The Hamas Health Ministry said on Monday that the number of dead in the Gaza Strip had risen to 18,205, in addition to 49,645 wounded. The ministry stressed that a large number of dead and injured are still unaccounted for since they are trapped under the rubble created by Israeli bombing. As many of the dead and injured are suspected terrorists, the IDF monitors the operation of health ministry ambulances, which have been caught numerous times with transported terrorists onboard. As a result, ambulances are late reaching and transporting the wounded to hospitals and they are left to bleed to death.
According to Al-Quds, Israeli forces are besieging the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, where the hospital director confirmed that the situation is dire: “We have 65 injured, 12 children in intensive care, 6 premature babies, and 3,000 displaced people.”
He noted that Israeli drones are bombing anyone leaving or entering the hospital. This brings to mind a curious phenomenon: last Saturday, Haaretz’s anti-Israeli journalist Amira Haas reported that out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip, only 14 are still functioning. The thing is Israel, with a population of close to 9 million, has only 30 general hospitals. Why does Gaza, with about 2 million residents, need 36 hospitals?
The answer is becoming clear: over the past 15 years, Hamas has been using hospitals, schools, mosques, and all other civic institutions as a cover for storing and operating weapons against Israel. On Monday, the fighters of the Nahal Brigade located a training facility for RPG shooting hidden inside a mosque in the heart of a civilian neighborhood in Jabaliya, with a stock of grenades, cartridges, and various types of weapons. The IDF clarified that some of the weapons were found in bags belonging to a civilian organization operating in the Gaza Strip.
There are no civilian organizations in Gaza – every institution and the vast majority of the people have been turned since 2007 into a kind of North Vietnam, where everybody is either part of the fight or a traitor. Even the Hamas tunnels were modeled after the tunnels of Củ Chi, an immense network of connecting tunnels located in the Củ Chi District of Ho Chi Minh City, which were part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country.
From the Shin Bet interrogation of captured Hamas terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre, it turns out that the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades operate their own fleet of ambulances which appear in every way like the real thing. This allowed Hamas to transport fighters above ground without fear of an aerial attack. The same ambulances also transport food and ammunition to the fighting terrorists.
Also, as some IDF units discovered the hard way, every empty institution in Gaza is booby-trapped, including schools, hospitals, and mosques.
Palestinians line up for flour is being distributed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA to Gazans as Israeli attacks on Gaza continue in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on December 07, 2023. Photo by Ashraf Amra pic.twitter.com/dzDWNEthHd
— Ashraf Amra (@amra_ashraf) December 7, 2023
According to Haas, as of December 4, UNRWA distributed 10,059 tons of flour. Receiving the flour requires early registration, standing in line for hours, and the very likely possibility that in the end there will be no flour left. Meanwhile, a black market in flour is burgeoning, where a pita is sold for one shekel, and a sack of flour that normally sold for 20 to 30 shekels now goes for 400. As has been documented numerous times, Hamas agents routinely take over food supply trucks, beat the hungry Gazans off them, and drive away.
Incidentally, the math of flour provisions according to Haas is not so bad: 10,059 tons of flour divided among 2 million people comes to a little more than 5 kg (11 lbs.) per person over two months. That’s a lot of pitas.
But as reports continue to suggest that 100 supply trucks continue to enter Gaza in Rafah, bringing not only food and medical supplies but also fuel and water (30,000 gallons of water on Monday), and other reports say the people of Gaza are starving and dying of thirst, something here doesn’t compute, and if both accounts are to be trusted, it appears that the Hamas rate of theft of supplies is staggering.
Soon enough we’ll discover that Hamas also operates the black market in Gaza.
On Sunday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that health needs in Gaza have “increased dramatically,” and that the health system “has been reduced to one-third of what it was.” In a special session held today in Geneva, WHO’s Executive Board adopted a resolution aimed at addressing the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. The resolution was adopted by consensus.
The resolution calls for “immediate, sustained and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief, including the access of medical personnel.” It calls on “all parties to fulfill their obligations under international law…and reaffirms that all parties to armed conflict must comply fully with the obligations applicable to them under international humanitarian law related to the protection of civilians in armed conflict and medical personnel.”
And you thought this was going to be a somber article without any funny stuff.
