NERMEEN SHAIKH:
The death toll in Gaza is nearing 3,800 as Israel continues its aerial
bombardment of the besieged territory for the 13th day. Dozens of
Palestinians were killed overnight as Israel bombed southern Gaza in
areas that were supposed to be safe zones after Israel ordered residents
of northern Gaza to vacate their homes. This is Raafat al-Nakhal
speaking in Khan Younis after an Israeli airstrike.
RAAFAT AL-NAKHAL:
[translated] We came from Gaza City. They told us to come to the south,
so we came to the south. We found that the strikes intensified in the
south. We stayed in a house. In front of us, there were strikes, and
behind us, strikes. There’s no safety. There’s nowhere safe in Gaza. You
have to be ready to die and to just stay in your house. …
There’s absolutely no difference between Gaza City, Rafah, Khan
Younis, between the south, the north, the east or the west. They brought
us to the south, and it’s been strikes every day. Every day there are
martyrs in massive numbers. …
I’m over 70 years old. I’ve lived through several wars. It’s never
been like this. It’s never been this brutal — no religion and no
conscience. Thank God. We only have hope in God, not in any Arab or
Muslim country or anywhere in the world, except for God.
AMY GOODMAN:
Funerals were held earlier today in Khan Younis after an Israeli
airstrike leveled a three-story building, killing 12 members of the same
family. Relatives said the dead include seven children.
GRANDFATHER: [translated]
What is this that has happened to them? Babies sleeping in their houses,
five children and four women sleeping in their houses, no men. They
were sleeping inside. The strike hit a three-level building on six
babies and four women. What shall we say? Thank God. The children were
all 5 or 6 years old. There was no warning, because it’s an Israeli
despicable terrorist country and not an Islamic country, a terrorist
American country.
UNCLE: [translated] These are seven babies. Four are buried here, and three are buried in another site. The total is 10.
GRANDFATHER: [translated] The children died, their mothers and their grandmother.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:
Meanwhile, in the northern Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike trapped
children under rubble. Dramatic footage shows Palestinians trying to
rescue the children.
AMY GOODMAN:
This all comes as Israel has amassed tanks on the border of Gaza ahead
of what appears to be an imminent ground invasion. Protests have been
growing across the Middle East after hundreds of Palestinians died in an
explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. Palestinians say the blast
was caused by an Israeli missile. Israel has denied responsibility
despite attacking the same hospital just days earlier. According to the
World Health Organization, 115 health facilities have been attacked so
far in Gaza.
On the diplomatic front, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security
Council resolution calling for a humanitarian pause in Gaza. President
Biden, who’s returned from Israel, is scheduled to give a primetime
address tonight seeking $100 billion from Congress to help arm Israel,
Ukraine and Taiwan. Meanwhile, Israel now says they believe 203 hostages
are being held in Gaza after being seized in the Hamas attack on
October 7th that killed over 1,400 people in Israel.
We go now to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where we’re joined
by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He’s a Palestinian physician, an activist and
politician, who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National
Initiative. He’s been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
since 2006, is also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization
Central Council.
Dr. Barghouti, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can respond to —
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN:
— all the developments? Most recently, of course, President Biden has
just left. Your assessment of his visit and the Arab summit that was
canceled by Mahmoud Abbas, who’s based where you are, in Ramallah, the
head of the Palestinian Authority, the Jordanian king and the Egyptian
president, after the attack on the hospital, and your assessment of what
Israel is saying about that attack?
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI:
You know, Amy, I don’t know where to start. The atrocities are beyond
description. We are subjected now, as Palestinians, not only in Gaza but
also in the West Bank, to horrifying war crimes, ethnic cleansing, acts
of collective punishment against the population of Gaza, where
civilians are dying because they don’t have water, they don’t have
electricity, they don’t have food, they don’t have medicines, and an act
of genocide. Every five minutes, a Palestinian is killed in Gaza. Every
15 minutes, a Palestinian child is killed in Gaza. And it goes on. My
last number is 3,785. I think it’s already wrong, because with the
passage of each minute, more Palestinians are killed.
