Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israeli troops ordered patients and medical staff to take off their clothing and forced them out of the hospital in the extremely cold weather.
The Jews had ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan for a nearby school sheltering displaced families. This included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.
Footage showed barely clothed Palestinians walking in line with their hands up after being forced out of Kamal Adwan Hospital.
At least 50 people have been killed around the besieged medical facility since Thursday evening. Witnesses “confirmed that the Jews had conducted field executions in [the hospital’s] vicinity.”
Several intensive care patients were confirmed dead after the forced evacuation, according to medical sources.
Youssef Abu el-Rish, Gaza’s deputy health minister, said Israeli forces had set fire to the surgical department, laboratory and a storehouse in the hospital.
American doctor Mimi Syed, an emergency physician currently on her second medical mission inside Gaza, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli military’s order to evacuate the Kamal Adwan Hospital spells the “end of humanity” in northern Gaza, as no health facility will now be operating in the area.
The Israeli military said it had made efforts to mitigate harm to civilians and had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel prior to the operation” but gave no details.
It said in a statement:
Kamal Adwan Hospital serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza, from which terrorists have been operating throughout the war.
After nearly 15 months of attacks, Israel has yet to provide any compelling evidence that Hamas operatives have been present in this or any other hospital.
NOTE: The use of the word “terrorist” for a group that resists occupation and oppression is a political, not fact-based choice. In reality, international law supports the efforts of resistance groups against an occupying power, the UN extending that right to the point of armed resistance.
Hamas has clearly and openly stated that its enemy is not the Jewish people, but the supremacist ideology of Zionism – the ideology under which Israel dispossessed 750,000 Palestinian people and exiled them to Gaza and other locations.
Veteran human rights expert Kenneth Roth said Thursday that the withdrawal of a report on imminent famine in northern Gaza negates “the whole point” of the office that produced the analysis: “to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations.”
The decision by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to retract its December 23 alert on the rapidly spiraling starvation crisis in the northern part of the besieged enclave came after the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, publicly criticized the report.
FEWS NET, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said in its report that Israel’s “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies” for nearly 80 days has made it “highly likely that the food consumption and acute malnutrition thresholds for famine… have now been surpassed in North Gaza Governorate.”
The report referenced the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the United Nations-backed assessment that classifies famine as “phase 5” and declares famine in a region once more than 30% of children under age five are acutely malnourished, more than two people per 10,000 die each day from starvation, or once 20% of households face an extreme lack of food.
On Thursday, a note on the group’s website said the “December 23 Alert is under further review and is expected to be re-released with updated data and analysis in January.”
FEWS NET is hardly the first group to warn of impending famine in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have been carrying out a ground offensive since early October and where nearly all humanitarian aid has been cut off for thousands of Palestinians who are trapped in the region (continue reading here).
Israel will withdraw from Lebanon when it is good and ready
Israel Friday said the two-month deadline for its troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon, stipulated in a cease-fire agreement, is “not a sacred date.”
The cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, which took effect on Nov. 27, 2023, stipulates that Israel should complete its withdrawal within 60 days.
The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation quoted on Friday unnamed Israeli security officials as saying: “The two-month timeline for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon is not a sacred deadline, and the implementation of the withdrawal depends on field developments.”
The officials added: “The plans presented to the US mechanism, which coordinates between the Israeli and Lebanese armies and UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), include gradual timelines based on steps taken by the Lebanese army.”
They also stated that Israel had informed the US that the withdrawal would only take place after the necessary conditions are met, without providing further details.
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