Hunger and thirst loom over Gaza, with calls for an investigation into Israel’s crimes against prisoners
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights revealed today that 71% of Gaza’s population suffers from severe levels of hunger.
The Observatory reported in a study published on its website that 98% of Gaza’s residents experience insufficient food consumption, with 64% resorting to consuming grass, fruits, unripe food, and expired items to alleviate hunger. The water access rate, including drinking water, bathing water, and cleaning water, is 1.5 liters per person per day in Gaza.
In the same context, the director of the Human Rights Watch organization in Israel and Palestine, Omar Shakir, called for international action to investigate the war crimes committed by Israeli forces in Gaza. Shakir stated in a press release that “starvation is one of the tools used by Israel in Gaza,” urging an end to collective punishment against Palestinians.
On another note, the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights called for an urgent and neutral international investigation into the Israeli army’s killing of Palestinian civilians after their arrest from various areas in Gaza. The Observatory pointed to the “correspondence of testimonies it collected with what Haaretz newspaper revealed about field execution crimes against detainees, while others died due to severe torture and mistreatment during their detention in a military camp known as Seddiq Timan, located between the cities of Beersheba and Gaza in the south.”
It mentioned that the mentioned camp has turned into a new Guantanamo prison, where detainees are held in extremely harsh conditions, inside structures resembling outdoor chicken coops, without food or drink for a long period.
The same newspaper reported yesterday that several Palestinian prisoners died in an Israeli occupation army detention camp in the Negev due to the harsh conditions of their detention. It clarified that the army keeps the prisoners blindfolded and handcuffed most of the time, announcing that many of them died inside the facility (detention center), without specifying their number.
