Virtually no aid has reached besieged north Gaza in 40 days, UN says
Palestinians are "facing diminishing conditions for survival" in parts of northern Gaza under siege by Israeli forces because virtually no aid has been delivered in 40 days, the UN has warned.
The UN said all its attempts to support the estimated 65,000 to 75,000 people in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia this month had been denied or impeded, forcing bakeries and kitchens to shut down.
Earlier this month, a UN-backed assessment said there was a strong likelihood that famine was imminent in areas of northern Gaza.
The Israeli military has said its six-week-long offensive targets regrouping Hamas fighters, and that it is facilitating civilian evacuations and supply deliveries to hospitals.
Hundreds of people have been killed and between 100,000 and 130,000 others have been displaced to Gaza City, where the UN has said essential resources like shelter, water and healthcare are severely limited.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86qd99nqgyo
UN agencies had planned 31 missions to the besieged areas of North Gaza governorate between 1 and 18 November, according to the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Twenty-seven were rejected by Israeli authorities and the other four were severely impeded, meaning they were prevented from accomplishing all the work they set out to do.
"This is happening when the IPC Famine Review Committee said just 11 days ago that parts of northern Gaza face an imminent risk of famine - and that immediate action is needed in days, not weeks," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters in New York.
"The result is that bakeries and kitchens in North Gaza governorate have shut down, nutrition support [for children and pregnant and breastfeeding women] has been suspended, and the refuelling of water and sanitation facilities has been completely blocked."
Mr Dujarric said access to the three barely functional hospitals there also remained severely restricted, amid what he called "desperate shortages" of medical supplies and fuel.
On Sunday, a World Health Organisation-led mission to Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia was able to deliver 10,000 litres of fuel and transfer 17 patients, three unaccompanied children and 22 caregivers to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
However, Mr Dujarric said the aid workers were forced to offload all the food supplies and some of the medical supplies they were transporting at an Israeli military checkpoint before reaching the hospital.
The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, warned on Wednesday that the situation there was becoming "even more catastrophic".
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry cited him as saying that the hospital had 85 patients receiving "the minimum level of healthcare" and that it needed children’s food and infant formula to treat an increasing number of malnutrition cases.
Since Tuesday, 17 children had arrived at the emergency room showing signs of malnutrition and an elderly man had died due to severe dehydration, he added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
But data from the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian affairs in Gaza, Cogat, said 472 aid lorries had entered northern Gaza via the Erez West crossing as of 17 November, without specifying whether any of that aid was allowed into the besieged areas.
Cogat also said it was continuing to work with international partners to “facilitate broad humanitarian responses for the civilian population in Gaza".
On Monday, a boy from Beit Lahia told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme that he and his family had fled to Gaza City after the Israeli military dropped leaflets from a quadcopter, ordering their immediate evacuation.
"The road from Beit Lahia to Gaza [City] was rough and bumpy with no transport available for us. When we arrived, we didn’t find anything... neither food nor drink. We headed to the schools, but there was no space left because the number of displaced... was huge," he said.
"As a result, we were thrown into the streets and didn’t know where to go. We are six families living in the streets, sitting on sand, dirt and debris.”
The IDF said in a statement on Monday that its forces had killed "dozens of terrorists in close-quarters encounters and through targeted strikes" in the Beit Lahia area over the past week.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency told AFP news agency that a drone had killed two people, including a 15-year-old girl, at a school sheltering displaced families in Beit Lahia.
The agency's first responders had also recovered the bodies of seven people killed in an overnight Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia, he added.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
More than 43,980 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3ypxd3p4eo
Palestinian olive harvest under threat from Israeli attacks and restrictions
On a Thursday afternoon towards the end of last month, a 59-year-old Palestinian woman set out to gather olives on her family’s land near the village of Faqqua, in the north of the occupied West Bank.
It was something that Hanan Abu Salameh had done for decades.
Within minutes, the mother of seven and grandmother of 14 lay dying in the dust of the olive grove, with a bullet wound in her chest - she’d been shot by an Israeli soldier.
