5 Facts about the Israeli Assaults
Israel has displaced 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, that is 1.9 million people
• Equal to the combined populations of both Manhattan (NYC) and St. Petersburg, Florida
Nearly 36,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israel
• That number is more than the entire population of Watertown, Mass.
Israel has killed 15,000 children in Gaza
• This equates to all the children up to 17 years old in Cambridge, Mass.
or
More than two times the number of children enrolled in public schools in Cambridge, Mass.
80,000 people have been injured by Israel's war on Gaza
• Imagine the entire population of Somerville, Mass.
625,000 children are out of school
• This is more than all the schoolchildren in the Los Angeles Unified School District
Statement on Rafah by Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
There has been nothing limited about the suffering and misery that Israel's military operation in Rafah has brought to the people of Gaza.
As feared, it has been a tragedy beyond words.
The ground incursion in Rafah has displaced more than 800,000 people, fleeing once again in fear for their lives and arriving in areas without adequate shelter, latrines and clean water.
It has cut off the flow of aid into southern Gaza and crippled a humanitarian operation already stretched beyond its breaking point.
It has halted food distributions in the south and slowed the supply of fuel for Gaza's lifelines – bakeries, hospitals and water wells – to a mere trickle.
Though Israel dismissed the international community's appeals to spare Rafah, the global clamor for an immediate stop to this offensive has grown too loud to ignore.
With today’s adoption of Security Council resolution 2730 calling for the protection of humanitarian workers and the International Court of Justice’s order to open the Rafah crossing to provide aid at scale and stop the military offensive there, this is a moment of clarity.
It is a moment to demand respect for the rules of war to which all are bound: Civilians must be allowed to seek safety. Humanitarian relief must be facilitated without obstruction. Aid workers and UN staff must be able to carry out their jobs in safety.
At a time when the people of Gaza are staring down famine; when hospitals are attacked and invaded; when aid organizations are blocked from reaching people in need; when civilians are under bombardment from north to south; it is more critical than ever to heed the calls made over the last seven months:
Release the hostages. Agree a ceasefire. End this nightmare.
Combatting Israel’s Water Apartheid
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2024, pp. 60-61
Waging Peace
“People know about land grabs, they know about demolitions,” said Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, “but they know less about the water issue, including what’s called ‘the water grab.’”
Halper was speaking at a March 17 online film salon, “Israeli Apartheid in Action: Water Control,” organized by Voices From the Holy Land. The panelists explored how Israel uses water as a weapon of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and “slow genocide” in Gaza.
As described in a 2023 report by panelist Eyal Hareuveni, researcher at the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Israel maintains near-complete control over the region’s freshwater aquifers, severely restricting Palestinians’ ability to drill wells, install pumps, build water tanks, access piped water and even collect rainwater.
and later in the article, our own Nancy Murray, one of the panelists is quoted:
What can activists do to combat water apartheid? As models for local action, Nancy Murray, co-founder of the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, pointed to the work of the Alliance, which successfully interrupted a water partnership between Israel and Boston, and Milwaukee 4 Palestine, which is campaigning against a partnership between Israel and Milwaukee. Such partnerships give Israeli companies with technological expertise in areas such as wastewater treatment and storm water management access to U.S. markets. According to Murray, these local campaigns require a range of efforts, including demonstrations, lobbying members of the state legislature and the governor, and educating the public.
Murray noted that the water crisis in Palestine intersects with water justice issues in U.S. cities such as Jackson, MS, and Flint, MI, and in Mexico, where the Israeli company IDE Technologies plans to build a desalinization plant and pipe the water 200 miles north, through Native American lands, to Arizona. The North American contexts present opportunities to foster public discussion of water as a human right, as acknowledged by the United Nations in a 2010 resolution.
Read the article here.