What did President Biden do? Instead of coming here and telling the
Israelis — and he knows very well that the United States is the only
country in the world that has leverage over Israel. Instead of telling
them, “Stop this atrocity. Have ceasefire, so that you can at least save
the prisoners that are in Gaza, the Israeli prisoners,” he came here to
be totally complicit with Israeli war crimes and to push the United
States into becoming a participant in these war crimes by sending
soldiers to participate in the Israeli invasion and in the crimes that
are committed against the Palestinian people.
He bought every lie that Netanyahu told him, and he kept repeating
them. And I don’t understand how the American intelligence structure
don’t tell their president that these are lies. I am sure they know
that. The first lie about decapitating children, it turned out to be a
big lie. The other lie about raping women, it turned out to be a lie,
and that’s what Los Angeles Times apologized about. Then this
huge lie about Palestinians killing themselves in their hospital, this
huge lie that Israel distributed and the Israeli military did, as they
usually do, by telling series of lies and changing them one time after
the other.
Before I come back to President Biden, let me explain. Israel
committed a terrible airstrike on the Baptist Hospital, run by the
Anglican Church, killing no less than 300 — killing no less than 473
Palestinian people, mainly children and women, and injuring more than
300 others. Why? For what? It was all about the Israeli ultimatum that
was already, according to WHO, sent to no less
than 27 hospitals, including the largest hospital in Gaza, Shifa
Hospital, to evict and evacuate so that Israel can conduct its ethnic
cleansing of big parts of Gaza at the moment, with a plan of ethnically
cleansing all of Gaza Strip. The strike was clearly Israeli. The type of
explosion is something that no Palestinian militant group has, a huge
blast that took the lives of almost 500 people instantly, in less than a
minute. That’s a power that no Palestinian group has. So it was a big
lie.
But Israel lied four times in justifying this attack. The first
Israeli reaction was that they did the airstrike on the hospital — they
admitted it in the first round, and they said they did it because Hamas
militants were hiding there. Then they changed the story, and they said
that Hamas is taking Palestinians as human shield. Then the third story,
they changed the story and said it was Hamas rocket. And then the
fourth lie, which is now dominant, is that it was a jihadi rocket.
How could the United States repeat these lies and accept them without
verifying them? Israel did that before with the case of Shireen Abu
Akleh, when they changed their story four times. Each time, in the
beginning, they said she was killed by a Palestinian, and gradually they
admitted that it was their crime. Believe me, these lies should not be
continued.
And the United States should immediately support an immediate
ceasefire. The meeting that should have been taking place with the
Jordanian king and with the Egyptian president and with Palestinian
president did not take place because all these three people realized
that Mr. Biden does not want to support ceasefire immediately. And they
realized that he’s practically supporting the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, something that Egypt refused and
something that Jordan refused and something that all the Arab countries
refused. That is the essence of what’s happening now.
And so, Israel now is changing the plan a little bit by pushing all
the people from the northern part of Gaza and the middle of Gaza into
the southern part. It’s already a very small area of less than 140
square miles, becoming now less than 60 square miles, with 2.3 million
people. They say they pushed them down for safety, but they continue to
bombard them in the south. The game is clear: They want to ethnically
cleanse, completely, Gaza Strip. And they initiated acts of ethnic
cleansing already in the West Bank, where 20 Palestinian communities
have already been evicted by Israeli terror settlers, where more than 75
Palestinians already killed also in the West Bank. At this very moment,
the Israeli army is attacking Tulkarem camp and Nur Shams camp in
Tulkarem area, using drones and using also rockets against civilian
population in a refugee camp. This is the situation that is getting
worse and worse every day.
And the real plan, as I can see it, according to what an Israeli
minister said, “We’re going to shrink Gaza’s size.” What does that mean?
Annexing the northern part and the middle of Gaza? What will happen to
all these hospitals? Let me read to you what World Health Organization
says. The World Health Organization says that 130 attacks — 136 attacks
were committed against health facilities in Gaza, during which time 491
Palestinians were killed, 16 health workers were killed, 370 people were
injured, 23 Palestinian health ambulances were destroyed, and 26
facilities were completely destroyed or partially destroyed.
Seventy-seven similar attacks also took place in the West Bank.
