Raid on Gaza’s largest hospital, new communications blackout, Israel’s goals in Gaza – in the Middle East this week.
Raid on Gaza’s largest hospital | Expelling people from southern Gaza ‘safe zones’ | tape cut off from communications with the outside world | What are Israel’s objectives in Gaza? | Here is the Middle East this week:
Death haunts hospital corridors
Gaza is losing its connection to the outside world as its telecommunications towers lose power, meaning it becomes harder to tell you stories about the people trapped inside.
On Wednesday, the unthinkable happened when Israeli forces attacked al-Shifa hospital where hundreds of patients were being treated and thousands had sought shelter.
Many people had already watched in dismay at al-Shifa as premature babies died one after the other in Gaza’s largest hospital, deprived of the fuel needed to run its generators.
Lack of electricity – not to mention medicine – also means cancer patients face a dreadful prospect.
So do people who regularly rely on dialysis treatments and babies placed in incubators at other hospitals who need help to breathe and thrive.
Israel says that attacking hospitals is acceptable because it is actually attacking “Hamas members” hiding there. But international law protects hospitals except in very specific cases, of which al-Shifa is not one, so for whom is Israel making these statements?
And as the international community finally begins to speak out more forcefully about Israel’s targeting of civilians and health facilities, we pay tribute to the Indonesian medical volunteers who chose to stay with their Palestinian colleagues.
If Gaza was your city…
Do you know how much would be destroyed during Israeli bombing? We have mapped the destruction of Gaza on several international capitals.
How can we understand so much suffering?
A joyful little girl who had just taken her first steps a few weeks ago found herself buried alive under tons of rubble when her home was bombed by Israel in the middle of the night.
His mother nine months pregnant? Dead, just like her twins who had struggled to be born when the bomb hit. His father was also dead. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins… all dead. Melissa was left with a surviving aunt, a paralyzed body, and pain.
There is a man at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir el-Balah, and his job for 15 years has been to wrap people who died there. But, Abu Saher cried as he told us, these last few years are nothing compared to the level of horrific human mutilation he witnesses today.
Finally, we present to you the plea of a teacher who feverishly checks every day to see if any of her 5th grade students have been killed in an Israeli attack.
What does Hezbollah think?
The Lebanese group and its leader Hassan Nasrallah have many expectations to meet. Widely considered the most powerful militia in the region, many hoped it would open a broad second front with Israel, including with Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.
But Nasrallah has a complicated line to walk, as he balances domestic pressure against him with Hezbollah’s role in the region’s “Islamic resistance.”
As skirmishes continue and Israeli attacks strike deeper into Lebanese territory, the question arises: how long will Hezbollah hold back?
If tunnels are the problem, why not go underground?
Israel has repeatedly said its goal is to clear tunnels under Gaza used by Hamas fighters.
Yet the fighting remains on the surface and any victories Israel claims appear to be largely against groups of unarmed civilians, causing incredible destruction as it draws one weapon after another from its vast arsenal.
Our strategic analyst argues that this is likely because Israel knows that entering the tunnels will be a long and dangerous campaign for it.
It also details, step by step, how Israel should operate in order to actually begin seizing these feared tunnels.
As the world looks to Gaza…
As Israel bombs Gaza, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his ally Russia appear to have seized the opportunity to step up their bombing in rebel-held areas of the country.
Al-Assad delivered an impassioned speech at an Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh this week, denouncing violations against civilians in Gaza and drawing much scorn among civilians being bombed in Syria.
The United States is also involved in Syria and Iraq, where its troops have been attacked and exchanged fire with enemy fighters… Will the situation get worse?
Briefly
Quote of the week
“We are now working on cases that we have never seen in our medical textbooks.” | Dr Ayman Harb, head of the orthopedics department at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.