Latest news with #PhilippeLazzarini
Middle East Eye
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
UN chief: Israel's ban on international media in Gaza 'fuels disinformation campaigns'
Unrwa's Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said Israel's ban on international media "fuels dis-information campaigns," with accounts from eyewitnesses and international humanitarian organisations being questioned he said in a post on X on Friday. Israel has blocked international media from reporting on the ground in Gaza, and has consistently targeted Palestinian journalists and their families. For example, Israel targeted Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief Wael Al- Dahdouh's family multiple times, killing his wife, two sons, daughter and grandson.
New Straits Times
a day ago
- Politics
- New Straits Times
UN agency calls for lifting of Israel's ban on international media in Gaza
ISTANBUL: The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Friday called for an immediate end to Israel's ban on international media access to Gaza, warning that the information blackout is fuelling disinformation and undermining trust in eyewitness and humanitarian accounts. According to Anadolu Ajansi (AA), Philippe Lazzarini said on X that the media ban has persisted for over 650 days amid what he described as "atrocities against civilians." "The ban on the entry of international media must be lifted," Lazzarini said. He pointed out that more than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed during the ongoing conflict. "Media ban fuels disinformation campaigns questioning firsthand data and accounts from eyewitnesses and international humanitarian organisations," he added. – Bernama-Anadolu
Scoop
2 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Ominous Plans: Making Concentration Camp Gaza
The odious idea of a camp within a camp. The Gaza Strip, with an even greater concentration of Palestinian civilian life within an ever-shrinking stretch of territory. These are the proposals ventured by the Israeli government even as the official Palestinian death toll marches upwards to 60,000. They envisage the placement of some 600,000 displaced and houseless beings currently living in tents in the area of al-Mawasi along Gaza's southern coast in a creepily termed 'humanitarian city'. This would be the prelude for an ultimate relocation of the strip's entire population of over 2 million in an area that will become an even smaller prison than the Strip already is. The preparation for such a forced removal – yet another among so many Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians – is in full swing. The analysis of satellite imagery from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) by Al Jazeera's Sanad investigations unit found that approximately 12,800 buildings were demolished in Rafah between early April and early July alone. In the Knesset on May 11 this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave words to those deeds: 'We are demolishing more and more [of their] homes, they have nowhere to return to. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.' Camps of concentrated human life – concentration camps, in other words – are often given a different dressing to what they are meant to be. Authoritarian states enjoy using them to re-educate and reform the inmates even as they gradually kill them. Indeed, the proposals from the Israel's Defense Department carry with them plans for a 'Humanitarian Transit Area' where Gazans would 'temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate, and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so'. The emetic candy floss of 'humanitarian' in the context of a camp is a self-negating nonsense similar to other experiments in cruelty: the relocation of Boer civilians during the colonial wars waged by Britain to camps which saw dysentery and starvation; the movement of Vietnamese villagers into fortified hamlets to prevent their infiltration by the Vietcong in the 1960s; the creation of Pacific concentration camps to detain refugees seeking Australia by boat in what came to be called the 'Pacific Solution'. Those in the business of doing humanitarian deeds were understandably appalled by Israel's latest plans. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), stated that this would 'de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations'. It would certainly 'deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland.' Self-evidently and sadly, that would be one of the main aims. A few of Israeli's former Prime Ministers have ditched the coloured goggles in considering the plans for such a mislabelled city. Yair Lapid, who spent a mere six months in office in 2022, told Israeli Army Radio that it was 'a bad idea from every possible perspective – security, political, economic, logistical'. While preferring not to use the term 'concentration camp' with regards such a construction, incarcerating individuals by effectively preventing their exit would make such a term appropriate. Ehud Olmert's words to The Guardian were even less inclined to varnish the matter. 'If they [the Palestinians] will be deported into the new 'humanitarian city', then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing'. To create a camp that would effectively 'clean' more than half of Gaza of its population could hardly be understood as a plan to save Palestinians. 'It is to deport them, to push and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have at least.' Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg was also full of candour in expressing the view that the plan was 'for all facts and purposes a concentration camp' for Gaza's Palestinians, 'an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law'. This would also add the burgeoning grounds of illegality already being alleged in this month's petition by three Israeli reserve soldiers of Israel's Supreme Court questioning the legality of Operation Gideon's Chariots. Instancing abundant examples of forced transfer and expulsions of the Palestinian population during its various phases, commentators such as former chief of staff of the IDF, Moshe 'Bogy' Ya'alon, are unreserved about how such programs fare before international law. 'Evacuating an entire population? Call it ethnic cleansing, call it transfer, call it deportation, it's a war crime,' he told journalist Lucy Aharish. 'Israel's soldiers had been sent in 'to commit war crimes.' There is also some resistance from within the IDF, less on humanitarian grounds than practical ones. To even prepare such a plan in the midst of negotiations for a lasting ceasefire and finally resolving the hostage situation was the first telling problem. The other was how the IDF could feasibly undertake what would be a grand jailing experiment while preventing the infiltration of Hamas. This ghastly push by the Netanyahu government involves an enormous amount of wishful thinking. Ideally, the Palestinians will simply leave. If not, they will live in even more carceral conditions than they faced before October 2023. But to assume that this cartoon strip humanitarianism, papered over a ghoulish program of inflicted suffering, will add to the emptying well of Israeli security, is testament to how utterly desperate, and delusionary, the Israeli PM and his cabinet members have become.
