Israel/Palestine Thread

Hospitals, medical centres, and healthcare workers enjoy special protection but Israel have targeted them all from Day 2. There is only one hospital left in any operational sense.

Article 18 of Geneva Convention IV and Articles 12 and 19 of Additional Protocol I make it explicit: medical units “shall not be attacked under any circumstances.”

However, this protection is not absolute. If a hospital is being used for acts harmful to the enemy (e.g. storing weapons, sheltering healthy combatants, or serving as a military command post), it may lose its protection. But the threshold is high - treating wounded combatants or having armed soldiers does not count as "acts harmful". Even if protection is lost, the principle of proportionality applies (Additional Protocol I, Article 51) where any attack must not cause excessive harm to civilians or civilian objects compared to the concrete and direct military advantage gained. Given that Hamas are utterly defeated and haven't fired a bullet in a long long time, Israel's campaign against hospitals and healthcare workers is part of their terror strategy against ordinary civilians. Israel used to use the "command and control centre" line but it's clear that was nonsense. Hamas aren't commanding or controlling anything for a long long time. Israel ransacked all the hospitals last year so they have no excuse to keep bombing them.

Opinion piece on Israeli policy of destroying medical facilities. Normally, this would be shocking news. But now, it just states the obvious.

"Yagil Levy, head of The Open University Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations, argues that the strike on Khan Yunis' Nasser Hospital last week reflects broader Israeli policy in Gaza.

'This attack reflects the accepted policy: systematic damage to medical facilities and medical staff. The use of a simulated threat – in this case, cameras placed on the roof of the hospital – in order to justify a disproportionate attack,' he said. 'After all, the medical infrastructure in Gaza was not destroyed in its own right – there is always a justification in the form of a real or simulated threat, such as the presence of Hamas members in the hospital, in order to harm it. The destruction of infrastructure, including medical infrastructure, is part of a policy to render entire areas uninhabitable and thus force the population to leave'"

Linda Dayan

Latest Haaretz snippets.

Starvation tactics still in play though it seems some in the IDF are losing control and killing their own (no surpirse seeing as they killed scores on Oct 7th).

Israel has said nothing about the cease fire that Hama agreed to 2 weeks ago. Its the same cease fire conditions Israel agreed to months ago. If you needed proof that Israel doesn't want to the war to end and doesn't care about the hostages, their silence is deafening.

Israel being compared to North Korea and Iran - by Israelis.

France is gearing up for the Two-State Solution confence in 3 weeks.

Israeli strikes killed 73 Palestinians over the past day, medical sources said. Of those killed, 12 were seeking aid, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said, adding that 13 more deaths from hunger and malnutrition were recorded in the last 24 hours, including three children.

Soldiers and officers from the Golani Brigade told Haaretz that negligent conduct by their commanders led to troop deaths along the Morag route in southern Gaza, describing the outpost along the route as plagued by "a lack of operational discipline that costs lives." They said that despite repeated warnings, their concerns were ignored, and that the IDF has failed to conduct thorough or credible investigations into the incidents in which soldiers were killed or wounded. The most recent fatal incident in the area occurred on Saturday, when Sgt. First Class (res.) Ariel Lubliner, 34, was traveling in a logistics convoy to the outpost and was shot and killed by one of its guards. The IDF described the case as an "unintentional discharge," but according to information obtained by Haaretz, the soldier at the guard post pointed his weapon at the convoy and, for reasons that remain unclear, released the safety and fired. The soldier was not removed from his position and continues to serve at the outpost.

Qatar's Foreign Ministry said it has not yet received an Israeli response to the cease-fire proposal Hamas accepted two weeks ago, stressing that "Israel's plan to occupy Gaza endangers everyone, including the hostages."

"Israel's foreign policy, led by Netanyahu and his trembling shadow, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, relies almost entirely on the U.S. Republican Party and Trump, while defying the rest of the world. This is criminally reckless behavior, effectively mirroring countries like North Korea and Iran, which depend on China and Russia. Under this government, Israel is closer than ever to becoming a pariah state with only a single ally that could prove to be a precarious one if things don't go as smoothly as they did in the skies of Iran" – Yossi Verter

French President Emmanuel Macron said on X that he is working "in close coordination with the King of Jordan in preparation" for the Conference on the Two-State Solution, set to be held in New York on September 22. Macron added that both he and King Abdullah oppose any post-war plan for Gaza that would involve the forced displacement of Palestinians, writing that "such a proposal, contrary to international law, would lead only to a dead end."

Of course he doesn't care that he's an alleged war criminal at large.

But he will when he's sharing a pot with Duterte and Gallant.

I hope he rots in The Hague - I'd wager many Israelis do too.

ICC are looking at other Israelis too so there could be more warrants. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir would be prime targets for prosecution. Though Ben-Gvir is well used to that as a convicted terrorist and racist.

'Israeli genocide of Palestine'?

But Hamas….

"At least 21,000 children in Gaza have been disabled since the war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October, 2023, a United Nations committee has said."