Even though the family had co-ordinated their intention to pick olives with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to her son Fares and husband Hossam, the soldier fired several shots as other family members fled for cover.
The IDF says it’s investigating the incident, but Hanan’s grieving relatives have little hope or expectation that her killer will be brought to justice.
This wasn’t an isolated incident.
Harvesting olives is an age-old ritual and also an economic necessity for many Palestinians, but, according to the UN, it is increasingly precarious.
Farmers across the West Bank - internationally regarded as Palestinian land occupied by Israel - face heightened risks, like organised attacks by Israeli settlers seeking to sabotage the olive harvest, along with the use of force by Israeli security forces to block roads and Palestinians' access to their lands.
“Last year we couldn’t even harvest our olives, except for a very small amount,” says Omar Tanatara, a farmer from the village of Umm Safa.
“At one point, the army came, threw the olives we’d already gathered on the ground, and ordered us to go home,” says Omar, who is also a member of the village council.
“Some people were even shot at and olives trees were cut down with saws – that’s how we later found them,” adds Omar, as he and other villagers use small hand-held rakes to pull this year’s harvest from their remaining trees while they can.
Even when Israeli and international activists accompany villagers to their olive groves, hoping to deter the threat, there’s no guarantee of safety.
Zuraya Hadad instinctively winces as we watch a video of the incident in which her ribs were broken by a masked man wielding a large stick.
The Israeli peace activist had been helping Palestinian farmers pick their olives when she was assaulted without provocation.
Rather than arresting her attacker, Israeli soldiers, who’d accompanied settlers to the site, just told him to move on.
“Even when we come to help, it doesn't guarantee that the Palestinians can harvest their olives,” Zuraya tells me as she recovers from her injuries at home.
“We try to raise awareness, but in the end it's either the settlers steal the olives or cut the trees, or they remain unpicked and go to waste.”
Land is at the heart of the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians - who controls it and who has access to it.
For thousands of Palestinian families and villages, cultivating and harvesting olives is a big part of their economy.
But many say that, in recent times, access to trees on their land has been impeded, often violently by Israeli settlers.
Hundreds of trees - which can take years to reach fruit-bearing maturity - have been deliberately burned or cut down, says the UN.
More than 96,000 dunums (approximately 96 sq km; 37 sq miles) of olive groves in the West Bank also went uncultivated in 2023 because of Israeli restrictions on access for Palestinian farmers.
After being gathered by hand, villagers from Umm Safa take sacks full of olives to the nearby factory, where the presses have restarted this season.
Olives are the most important agricultural product in the West Bank. In a good year, they're worth more than $70m (£54m) to the Palestinian economy.
But income was well down last year and this year will be even worse, says factory owner Abd al-Rahman Khalifa, as even fewer farmers are able to harvest their crop owing to attacks by settlers.
“Let me give you an example,” he tells me.
“My brother-in-law in Lubban - next to the Israeli settlement - went to pick his own olives, but they broke his arms and they made him leave along with everyone who was with him.”
“We, as Palestinians, don’t have petrol or big companies. Our main agricultural crop is olives,” he adds. “So, like the Gulf depends on oil, and the Americans on business, our economy is dependent on the olive tree.”
On the hill overlooking the olive groves of Umm Safa stands an illegal settler outpost - a farm.
The extremist settler who runs it, Zvi Bar Yosef, was sanctioned this year by the UK and other Western governments for repeated acts of violence against Palestinians, including twice threatening families at gunpoint.
Over the last year of the war in Gaza, Jewish settlers have been emboldened by the support of far-right Israeli ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir.
As national security minister, he has given out free firearms to hundreds of settlers and has encouraged them to assert their right to what - they say - is their "God-given" land.
Ben-Gvir has also been accused of openly supporting the disruption of olive harvesting on Palestinian land.
At the olive press, farmers wait patiently in the yard to witness the transformation of the olives they’ve been able to gather this year into "liquid gold".
The olive tree has been a symbol of this land for centuries.
For generations of Palestinians, it is their link to the land - a link that is under threat now more than ever.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gnvz1975o