Barnama
3 days ago
- Politics
- Barnama
UN Agency Describes Gaza War As 'Crisis For Rules-Based International Order'
GENEVA, July 16 (Bernama-Anadolu) -- The chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Wednesday warned that the war in Gaza has escalated beyond a humanitarian catastrophe, describing it as a fundamental threat to the rules-based international order and urging immediate action by states, Anadolu Ajansi (AA) reported. "Entire families, entire neighbourhoods, an entire generation are being wiped out in Gaza," Philippe Lazzarini said on X, citing his address to the Emergency Conference of States held in Bogota. "Hundreds of UNRWA staff -- our colleagues, our friends -- have been killed. Aid is blocked. Civilians are not protected," he added.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Gaza's vulnerable suffer war's toll: Malnourished, maimed and displaced
Gaza's children and elderly are bearing the brunt of the devastation inflicted by Israel's war on the enclave, as the United Nations warns of a sharp rise in amputations, long-term disabilities and severe hunger. More than 40,000 children have been injured since the conflict began, and nearly 90 percent of Gaza's population has been displaced, often multiple times. Amid worsening conditions, aid workers are also reporting a sharp rise in malnutrition among children, and growing hardship for elderly people, who are even less able to access food, care and essential medical support than the general population. On Tuesday, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said: 'One in 10 children screened in UNRWA medical facilities is malnourished.' He warned that child malnutrition is rising rapidly in Gaza amid severe shortages of food and medical supplies. 'Salam, a seven-month-old baby, died of malnutrition last week,' he added, addressing the growing urgency of the crisis. He added that more than 870 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access food from aid distribution points set up by the highly criticised GHF, a private contractor backed by Israel and the United States. Before the war began on October 7, 2023, about 500 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza every single day. That number collapsed following Israel's assault on the besieged enclave, dropping to fewer than 80 trucks per day. In March, Israel imposed a nearly three-month blockade, halting aid deliveries altogether. On May 27, the GHF assumed control of aid operations, replacing 400 local distribution points with just four 'mega-sites'. These locations have become scenes of deadly violence, as Israeli forces have reportedly opened fire on Palestinians gathering for food, many of whom must walk several kilometres to reach the sites. The more than 870 people who have been killed trying to collect aid from GHF points include at least 94 children and 11 elderly people. Despite mounting criticism, GHF remains the sole provider of food in the Gaza Strip. Since January 2024, UNRWA has screened more than 240,000 boys and girls under the age of five in its clinics, adding that before the war, acute malnutrition was rare in Gaza. 'As malnutrition among children spreads across the war-torn enclave, UNRWA has over 6,000 trucks of food, hygiene supplies, medicine, medical supplies outside of Gaza. They are all waiting to go in,' UNRWA's communications director, Juliette Touma, said in a press statement on Monday. As of July 1, 2025, more than 139,000 Palestinians have been injured in Gaza since the war began, and more than 40,500 of them are children, according to the Global Protection Clusters July report. At least 58,479 people have been confirmed killed since the start of the war in October 2023, with an estimated 11,000 more buried under rubble, their bodies unrecovered due to restrictions on rescue teams or because it is simply impossible to reach them. Roughly one in four of the injured are expected to require long-term rehabilitation care. Children are especially vulnerable: 10 children lose one or both limbs each day, and 15 children per day are left with potentially life-altering disabilities. By the end of 2024, more than 5,200 children were known to require significant rehabilitation, and at least 7,000 were living with permanent disabilities. The true number is believed to be far higher due to the collapse of Gaza's health system. Children with disabilities are among those most at risk in Gaza's child protection caseload. Of the 5,160 cases registered, 849 (16.5 percent) involve children with physical, sensory, intellectual or psychosocial disabilities. Nearly half of these cases (49 percent) are children aged seven to 12, with a slight majority being boys (53 percent). These children face increased risks of violence, neglect, exclusion from essential services and deep social isolation in the current crisis. Conditions like loss of hearing and vision are also on the rise. Based on screenings conducted between 2023 and this year by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, UNRWA said about 35,000 people are at risk of temporary or permanent hearing loss due to constant bombardment and explosions. The war has also severely affected older adults in Gaza. Of 111,500 people aged 60 and above, 97 percent report health problems, 96 percent have chronic illnesses and 86 percent live with disabilities – conditions made worse by medicine shortages, deteriorating hygiene and the destruction of health facilities. At least 3,839 older people have been killed since the war began. Across Gaza, 90 percent of the total population has been forcibly displaced – many of them multiple times; some 10 times or more. Since mid-March 2025, more than 665,000 people have been uprooted, often finding themselves with little or no access to food, water, shelter, healthcare or any basic life necessities. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 86 percent of Gaza's territory is either within an Israeli-imposed no-go zone or under active forced evacuation orders. Older people and those with disabilities face extreme hardship as a result of displacement. Many cannot flee at all due to mobility challenges, illness or the loss of assistive devices – with more than 83 percent reporting that their wheelchairs, walkers, hearing aids or prosthetics have been lost or destroyed. The terrain has become highly dangerous and inaccessible: Israeli forces have built sand mounds at checkpoints, making movement nearly impossible for families with someone who has a mobility impairment. At the same time, high levels of unexploded ordnance contaminate many of Gaza's roads and disproportionately endanger those with physical, sensory or cognitive disabilities. These conditions increase the risk of separation from caregivers, especially for children with disabilities and the elderly, who may struggle to communicate, understand evacuation orders or move independently. Once separated from family or other caregivers, these people face a significantly higher risk of injury, death, abuse and exclusion from vital services, compounding the dangers of war with profound long-term harm.
