Sources
- “Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General | Meetings Coverage and Press Releases.” October 13th, 2023.
- “Gaza: Findings on October 17 al-Ahli Hospital Explosion | Human Rights Watch.” 2023. November 26, 2023.
- “Gaza Deaths from Hunger Could Surpass Casualties of Airstrikes in Coming Weeks.” Mercy Corps. December 21st, 2023.
Belligerents
- Israel
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
- Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant
- Gaza Strip
- Hamas
- Palestinian Islamic Jihad
- Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Notable Leaders
- Commander - Mohammed Deif
- Prime Minister - Ismail Haniyeh
- Gaza Strip Leader - Yahya Sinwar
- Iran
- Hezbollah
- Houthis
Casualties and losses
- Israel
- Ongoing conflict
- Gaza Strip
- Ongoing conflict
Location
Causes
- This conflict was instigated by the 2023.10.07 - October 7th Hamas Attack.
Events
- Prime Minister Netanyahu made the first official statement at 11:35 AM (GMT+3) on Twitter, declaring Israel to be at war.
Major Contention Events
Bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital (parking lot)
- On October 17th, multiple media outlets (Al Jazeera claiming 500 dead, Jeremy Bowen on BBC News claiming a huge explosion that appeared like an Israeli airstrike, Channel 4 claiming the Israeli explanation of a PIJ rocket misfire didn’t make sense. NYT) reported that some 500 people were killed when Israel bombed al-Ahli Hospital.
- Upon further analysis of the strike, a crater in the parking lot of the hospital showed that the hospital was clearly not destroyed and the strike was highly unlikely to come from an Israeli missile. Human Rights Watch published on November 26th, 2023 that the explosion was likely from a Palestinian armed group and questioned the unusual death count reported by Hamas for the attack.
Gaza: Findings on October 17 al-Ahli Hospital Explosion
- Human Rights Watch, November 26th, 2023
At 6:59 p.m. that day, a type of munition that Human Rights Watch has not been able to conclusively identify hit a paved area inside the hospital compound, between a parking lot and a landscaped area where many civilians congregated to seek safety from Israeli strikes. The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 471 people were killed and 342 injured. Human Rights Watch was unable to corroborate the count, which is significantly higher than other estimates, displays an unusually high killed-to-injured ratio, and appears out of proportion with the damage visible on site. … Human Rights Watch investigated the explosion by reviewing publicly available photos and videos, analyzing satellite imagery, interviewing five witnesses to the incident and its aftermath, reviewing analyses published by other organizations, and consulting experts. The remote analysis assessed the explosion and the damage on site, as well as several possible trajectories of the objects visible on videos taken at the time of the attack, which also showed the moments before and after the explosion at the hospital. … However, the sound preceding the explosion, the fireball that accompanied it, the size of the resulting crater, the type of splatter adjoining it, and the type and pattern of fragmentation visible around the crater are all consistent with the impact of a rocket.
Evidence available to Human Rights Watch makes the possibility of a large air-dropped bomb, such as those Israel has used extensively in Gaza, highly unlikely. The Israeli military has dropped thousands of such bombs across the Gaza Strip since October 7.
A Hamas official said the remnants would “soon be shown to the world.” More than a month after the events, this has not happened. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader and deputy minister in the Hamas-led Gaza governing authority, told the media on October 22 that “the missile has dissolved like salt in the water.… It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.” Human Rights Watch noted that substantial portions of munitions typically survive a detonation, even if parts of munitions are designed to break apart and may be made unrecognizable by thermal damage.
Israel bombing “safe zones”
- Many publications (the UNCHR, HRW, PBS, DOHA news, VOA News) suggested that Israel was ordering civilians to flee in only 24 hours, an impossible task given the number of people (over 1 million) that needed to flee northern Gaza.
- This seems to originate from a statement published by the UN from Spokesman for the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric.
- Many have also suggested that Israel has engaged in bombing “safe zones” by bombing southern Gaza after directing civilians to flee there.
- On October 13th, Israel warned some 1.1 civilians to flee northern Gaza via airdropped pamphlets from the IAF, and messages across social media in both Arabic and English.
- Despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that a 24 hour warning was actually ever officially given. Significant ground military operations in Gaza didn’t actually occur until the 27th of October, 2023.
- There have not been any mutually agreed upon “safe zones” established in the Gaza Strip as Hamas has never made any attempt to assist Israel with establishing said zones. The only official safe zone that Israel has declared exempt from attack is Al-Mawasi on October 18th.
- The IDF has claimed multiple times that Hamas has fired dozens of rockets, many of which fail, multiple times from Al-Mawasi, as early as December 9th.
- On January 4th, Hamas claimed that an Israeli air-strike killed 14 people in a house in Al-Mawasi. Despite this claim, there appears to be no pictures, video evidence nor any other type of information relating to this strike, which is odd, given that this area has been declared a permanent safe zone by Israel.
Reduction in necessary food and medical supplies
- Many claim that a dramatic reduction in trucks going into the Gaza Strip means that an insufficient amount of humanitarian supplies (food, water, medicine, fuel) are making it into the Gaza Strip. Some put forth stronger claims that this reduction has been intentionally done by Israel to collectively punish the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.
- Multiple claims have been made about Gazans facing widespread famine or imminent starvation.
- “Israel-Gaza war: Half of Gaza’s population is starving, warns UN” - BBC, December 9th, 2023
- “Gaza on the brink as one in four people face extreme hunger” World Food Programme, December 20th, 2023
- “Gaza Deaths from Hunger Could Surpass Casualties of Airstrikes in Coming Weeks” - Mercy Corps, December 21st, 2023
- “UN agency says 40 percent of Gaza’s population ‘at risk of famine” - Al Jazeera December 28th, 2023
- “Half of Gazans Are at Risk of Starving, U.N. Warns” - New York Times, January 1st, 2024
- “Famine in Gaza ‘around the corner,’ as people face ‘highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded,’ UN relief chief says” CNN, January 6th, 2024
- “Palestinians in Gaza Face Acute Risk of Famine, UN Agency Reports” - VOA News, January 9th, 2024.
