation forces have continued their genocidal war and aggression on the Gaza Strip, intensifying targeted airstrikes on civilian homes, especially in the Rafah governorate. This has resulted in the martyrdom, injury, and disappearance of hundreds of civilians, with the death toll since the beginning of the aggression reaching 36,000 martyrs missing and 68,000 wounded, 70% of whom are children and women. Meanwhile, the occupation forces continue to besiege, invade, and destroy Nasser Hospital and Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, leading to the martyrdom, injury, and arrest of dozens of patients, wounded, and staff in these hospitals and rendering them out of service. Furthermore, the occupation forces continue to expand their attack on Khan Younis city, destroying homes and facilities and raiding shelters in the city, forcibly displacing its remaining inhabitants.
Every day, Israeli statements and field indicators warning of the expansion of the ground assault on the Rafah governorate increase, posing a threat of thousands of casualties and causing a humanitarian catastrophe with repercussions that cannot be mitigated at all levels. Rafah governorate is home to nearly 1.5 million citizens living in shelters belonging to the UNRWA amidst a shortage of water, food, medicine, and a lack of health and humanitarian services. Any military attack on Rafah city signifies the Israeli occupation’s insistence on forcing Gaza residents into forced migration to Egyptian territories, amidst preventing the return of displaced persons to northern Gaza and amidst the extensive destruction of civilian homes and all civil facilities in the Strip, implying the absence of suitable shelters or any humanitarian services in Gaza that could be resorted to by civilians, besides the lack of humanitarian services in other cities and the Strip infiltrated by Israeli ground forces, meaning a sentence of execution and insistence on annihilating Gaza residents, and creating a new catastrophe by forcing the remaining survivors to migrate forcibly outside Palestinian territories.
The International Commission “Hashd”: Field facts this morning revealed, following the withdrawal of Israeli occupation tanks from areas west of Gaza, the discovery of dozens of decomposed martyrs’ bodies in the streets near the university junction, confirming the commission of field execution crimes by Israeli occupation forces against them. Meanwhile, Red Crescent teams found the body of 12-year-old girl Hind Rabah and the bodies of five members of her family, as well as the body of the paramedic Youssef Zaino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun in an ambulance that was bombed just meters away from the vehicle carrying Hind and her family, despite the Red Crescent having obtained prior coordination to allow the ambulance to reach to rescue Hind, indicating Israel’s disdain and recklessness towards the lives of Palestinians and the principles of humanity and the provisions of international humanitarian law that provide special protection for children, women, medical teams, and paramedics.
The International Commission “Hashd”: Famine, thirst, diseases, and epidemics are now threatening the lives of Gaza residents amidst the continued collective Israeli punishments and the shortage and limitation of humanitarian aid and the collapse of the health and humanitarian services system, with famine and diseases claiming the lives of dozens of children, women, elderly, and patients and threatening the health and lives of 400,000 residents of northern Gaza due to the depletion of food and medicine, and the continued prevention by Israeli occupation forces of humanitarian aid from entering northern Gaza. This requires intensifying international efforts to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid, relief, and medical supplies in sufficient quantities to stop the acute famine and its catastrophic repercussions on the health and lives of Gaza residents, especially the residents of northern Gaza.
The International Commission “Hashd”: Warns the international community against accepting any justifications by the Israeli occupation state aimed at continuing the aggression and expanding the attack on Rafah city, as the Israeli occupation forces’ talk about evacuating civilians is characterized by recklessness towards the catastrophic suffering and lives of civilians due to the continuous crimes of the Israeli occupation against the Gaza Strip. Besides, there is no other refuge for civilians to resort to, and these justifications aim to cover up the ongoing genocide and the violation of the lives and blood of civilians, who have been turned into military targets, through insistence on continuous denial and violation of the rules of international humanitarian law and human rights conventions, especially the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, the judgment of the International Court of Justice, and the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.
The International Commission “Hashd”: Calls upon the United Nations, especially the Security Council and the world’s countries, to fulfill their legal obligations before it is too late, by taking practical steps and immediate measures to stop the Israeli aggression, prevent Israeli occupation forces from carrying out a ground operation in Rafah city, ensure the protection of civilians from genocide, and guarantee the flow of humanitarian aid and relief, and prevent the forced displacement of Palestinians outside Palestinian territories.
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