UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18 2023 (IPS)* – The unrestrained destruction of Gaza and the disproportionate killings of over 17,000, mostly civilians– in retaliation for 1,200 killings by Hamas and 120 hostages in captivity– have left the Palestinians in a state of deep isolation and weighed down by a feeling of being deserted by the world at large.
People in Rafah city in the Gaza Strip flee a missile attack. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
The United Nations and the international community have remained helpless– with UN resolutions having no impact– while American pleas for restrained aerial bombings continue to be ignored by the Israelis in an act of defiance.
The Biden administration is reportedly considering accepting mandatory detention of asylum seekers, one of the demands of Republican Party lawmakers to “secure the border” in exchange for passing the administration’s supplemental aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and US border enforcement.
The US Immigration and Nationality Act already makes detention mandatory for asylum seekers in expedited removal who are awaiting credible fear of persecution interviews.
(WMO)* — Mountains Matter and the Cryosphere is Critical is the message from the peaks to the valleys to the desert landscape of COP28 in Dubai on International Mountain Day, an annual event on 11 December drawing attention to the importance of our mountain ecosystems to the whole planet.
WMO 2024 Calendar Competition – Niurma Sanchez
Mountains are home to 15% of the world´s population and host about half of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. They provide freshwater to half of humanity.
Hind Khoudary, with the World Food Programme in Gaza, recounts hard days in the strip during and after a brief humanitarian pause.
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After seven weeks of relentless bombardment that left 80 percent of Gaza’s population – 1.8 million people – displaced, trapped and acutely hungry, a week-long humanitarian pause came into effect offering a temporary respite and allowing some aid into the small, decimated and fully-deprived enclave where food, water, medicine and any of life’s necessities are dangerously low.
(UN News)* — Some Gazans are so desperate for food that they are now stopping aid trucks and immediately eating what they find, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Thursday [].
Speaking later in the day at UN Headquarters, the deputy head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), confirmed that following a food assessment, around half of all Gazans “are starving”, with no idea where their next meal is coming from.
Briefing journalists in Geneva uon his return from Rafah governorate, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, explained that people were “desperate, hungry and are terrified”, 69 days since the Israeli military bombardment began in response to the 7 October Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel.
(UN News)* — Heavy rains created new misery in Gaza as UN humanitarians repeated deep concerns on Thursday [] over the deteriorating health situation in the Strip, amid ongoing Israeli bombardment and fighting with Palestinian armed groups.
UN humanitarian affairs coordination office OCHA said that many areas in the enclave have been flooded, “worsening the struggle of displaced Palestinians”, while UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini was due to brief journalists in Geneva on the situation on Thursday, following his most recent visit to Gaza.
(UN News)* —Civilians in Sudan – where rival militaries are waging a bloody war, with devastating consequences – are at a high risk of falling into catastrophic levels of hunger by May next year, the UN emergency food relief agency warned on Wednesday [].
(UN News)* — The outbreak of conflict seven months ago in Sudan has led to “a convergence of a worsening humanitarian calamity and a catastrophic human rights crisis”, according to a senior UN official, and the restive region of Darfur has been particularly badly affected.
Close to nine million people need humanitarian assistance and reports suggest that some 4000 people have been targeted and killed because of their ethnicity.
(UN News)* — A record 114 million forcibly displaced around the world represents a “crisis of humanity”, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) chief Filippo Grandi said on Wednesday [] as the Global Refugee Forum got underway in Geneva.
The world’s largest gathering dedicated to refugee issues, the Forum is co-hosted by UNHCR and Switzerland and convened by Colombia, France, Japan, Jordan and Uganda.
Thirty years ago, Philip Roth wrote a profound, funny, disturbing novel about Israel, Palestine, and antisemitism called Operation Shylock.
In this story, an American Jewish writer named Philip Roth discovers that another writer who also calls himself Philip Roth is giving people in Israel fits by preaching “Diasporism” – a doctrine calling on Israel’s Jews to return to the mostly European lands from which they or their parents originally came.
Roth #2 considers Europe and America to be the Jews’ true homelands: places where a humane, creative Jewish culture once flourished, and which are now needed as sanctuaries because of Israel’s failure to make peace with the Palestinians and the Islamic world’s hostility to Israel.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 