So nobody can convince us that it was Palestinians who killed
Palestinians in that hospital. And nobody should give any justification
for the behavior of President Biden. The only conclusion that one can
come to is that he cares only about his reelection. He doesn’t care even
about the lives of Israeli prisoners, neither him nor Netanyahu;
otherwise, why wouldn’t they accept ceasefire? Why Netanyahu continues
his airstrikes, although these airstrikes already killed 22 Israeli
prisoners? They continue because they don’t care about Palestinian lives
or Israeli lives.
And Mr. Biden should listen not to the lies of Netanyahu, but to the
noble voice of the Jewish people, the American Jewish people who came to
the American Congress to demonstrate and demand one thing: immediate
ceasefire. I’m telling you, we’re calling on the whole world to
immediately stand up, and instead of supporting the genocide and the
collective punishment and the hysterical Israeli ethnic cleansing, to
support immediate ceasefire, so we can stop the killings that are taking
place, a ceasefire that could guarantee safe passage to the prisoners,
but also that could guarantee humanitarian aid to Palestinians who are
now dying out because of thirst, because of starvation, and, most
importantly, because of lack of medicines and because of a possibility
of an epidemic that could immediately start in Gaza because of the
suspension of vaccinations for children and because of the destruction
of sanitary infrastructure. We could see an epidemic of cholera very
soon in Gaza. Is that what Mr. Biden wants? Is that what Mr. Netanyahu
wants? This is atrocity that should stop. And anybody that don’t call —
that doesn’t call, sorry, for a ceasefire immediately will be considered
not only complicit with these war crimes, but a participant in them.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:
And, Dr. Barghouti, could you respond to the decision that Biden
announced of Egypt opening the Rafah border for 20 humanitarian trucks
to enter into Gaza, you know, and what you think the significance of
that is, if there is any, and the specific concerns you’ve raised as a
doctor, the tens of thousands of pregnant women in Gaza today, what the
fate of patients there are, who are in urgent need of medical care, and
none is available?
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI:
Well, one of the most striking scenes was the images of children who
died in the uterus of their mothers, because they were pregnant and they
were hit. But there are 5,500 Palestinian women who are giving birth
this month, and we already received terrible, terrible information about
them giving birth in the streets, because there is no place to go to.
The south of Gaza does not have any space anymore, besides the fact that
there is no safe space for anybody. Israel has already destroyed more
than 80,000 homes and houses of people, and people have no place to go
to. And there is very high risk now of an increased infant mortality,
perinatal mortality and maternal mortality because of the situation that
Palestinians find themselves in — no sanitary facilities, no drinking
water, no running water, no proper sewage system. It’s a total disaster
and total, total humanitarian crisis.
You asked me about something about President Biden. Can you repeat the question, please?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yes, about the decision to let convoys, humanitarian convoys, 20, in from Egypt into Gaza.
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI:
Imagine 2.3 million people already deprived of fuel, water,
electricity, medications and food for 12 days. And you send 20 trucks
for them? What does that change? It’s less than a drop in the ocean.
That’s much less than what people need. It becomes only a cover of the
crime that is happening. I’m not against, of course, bringing these
trucks, whatever they can help, but that’s not what we need. We need an
open corridor so that food, water, electricity, as well as medications
can get to people. We have medical teams in Gaza. We have Palestinian
medical relief teams working along the work of the Red Crescent, as well
as the Ministry of Health. And they are calling us every day, telling
us, “We don’t have any more medications. We don’t have even dressing to
help the injured people. We don’t have proper sanitary facilities. How
can we deal with patients in these conditions?” You know, patients were
treated and surgical operations took place the other day on the stairs
of the hospitals, because there were no beds left. And the massacre that
happened in the Baptist Hospital was so shocking and practically
brought the whole health structure down. And now, already, three
hospitals stopped working, because they have no electricity, because
they don’t have sufficient medications. It’s a humanitarian disaster
that is building up.
