Israeli strikes on Saturday hit parts of Gaza including Rafah where Israel expanded an evacuation order and the UN warned of ‘epic’ disaster if an outright invasion of the crowded city occurs.
AFP journalists, medics and witnesses reported strikes from the south to the north of the coastal territory, where the UN says aid is blocked after Israeli troops defied international opposition and entered eastern Rafah this week, effectively shutting two crossings.
At least 21 people were killed during strikes in central Gaza and taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah city, a hospital statement said.
Bodies covered in white lay on the ground in a courtyard of the facility. A man in a baseball cap leaned over one body bag, clasping a dust-covered hand that protruded.
The feet of another corpse poked from under a blanket bearing the picture of a large teddy bear.
In Rafah, witnesses reported intense air strikes near the crossing with Egypt, and AFP images showed smoke rising over the city.
Other strikes occurred in north Gaza, they said.
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 34,971 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that Gaza risked an ‘epic humanitarian disaster’ if Israel launched a full-scale ground operation in Rafah.
Reiterating his calls for a ceasefire, Guterres said: ‘We are actively engaged with all involved for the resumption of the entry of life-saving supplies—including desperately needed fuel—through Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings.’
The evacuation order on Saturday told residents to go to the ‘humanitarian zone’ of Al-Mawasi, on the coast northwest of Rafah.
That area has ‘extremely limited access to clean drinking water, latrines, et cetera,’ said Sylvain Groulx, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency coordinator in Gaza.
The army late Friday said rocket fire from Gaza wounded an Israeli civilian in the southern city of Beersheba. It was the first time since December that the city had come under Palestinian rocket attack.
The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Friday to grant the Palestinians additional rights in the global body and backed their drive for full membership, which is blocked by the United States.
Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan reacted angrily to the largely symbolic vote, while Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said it was historic.
With the war in Gaza raging, the Palestinians in April relaunched a request dating back to 2011 to become full members of the United Nations, where their current status is that of a ‘nonmember observer state.’
To succeed, the initiative needed a UN Security Council green light and then a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly.
But the United States—one of five veto-holding members on the Security Council and Israel’s closest ally—blocked it on April 18.
Before Friday’s vote, Palestinian ambassador Mansour said ‘I have stood hundreds of times before at this podium, but never for a more significant vote than the one about to take place, an historic one.’
‘The day will come where Palestine will take its rightful place among the community of free nations,’ he added.
But Israeli ambassador Erdan fired back, saying the UN Charter was being abused and making his point by putting a printout of the charter through a shredder as he stood at the podium.
‘With this new precedent, we may see here representatives of ISIS or Boko Haram that will sit among us,’ Erdan said, referring to two jihadist groups.
He said it would give ‘the rights of a state to an entity that is already partly controlled by terrorists, and will be replaced by a force of child-murdering Hamas rapists.’
The United States opposes any recognition of statehood outside of a bilateral accord between the Palestinians and Israel, whose right-wing government is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution.
US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said after the resolution passed that while ‘our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood... it remains the US view that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance this goal.’
The resolution gives the Palestinians ‘additional rights and privileges’ starting in the next session of the General Assembly, in September.
A long-awaited State Department report on Friday said that Israel likely violated norms on international law in its use of US weapons.
The report said it was ‘reasonable to assess’ that Israel, which receives some $3 billion in US weapons a year, has used the arms in ways inconsistent with standards on humanitarian rights but that the United States could not reach ‘conclusive findings.’
The report had been held up for several days amid debate within the State Department on whether to reprimand Israel, a historic US ally which has faced growing criticism over the toll in the seven-month Gaza war.
The State Department finally submitted its report two days after President Joe Biden publicly threatened to withhold certain bombs and artillery shells if Israel goes ahead with an assault on the packed city of Rafah.
Biden, facing a furor over the war from within his Democratic Party months before elections, had in February issued a memorandum known as NSM-20 that asked countries that receive US military aid to make ‘credible and reliable’ assurances they are complying with human rights laws.
Israel -- which launched a war against Hamas after the militants staged the deadliest ever attack on the country on October 7 -- made assurances to the United States and ‘identified a number of processes for ensuring compliance that are embedded at all levels of their military decision-making,’ said the public version of the report, which was submitted to Congress.
‘The nature of the conflict in Gaza makes it difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents,’ it said.
‘Nevertheless, given Israel’s significant reliance on US-made defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles covered under NSM-20 have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its IHL obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm,’ it said, referring to international humanitarian law.
The report also said that while the Israel Defense Forces have ‘the knowledge, experience and tools’ to minimize harm, ‘the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases.’
But despite some ‘serious concerns,’ the report said that all countries receiving US military aid had made assurances credible and reliable enough ‘to allow the provision of defense articles covered under NSM-20 to continue.’