- “UN agency chiefs say Gaza needs more aid to arrive faster, warning of famine and disease” - Associated Press, January 15th, 2024.
- “Over one hundred days into the war, Israel destroying Gaza’s food system and weaponizing food, say UN human rights experts” - United Nations Human Rights, January 16th, 2024
- “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”
- “Gaza’s desperate hunger: Families struggle to fend off starvation” - The Washington Post, January 25th, 2024.
- “Gaza’s population is ‘starving to death’, WHO says” - France24, January 31st, 2024
- “Red Cross warns hunger in Gaza ‘beyond catastrophic’” - Middle East Monitor, February 8th, 2024
- “Palestinians in Gaza face mass starvation. Only an immediate cease-fire will save them.” - USA Today, February 16th
- “UN agencies warn of ‘explosion’ in Gaza child deaths” - France 24, February 19th, 2024
- “Over 700,000 people could starve to death in north Gaza as Israeli blockade persists, Gaza authorities warn” - PressTV, February 20th, 2024
- “Children ‘starting to die from malnutrition’ in northern Gaza as food crisis worsens” - The Telegraph, February 22nd, 2024
- “Gazans ‘hanging by a thread’, warns WFP” United Nations Palestine, February 23rd, 2024
- “‘Hunger is killing us’: Gazans increasingly desperate amid growing humanitarian crisis” - Times of Israel, February 24th, 2024
- “Famine Imminent in Gaza, Humanitarian Officials Tell Security Council, Calling for Immediate Ceasefire” - UN Press Release, February 27th, 2024
- “A quarter of Gaza’s population is one step from famine and aid trucks are looted, UN says” The Associated Press - February 27th, 2024
- “Famine imminent in northern Gaza, new report warns” - World Food Programme, March 18th, 2024
- “Gaza’s catastrophic food shortage means mass death is imminent, monitor says” - Reuters, March 18th, 2024
- “World Bank report finds imminent risk of catastrophic famine in Gaza Strip” - The Guardian, March 20th, 2024
- The “500 trucks a day” figure includes things like construction materials, which have been severely restricted by Israel during the war.
- The amount of food that has been going into the Gaza Strip over the past three months has been higher than any amount of food delivery in history of the Gaza strip, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
- The issues Palestinians in Gaza are facing right now are likely ones of distribution. Humanitarian aid is reaching the other side of the crossings into the Strip, but distribution is difficult for several reasons, including a lack of workers and drivers, a lack of people willing to serve as security forces for aid after recent strikes, accusations of Hamas stealing aid, and lack of safe routes deeper into northern Gaza.
- As of April 1st, 32 people have starved to death, using the most favorable source of Hamas’ Gazan Health Ministry.
Al-Shifa Hospital
- International media claimed Israel lacked proper justification for the raid into Al-Shifa Hospital on November 13th.
- The hospital’s head of surgery, Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, said “We are civilians. I am a doctor-surgeon. We have medical staff, we have patients, and displaced people. Nothing else.”
- United States intelligence services agree with IDF services based on independently collected intel that the hospital was used by Hamas and PIJ to command forces and hold some hostages. The IDF showed a massive tunnel shaft at Gaza Hospital to reporters after initially taking it over.
- The NYT did an analysis based on classified documents from the IDF, claiming that the intelligence suggested Hamas used the tunnel for cover, stored weapons inside and maintained a harden tunnel system beneath Al-Shifa.
- Haaretz did their own investigation of Al-Shifa after the IDF raid and agreed that the medical personal and operators must have known Hamas was operating out of the hospital.
- The IDF released surveillance camera footage from Al-Shifa Hospital showing Hamas terrorists bringing a Nepali and Thai citizen there on October 7th, as well as footage of the hospital being utilized by Hamas militants.
- Israel went in and raided Al-Shifa a second time on March 18th, with the raid lasting 14 days. Israel claims to have arrested 900 suspected militants, with more than 500 being identified as members of Hamas or PIJ, with some of the detained being “commanders and significant people” according to CNN.
ICJ Genocide Case
UNRWA accusations of Hamas collaboration
UNRWA Tunnel
World Central Kitchen strike
Nasser Hospital mass graves discovery
Israeli “Kill Zones”
AI Targeting
Building Destruction Percentage
https://twitter.com/AviBittMD/status/1783542176607039916?t=a6Grg3oUvek7mwGvKCRXAw&s=19
Hamas selling food
Humanitarian Pier Workers attacked
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-exclusive-u-s-humanitarian-pier-attacked-during-construction-work-off-gaza-coast https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/25/gaza-terrorists-attack-israeli-pier-00154386
Hamas Human Shields
Ceasefires
Hind Rajab
Shooting of the 3 Israeli hostages
Mass Graves
https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1784735589364859140
The Drone strike of the 4 walking men.
”Flour massacre”
ICC Arrest Warrants
- ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC on May 20th, 2024, issued a statement that he had filed applications for arrest warrants for Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim and Ismail Haniyeh, as well as Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for breaches of the Rome Statute committed on and after October 7th, 2023.
- Karim gave a 30 minute interview adding more context around the warrant request.
- The United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken published a response rejecting the application for arrest warrants, calling into question the speed at which the prosecutor moved to request charges against Israeli leadership.
- Antony Blinken and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham both claimed that the ICC blind-sided Israel with the request for arrest warrants on the same day they were supposed to be arranging a visit for the prosecutor to visit and discuss charges with Israel.