The letter called for Israel to open up channels for humanitarian workers to communicate with Israeli officials about ensuring their operations are safe from the Israeli military, a process known as deconfliction, the letter reportedly said. The talks between UN and Israeli officials are ongoing, and no final decision has been made.

The UN has already reported having to suspend its operations through the U.S. military’s pier in Gaza due to allegations that Israeli forces used the area around the pier in a brutal military operation in which they massacred nearly 300 Palestinians, raising safety concerns for workers.

Though the UN is calling for better deconfliction, groups have emphasized that even deconflicted operations have been targeted by Israeli forces.

If the UN were to suspend its operations in Gaza, it would likely be seen as a win for Israel, which has spent years targeting humanitarian workers and groups across Palestine. Its unfounded accusations against the UNRWA in January — which caused many countries to suspend funding — were just one incident among many in which Israeli officials have tried to attack and delegitimize UNRWA over the years.

Today, after four months of collaborative work, we are together publishing “The Gaza Project.” Below is one of two articles from the project that +972 is co-publishing with Forbidden Stories (read the other here). For the full list of articles comprising “The Gaza Project” and more information about the collaboration, click here.

A report by The Guardian released Monday reveals that the same group behind a covert Israeli social media campaign to influence U.S. politicians has also spent months coordinating with dark money groups, Israel advocacy organizations and lawmakers to spread pro-Israel sentiment between 80 different ongoing programs. The campaign is organized under Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, headed by Minister Amichai Chikli.

Between October and May, the investigation found, officials have spent the equivalent of $8.6 million on the campaign, which includes a program known as Voices of Israel, which officials are resurfacing specifically to spread propaganda attempting to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In the U.S., the campaign has influenced political discourse about college protests and has even seemingly had a role in passing pro-Israel bills at the state and federal level.

Voices of Israel has existed since at least 2017, first conceived under the name “Concert,” the report found. Former minister of strategic affairs Gilad Erdan, under whom the campaign was born, aimed for the campaign to be a “PR commando unit” for Israel’s reputation abroad; previous iterations have worked on issues like the passage of bills in the U.S. that ban participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Historically, it has funded American Zionist organizations like Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the Israel Allies Foundation.

There are over 20,000 children in Gaza who are missing, Save the Children estimates, in addition to the over 15,000 children who have been killed amid Israel’s genocide and campaign of extermination.

In February, UNICEF estimated that at least 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families, or about 1 percent of the 1.7 million Palestinians who Israel has forced out of their homes. Many children have been separated from their families in recent weeks amid Israel’s bloody assault on Rafah, Save the Children says.

Based on the UN’s May estimate that 10,000 people are buried under the rubble in Gaza, Save the Children calculated that 4,000 of these people are children. This means that an estimated 21,000 children are missing, based on estimates by humanitarian groups, with many likely dead.

The number of children missing may be far higher. Save the Children notes that there is an unknown number of children buried in mass graves, and the UN has reported that children have been found in mass graves with signs of torture and executions in recent months. Additionally, many children have been “disappeared” by Israeli forces — kidnapped and sent to torture camps in undisclosed locations, where many have reported being subject to assault and horrific conditions by Israeli guards.

Indeed, on top of the mass killing of children and their families, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Monday that Israel has been escalating arrests of children in the West Bank, with seven children arrested in the past 24 hours and an estimated 240 children still imprisoned by Israeli forces.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, children are facing death around every corner due to Israel’s all-out assault. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported last week that there are at least 50,000 children who require medical treatment for malnutrition due to Israel’s starvation campaign.

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Israeli forces have demonstrated a pattern of systematically targeting densely populated civilian areas across hundreds of attacks in Gaza that likely violate international wartime laws, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found in a report released Wednesday.

“Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with the following fundamental principles of international humanitarian law in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza since 7 October: the principle of distinction, the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, the principle of proportionality and the principle of precautions in attack,” the report said.

