How Israel’s Army Uses Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza
Israeli soldiers and Palestinian former detainees say troops have regularly forced captured Gazans to carry out life-threatening tasks, including inside Hamas tunnels.
Israeli soldiers and Palestinian former detainees say troops have regularly forced captured Gazans to carry out life-threatening tasks, including inside Hamas tunnels.
Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said in a new report today.
This report highlights the hostilities’ impacts on education in Gaza and the main challenges facing the education system. It will also highlight the secondary impacts of the prolonged lack of education on Gazan students.
Children ride a bicycle across a war-devastated street in Gaza City on October 2, 2024, amid the ongoing Israeli genocide. (Photo: Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
This paper monitors the material and human losses to the infrastructure of the higher education sector, ranging from partial to severe damage or total destruction of university campuses, colleges, higher education institutions, and university faculties.
Researchers of the Law and Development Group have written the legal brief “Breaches of obligations arising from peremptory norms of general international law and consequences for institutional cooperation with universities in Israel”.
Technologies developed with financial support from Europe are being used in the current war in Gaza, as they have been previously in occupation of Palestinian territory and marginalisation of the Palestinian people.
In Gaza, the military operation decimated the remaining infrastructure an precipitated an unprecedented humanitarian and environmental crisis, as the gross domestic product fell by 81 per cent in the last quarter of 2023 and unemployment soared to 79 per cent. Prior to October 2023, 80 per cent of Gazans depended on international assistance. By the end of the year, multidimensional poverty had affected the entire population. The West Bank and East Jerusalem were not spared, as violence spread and the occupying Power tightened long-standing restrictions on movement and access. The quarterly gross domestic product shrank by 19 per cent and unemployment reached 32 per cent.
Since the start of the current war on Gaza, the Palestinian cultural heritage has been undergoing widespread destruction, assuming the contours of a systematic cultural obliteration which has targeted ancient sites, historic and religious buildings, the cultural scene as a whole, museums, cultural and academic buildings, public buildings and infrastructure works. The present paper offers a brief summary of policies to do with cultural heritage in Palestine, protecting cultural heritage in international humanitarian law, the role of UNESCO and similar organizations, a preliminary assessment of the destruction done to cultural sites, mechanisms for judicial follow-up, future action to be taken to assess the damage, and framing plans and programs for recovery and rebuilding.
The report, “Targeting Childhood: Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank,” details and analyzes Palestinian child fatalities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 7, 2023, and July 31, 2024. Israeli forces routinely targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition and aerial attacks, prevented ambulances and paramedics from reaching wounded children, and confiscated children’s bodies in violation of international law.