Residents of Gaza are forced to live in bombed-out buildings and tents next to huge piles of garbage, a UN spokeswoman said today, calling such conditions in the besieged territory intolerable.
Louise Wateridge of the UN Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA) described living conditions for residents of the Palestinian Territory as "absolutely terrible" and told reporters in Geneva via video link from central Gaza that the situation was "truly intolerable".
Wateridge, who returned today after four weeks outside the Palestinian territory, said that even during that period the situation worsened considerably.
"Today is the worst it's ever been. I have no doubt that tomorrow will be even worse," she said.
After almost nine months of war between Israel and Hamas, Gaza has been destroyed, the spokeswoman said, adding that she was shocked when she returned to Khan Yunis in the central part of the Strip.
"The buildings are skeletons, if there are any. They are all ruins. And yet people are living there again. There is no water there, no sanitation, no food. And now people are living again in those buildings which are empty shells with mats over the holes in the walls ", she said, obviously thinking that people who had already been displaced had returned to the places where their homes had once been.
Wateridge also said difficulties in efforts to get fuel into Gaza and distribute it safely have affected the ability to deliver aid.
"Without fuel, the humanitarian response has completely stopped," she assessed and said that 150 meters from it there are about 100.000 tons of waste piling up, and that improvised tents are all around and that residents live there, and that the increasingly high temperatures worsen living conditions.
"My colleagues, my friends here are unrecognizable. When you have limited access to food for so long you start to age, you look unhealthy, your skin changes color," she explained.
On Thursday, patients were evacuated from Gaza to neighboring Egypt for the first time since the Rafah border crossing was closed in early May when Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says 10.000 people need to be evacuated from Gaza for treatment.
One of those waiting to be evacuated is a colleague of the spokeswoman from UNRWA, Abdullah, who was wounded in an attack and had both legs amputated in February.
Since then, he has been in the destroyed Al Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, which was under siege, for weeks.
He spent two months waiting in the medical tent and almost lost his life several times.
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Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 houses and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid reports of increased house demolitions and rising violence in the Palestinian territories, according to the Guardian.
Bulldozer contractors accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mainly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and demolished six houses, tented residences, a power generator, solar cells and water tanks, according to in the words of residents and Israeli activists who documented the proceedings. Agricultural land and fences were also damaged, and trees were uprooted. About a third of the infrastructure in the village was destroyed by the demolition.
Three human rights organizations sued the Dutch government today for not respecting the ban on supplying Israel with spare parts for F-35 fighter jets.
In a ruling in February, the Court of Appeal ordered the Netherlands to stop supplying parts for fighter jets used by Israel in its offensive on the Gaza Strip because there was a "clear risk" that the planes would be used as a means of violating international humanitarian law.
However, human rights organizations returned to court claiming that the ban was not enforced.
"Unfortunately, everything indicates that these parts from the Netherlands arrive in Israel by other routes," said Oxfam Novib ("Oxfam"), one of the organizations involved in the case.
"The Dutch government continues to deliver (parts) to other countries, including the United States of America and this is against the court's order," a lawyer representing human rights organizations, Lisbeth Zegveld, told the court.
She explained that the February ruling applies to all F-35 parts with Israel as the final destination and that the Dutch state must stop all such shipments and that the government must "actively prevent" the parts from reaching Israel.
The Dutch Public Service NOS, citing court documents, announced that the Dutch government has made it clear that it cannot prevent parts delivered to the US from ending up in Israel.
The government's lawyer, Reimer Veldhuis, said the country does not believe it can restrict the export of parts for the F-35 to countries other than Israel, adding that the chances of parts for the plane being shipped to the Jewish state are slim, because the parts are used for manufacturing, not repairing aircraft.
The Dutch government has announced that it will implement the February ruling, but has also announced a lawsuit to the Supreme Court.
Government lawyers argued in court that if the Netherlands did not supply the parts, Israel could easily get them elsewhere.
International law experts told AFP that both sides in the Gaza conflict are likely to be violating human rights.
The war began on October 7 last year with an attack from Gaza on southern Israel that killed around 1.200 people, mostly civilians.
In the Israeli revenge offensive on the Gaza Strip, 37.765 people died, also mostly civilians, according to the data of the Ministry of Health there.
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Israeli forces deepened their incursion into two northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian health officials said tank shelling in Rafah killed at least 11 people, according to Reuters.
Residents and Hamas media said tanks advanced further west into Rafah's Shakoosh neighborhood, forcing thousands of displaced people there to leave their tent camps and head north toward nearby Khan Yunis.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
One resident, who spoke to Reuters via a chat app, said some bulldozers in the Shakush area were piling up sand for Israeli tanks to stand behind.
"Some families live in the area of the raid and are now under siege by the occupation forces," he told Reuters.
"The situation there is very dangerous and many families are leaving for Khan Yunis, even from the Mawasi area, because things have become unsafe for them," said the man, who moved north overnight.
More than eight months after Israel's air and ground war in Gaza, triggered by a Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to attack Israeli forces operating in areas the army said it had gained control of several months ago. months. Palestinian groups still sometimes fire rockets into Israeli territory.
A senior Palestinian official rejected a move by Israel's finance minister to promote new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying it was aimed at waging a "war of genocide" against Palestinians, Reuters reported.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said yesterday that the Israeli government will also take punitive steps against the Palestinian Authority in response to international moves by the Palestinians against Israel.
Asked about Smotrich's statement, which was not confirmed by the government, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Wasel Abu Yusef, said that the settlements are "illegal colonies that violate all international resolutions."
"The decisions of the occupation government are aimed at continuing the war of genocide against our Palestinian people," he told Reuters.
He said the PLO and the Palestinian Authority will continue to press for Israel to be brought before international courts and punished for "crimes against our people, especially in the Gaza Strip."
Smotrich, who heads the party for settlers, said that the government supported his proposal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, which usually releases cabinet-level decisions, did not issue a statement and could not be reached for comment at this time.
The steps Smotrich said he was taking included ending "various approvals and benefits" for senior Palestinian Authority officials, approving new settlements and retroactively sanctioning some Jewish settlements.
The Palestinian Authority has limited self-government under the interim peace accords of the 1990s in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Palestinians and most of the international community consider Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal. Israel disputes this, citing the Jewish people's historical, biblical and political ties to the area, as well as security considerations, according to Reuters.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas has entered its 265th day.
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