According to the analysis, in 87 percent of Israel’s attacks since October, over five people have been killed, while 10 or more have been killed in over 60 percent of Israel’s attacks. This proportion alone suggests widespread war crimes, the report said. Meanwhile, the very use of 2,000, 1,000 and 250 pound bombs in these densely populated areas could amount to wartime violations. Further, the UNHCR wrote, the launching of such large bombs in this way could indicate direct attacks on civilians.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have been clear about their objectives, as the report points out. In October, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Major General Ghassan Alian referred to “Hamas and the residents of Gaza” as “human beasts” and told them, “you wanted hell, you will get hell.” The report quoted another IDF spokesperson saying at the beginning of Israel’s current incursion into Gaza that they’re “focused on what causes maximum damage.”

In an alert, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reiterated deep concerns that people uprooted by ongoing hostilities in southern Gaza remain traumatized and are crammed into a narrow area along the beach “in the burning summer heat”.

Visible signs of wasting

Among the alarming shortages facing the people of Gaza, UN aid coordination office, OCHA, highlighted a lack of milk and formula for babies, along with nutritional supplements for children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

“Despite visible signs of wasting among children, no nutrition screenings have been conducted to assess the scale of malnutrition and treat identified cases due to limited capacity,” the UN agency noted in its latest report published late Wednesday.

Rafah emptied

Meanwhile, in the southernmost governorate of Rafah, “people continue to be displaced amidst active fighting and bombardment,” OCHA said. It cited estimates by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, that only around 65,000 people remain in Rafah governorate. Six weeks ago, before Israeli evacuation orders and military operations which have crippled aid relief work, the area hosted 1.4 million.

“At displacement sites, internally displaced persons are living in overcrowded makeshift shelters and tents which are in dire need of repair and do not offer any protection from extreme heat,” OCHA said, citing latest assessments covering four sites in Deir al Balah, Khan Younis and Al Mawasi - a total population of more than 130,000 people.

In a related development, OCHA also reported that for the first time since early June, five fuel trucks entered Gaza. But supplies remain scarce “as no fuel had been delivered in the Strip for the past two weeks”.

Aid stores hit

According to WFP's Mr. Skau who visited Gaza last week, one million displaced people in south Gaza remain “trapped, without clean water or sanitation. It’s a public health and protection disaster.”

In northern Gaza, he noted that aid deliveries have improved although people need a variety of more nutritious food. But delivering lifesaving relief is increasing difficult, as UN staff “spend five to eight hours waiting at checkpoints every day. Missiles hit our premises, despite being deconflicted.”

“The breakdown of law and order means we also face looting and violence amid a large security vacuum,” Mr. Skau continued, amid scenes of “large-scale destruction, rivers of sewage (and) “traumatized and exhausted people…from the south to the northernmost tip of the Strip”.

Meanwhile, OCHA said that ground incursions and heavy fighting continue to be reported in locations including Beit Hanoun, south of Gaza city, eastern Deir al Balah, northeastern Khan Younis, as well as in central and southern Rafah.

Deadly harvest

Latest UN assessments also indicate that in addition to the lack of access in southern Gaza to shelter, health, fresh food, water and sanitation, more than half of the enclave’s cropland has been damaged.

Although more than 40 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s total area is covered by fields, vegetable plantations and orchards - about 150 square kilometres (93 square miles) the UN agencies highlighted a “significant decline” in crop potential from “razing, heavy vehicle movement, bombing, shelling and other conflict-related operations”.

As of May this year, about 57 per cent of Gaza’s cropland is estimated to have been damaged, compared to more than 40 per cent in mid-February, according to FAO and UNOSAT.

Hundreds of agricultural structures have also been damaged, FAO said, including 537 home barns, 484 broiler farms, 397 sheep farms and 256 agricultural warehouses, in addition to almost half of Gaza’s agricultural wells (1,049 out of 2,261) as of 20 May.

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From June 1 to June 11, Israeli forces killed over 800 Palestinians and wounded over 2,400 as they carried out bombardments and raids across Gaza, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported. This is an average of over 72 Palestinians killed each day at the hands of Israeli forces.

This includes Israel’s assault of Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday that killed 274 Palestinians, including 64 children, and injured 698 others, with Israeli forces carrying out one of the most deadly single attacks of their genocidal siege so far in order to retrieve four Israelis held hostage in Gaza. The attack was carried out on a bustling civilian center in the middle of the day, raising questions about whether Israeli forces violated international law.

