Intense Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip continued on the morning of the beginning of the second month of the war, in which more than 10,000 Palestinians, nearly half of whom were children, have been martyred since its outbreak. This prompted officials from 18 UN agencies to issue a joint statement demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
The number of martyrs in the Gaza Strip has risen since October 7 to 10,022 martyrs, including 4,104 children and 2,641 women, and more than 25,000 Palestinians were injured.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Monday that 70% of the victims of the aggression were women and children, noting that the occupation had committed 24 major massacres during the past hours, claiming the lives of 243 martyrs.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said that the occupation directly targeted the mental health hospital and the eye hospital, and is waging a frantic war on hospitals and ambulances in the Gaza Strip, indicating that it has already begun to implement its threats to target medical facilities and commit massacres there.
He confirmed that the occupation committed 19 massacres during the last hours, claiming the lives of 292 martyrs, and that it continues to lie about the existence of safe corridors for displaced persons and medical personnel. He added: "The safe corridors that the occupation talks about are nothing but corridors of death."
He continued: "The health system has become completely powerless as the aggression enters its second month. We call on all parties to work to provide a safe humanitarian corridor to ensure the passage of aid."
He added: "We have received 2,350 reports of people missing under the rubble, including 1,300 children, since the start of the aggression on Gaza." Al-Qudra reported, "192 health personnel were martyred, and 32 ambulances were destroyed and put out of service as a result of the Israeli aggression." He stated that "the occupation targeted more than 113 health institutions, which led to 16 hospitals and 32 primary care centers being out of service due to Israeli targeting and fuel exhaustion."
Continuous bombing
On Monday afternoon, Israeli occupation aircraft launched a missile on the roof of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, while the bombing was renewed on various areas in Gaza City, targeting several civilian homes. The Ministry of Health also announced that the occupation had committed a new massacre in Al-Maghazi camp on Monday evening.
Director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Muhammad Abu Salamiya, said in a press conference held inside Al-Shifa Hospital: “A child was martyred and 5 people, including a woman, were injured in an Israeli bombing of one of the upper floors of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.”
The government media office in the Gaza Strip said that the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening caused widespread destruction in the only psychiatric hospital in the Gaza Strip and the eye hospital.
Salama Maarouf, spokesman for the media office, confirmed that the continuous bombing of the Gaza Strip targeted the vicinity of all hospitals last night. He continued: “The occupation is deliberately bombing bakeries and all sources of water and solar energy to starve the population.”
The Ministry of Health in Gaza also said that the occupation army targeted a children's hospital during its raids on the Strip last night. It revealed that the occupation raids on Al-Rantisi Hospital led to the death of 4 displaced people and the injury of 70, including children suffering from cancer.
As the Israeli war on Gaza entered its first day of the second month, the occupation aircraft continued, since dawn on Monday, to launch a series of raids on various areas of the Gaza Strip.
Earlier, the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) announced the death of three citizens, including a child, at dawn on Monday during a raid launched by occupation warplanes on a house in the city of Khan Yunis. Local sources said, "The occupation aircraft bombed a house on Al-Muhafaza Street in the city of Khan Yunis, which led to the death of three citizens, including a child, and the injury of others, in addition to the presence of a number of citizens under the rubble."
In conjunction with the occupation artillery, Israeli warplanes have been launching violent raids for hours on western Gaza, specifically in the Beach camp, where entire residential squares were targeted, in addition to bombing the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital.
In the central Gaza Strip, at least one house was bombed in Deir al-Balah, which led to the death and injury of more than 15 citizens, the majority of whom were children and women. The aircraft also launched several raids on the east of the Bureij camp and the Maghazi camp. Israeli aircraft bombed a house for the Mishmish family in the Al-Zawaida area in the central Gaza Strip, killing 10 citizens and wounding others.
The sources indicated that the occupation warplanes bombed a house in Tal al-Sultan, west of the city of Rafah, leading to the death and injury of a number of citizens.
Separating the north from the south
In a related context, Israeli military vehicles returned to advancing in the northern and southern axis of Gaza City, reaching Al-Rashid Street overlooking the seashore, in order to be able to separate the north of the Strip from its south.
This comes in light of violent confrontations with fighters from Palestinian armed factions, which resulted in deaths and injuries among the ranks of the Israeli army.
According to Anatolia, aircraft, artillery, and warships launched more than 100 raids during the past hours on Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, targeting residential buildings, roads, and agricultural lands in an unprecedented manner.
On Sunday evening, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that his forces “completed the siege of Gaza City and divided the Strip into two parts, northern and southern Gaza.”
Hagari claimed in a press conference that the army, led by the Golani Brigade, completed the siege of Gaza City and reached its coast, considering that “this step is very important to put pressure on the Hamas movement.”
On the other hand, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed arm of the Hamas movement, continue today and in the past few days to carry out dozens of attacks with Yassin 105 anti-armor missiles against Israeli tanks, bulldozers, and personnel carriers.