The 11-day death toll also includes at least 70 Palestinians killed and over 300 wounded due to heavy Israeli shelling in central Gaza on June 4, MSF said; and at least 40 Palestinians killed and 74 wounded on June 6, when Israel bombed a UN school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat. The killings of hundreds of Palestinians in other Israeli attacks, ranging across southern, central and northern Gaza, in the first days of June have otherwise been largely ignored by news outlets, and are hardly documented by official sources.

Behind each death is a horrifying story of a Palestinian who lived through months of displacement, constant bombardment, hunger and likely the loss of family members, bearing witness to the 37,000 people killed by Israel in Gaza over eight months just to themselves be killed by Israeli forces. Survivors recall horrors, like children who recount being pulled out of the rubble of their homes, and the pervading smell of death.

Following the UN Security Council vote to approve a three-phase ceasefire in Gaza, U.S. officials and other international allies of Israel are cynically placing blame on Hamas for a stall in current ceasefire negotiations — even as Israel has insisted on indefinitely continuing its massacre in Gaza and Hamas has said its main request is a guarantee that Israel would actually honor the ceasefire.

But reports from a wide variety of news sources on how both Israel and Hamas are approaching the ceasefire proposal suggest that Blinken is lying about which party is accepting of the deal. Indeed, reports have found that it is actually Israel that won’t agree to the deal’s framework: an immediate ceasefire with a limited prisoner and hostage exchange, then a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and ultimately the reconstruction of Gaza and return of Palestinians to their homes.

Israel’s insistence on continuing its genocide has been consistent throughout the last eight months, including in reaction to the most recent ceasefire proposals of the past weeks. Officials have said Israel will only stop bombarding Gaza when they decide that Hamas has been eliminated and Palestinians there no longer pose a threat to Israel — a pledge that requires the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians, as military procedures and Israel’s own public statements have shown.

But the main demand from Hamas appears to be straightforward, according to other officials familiar with the negotiations. Multiple outlets citing such sources have echoed what Hamas officials have said: that they are primarily concerned with getting guarantees from the U.S. and Israel that the deal will actually lead to a ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza.

Specifically, Hamas is concerned about a lack of assurances from the current proposal about the transition between the first and second phases of the plan, Reuters reports, citing multiple sources involved with the talks. The first phase involves a six-week ceasefire, with the release of some Israeli hostages, while the second phase calls for a permanent ceasefire and Israeli troop withdrawal.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/vNwMx

In a report released on Wednesday by the UN Commission of Inquiry that covers the period from October 7 to the end of 2023, the commission found that Israel has committed a large range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The crimes against humanity that investigators found Israel has committed include the crime of extermination, which is the intentional mass killing of an entire group of people, “including by inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.”

The report also lists gender persecution as a crime against humanity, with Israel Defense Forces creating a “culture that allowed – and may have even encouraged – [soldiers] to humiliate and degrade Palestinians on the basis of gender.”

In terms of war crimes and international law violations, the commission concludes that Israel has directly targeted civilians and civilian objects and meted out collective punishment against Palestinians; has been using starvation as a weapon of war; has forcibly displaced at least 1.7 million people in Gaza; has systematically committed sexual violence against Palestinians; and has seen its senior officials inciting numerous calls to extinguish Palestinian civilians and life in Gaza.

“[B]oth the 7 October attack in Israel and Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza should not be seen in isolation. The only way to stop the recurring cycles of violence, including aggression and retribution by both sides, is to ensure strict adherence to international law,” the report read. “That includes ending the unlawful Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, discrimination, oppression and the denial of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and guaranteeing peace and security for Jews and Palestinians.”

More than eight months into Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, the territory’s healthcare system is barely functioning, with the World Health Organization reporting this week that there have been 464 Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system since October 7, affecting 101 health facilities.

Gaza’s Health Ministry warns that the few remaining hospitals still partially functioning could completely shut down due to Israel’s near-total blockade of the territory, which is keeping out parts needed to maintain hospital diesel generators, as well as crucial medical supplies.

Over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, and nearly 85,000 Palestinians have been wounded. “The situation in Gaza … remains catastrophic,” says Dr. James Smith, an emergency medical doctor just back from Gaza, where he treated patients for nearly two months.

“There are no fully functional hospitals any longer in Gaza and no health facilities that are able to absorb the sheer scale of need now.”