Statement from 18 UN agencies
For their part, officials of the main United Nations agencies issued a joint statement on Sunday in which they expressed their anger at the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Officials from 18 organizations, including UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization, expressed their regret at the death toll in the war between Israel and Hamas that began on October 7.
In the statement, agency officials denounced that an entire population of Gaza was being besieged and attacked, and deprived of access to the necessary elements for survival, stressing that "the bombing of residents in their homes, in shelters, hospitals, and places of worship is unacceptable."
UN agency officials also called on Hamas to release more than 240 hostages, demanding that each side respect its obligations under international law.
They also called for allowing more food, water, medicine and fuel to enter the Gaza Strip to help the population.
For his part, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that about 50 schools and the agency’s facilities in Gaza, housing 700,000 displaced people, were bombed. He added that the number of trucks arriving in Gaza is “very small,” and the supplies that arrive are less than what should be provided.
Clashes with the resistance
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), announced that it had destroyed an Israeli tank penetrating the Isra neighborhood in northwest Gaza with a Yassin shell. It added that its fighters are engaged in clashes with Israeli forces penetrating the Sultan area, northwest of Beit Lahia.
Earlier today, Monday, the Al-Qassam Brigades said that its fighters destroyed an Israeli tank penetrating the Sultan area, northwest of Beit Lahia, with an “Al-Yassin 105” missile.
Al-Qassam had previously published video clips showing its fighters detonating Israeli tanks penetrating into Gaza, some of which were detonated from zero distance.
Countless losses: war on the Palestinian economy and the loss of 390,000 jobs
The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip left devastating effects on the Palestinian economy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which suffers from ongoing closure policies. Although there are no official statistics on the damage to which the economy was exposed, estimates indicate catastrophic effects.
The Palestinian economy is experiencing a state of weakness and decline as the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip enters its second month.
Although Israel launched the war on the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank is also experiencing a state of tension and constant closures of the crossings and checkpoints connecting its cities.
To date, none of the official or research institutions have issued any preliminary losses for the Gaza Strip, due to the difficulty of calculating them as the Israeli bombing continues.
But before the war, the unemployment rate in Gaza was 46%, while 80% of the population received humanitarian aid, while 80% of the buildings destroyed in the 2014 war had not been rebuilt until the eve of the last war, a month ago.
390 jobs
The International Labor Organization said that the West Bank and Gaza Strip markets have together lost 390,000 jobs since the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Strip on October 7.
The organization stated in a report that its estimates indicate the loss of no less than 61% of job opportunities in Gaza, the equivalent of 182,000 jobs since the beginning of the ongoing war.
She stressed that the ongoing war caused an indirect impact in the West Bank, “as 24% of job opportunities there, equivalent to 208 thousand jobs, were lost during the same period.”
The total number of workers in Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) until the end of the first half of this year reached 1.15 million individuals, according to data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
This means that a third of workers in the Palestinian market have lost their jobs, completely or partially, since the beginning of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
According to the ILO, the total job losses translate into daily labor income losses of US$16 million.
The organization expected that these numbers would rise "if ground operations in Gaza intensify and the humanitarian crisis in the Strip continues."
Clearing funds
Palestinian tax money “clearance” entered the atmosphere of war, with several statements issued regarding it.
On October 30, the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, directed the freezing of Palestinian clearance funds, due to what he described as the Authority’s failure to condemn the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by the Palestinian resistance on the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.
Israel collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority against Palestinian imports of imported goods, and transfers money to it monthly, averaging 750 million shekels ($190 million).
However, Defense Minister Yoav Galant ordered the transfer of funds, minus what the Palestinian government transferred, to the Gaza Strip, as punishment for the residents of the Strip.
Also, on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority refused to receive tax funds (clearance) from the Israeli side, after Tel Aviv announced the transfer of them, after deducting amounts that were previously directed to the Gaza Strip.
The sources stated that “a presidential decision was issued not to receive incomplete clearance funds, because the decision to deduct funds going to Gaza means strengthening the separation of the West Bank from the Gaza Strip.”
In the same context, on October 25, the Palestine Monetary Authority issued instructions to banks operating in the local market to deal with the monetary consequences of the Israeli war against the Gaza Strip.
The most important thing contained in the new instructions relates to borrowers from the Gaza Strip, which stipulate that loan installments will be postponed until the end of January 2024.
The value of loans provided to individuals and companies in the sector amounted to $923 million as of the end of last September.
For the thirty-first day in a row, the Israeli army is waging a “destructive war” on Gaza, in which more than ten thousand Palestinians were martyred, including 4,800 children and 2,550 women, and more than 24,000 others were injured, and 153 Palestinians were killed and 2,080 were arrested in the West Bank, according to official Palestinian sources. .
The Israeli bombing resulted in widespread destruction of infrastructure, citizens’ buildings, and economic facilities, especially with the start of the ground operation and the intensification of the Israeli bombing of Gaza.