And the only explanation is that Netanyahu wants to solve what he
thinks is the demographic problem of Israel, being that the number of
Palestinians today in West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Israel itself is
equal to the number of Israeli Jewish people. He wants to eliminate
that, first by ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million people in Gaza,
pushing them out of Gaza and then annexing Gaza Strip, and then initiate
a process of ethnic cleansing for Palestinians in the West Bank, first
in Area C and then in the rest of the West Bank. That’s why the king of
Jordan is so shocked about these plans, because he knows that he’s
coming next. After they finish with Gaza, they will move to the West
Bank. This is something that nobody should accept.
I never thought — I never thought, I admit — and I was wrong — I
never thought that Israel could dare to conduct ethnic cleansing in the
21st century. And unfortunately, I was wrong. That’s exactly what they
are doing today. And I ask the question. They say that Israel has the
right to respond. OK, they responded. They responded. They already
killed almost 4,000 people. How many thousands of children, how many
thousands of patients, how many thousands of women and men should die
before Israel decides it’s enough? Or should all the millions of
Palestinians disappear from Palestine and disappear from this world so
that these fascists — and I call them fascists and Nazis — that are
governing Israel would be satisfied?
NERMEEN SHAIKH:
Dr. Barghouti, I just want to quote to you — I think this is the senior
minister to whom you were referring, comments he made — Israel’s
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, saying in an interview with Israel’s Army
Radio on Wednesday — he said, quote, that “At the end of this war, not
only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, but the territory of Gaza will
also decrease.” So, if you could talk more about that, elaborate on your
point about what precisely they intend to do with Gaza, and then talk
about what’s happening in the West Bank? You said it’s also the site of
war crimes, of ethnic cleansing. But also the protests that are directed
against the Palestinian Authority there — we had earlier in headlines
that the protests across the West Bank have also taken aim at the ruling
Palestinian Authority, which has launched a violent crackdown on
demonstrations. A 12-year-old Palestinian girl named Razan Nasrallah was
shot and killed by PA security forces Tuesday during protests in Jenin.
So, if you could talk about that, the situation in the West Bank?
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Yeah. I’m sorry, but you asked about something else before the West Bank?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yes. I just cited to you the person whom I thought you were mentioning earlier, the Israeli foreign minister —
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Oh, Cohen, yes, yes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — talking about — yes, please.
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI:
Yes, yes, Eli Cohen. The foreign minister of Israel means that Israel
is turning now, since Egypt is not allowing the ethnic cleansing of
people in Gaza to Egypt up ’til now, is turning to plan B. And plan B is
to remove everybody in the northern part of Gaza and in Gaza City
itself — that is about 1.1 million to 1.2 million people — move them
down to the southern parts of Gaza and then annex that area, cutting
down the size of Gaza from 140 square miles to maybe now less than 50
square miles or maybe 60 square miles. This is the only explanation of
what he said, shrinking the size of Gaza, bringing it down. And they
think — the Israeli government thinks — that if they cluster all these
2.3 million people in such a small area, then the pressure will be so
huge that Egypt will be obliged to open the borders and let them out of
Gaza. And in that case, Israel would have achieved its original plan of
total ethnic cleansing, pushing Palestinians out of Palestine into the
Sinai. Mind you, 70% of these people have already been ethnically
cleansed by Israel in 1948. They were displaced from parts of the 520
communities that Israeli troops erased to earth back in 1948, committing
50 massacres and pushing Palestinians out of Palestine. They want to
repeat the same ethnic cleansing again.
But let me tell you, this is not the last plan of Israel. Netanyahu
made it very clear. Maybe I’m repeating that. He carried the map of
Israel in the United Nations in front of the whole world weeks ago, in
which that map, the map of Israel, included the annexation of all of the
West Bank and the annexation of all the occupied Gaza Strip. This is
their plan: annexation, ethnic cleansing and committing genocide against
the Palestinian population.
But in response to your question about West Bank, let me tell you the
situation here is very dangerous, is very grave. First of all, Israel
imposed practically a process of fragmenting the West Bank into 224
small islands or ghettos, if you want, separated from each other by no
less than 640 military Israeli checkpoints, many of which are closed
completely — for instance, Jericho now is totally closed — and then the
wall, of course, itself and the so-called bypass roads, which are
segregated roads exclusive for Israelis. Many, many Palestinians cannot
move now from one area to another. Our health work is becoming very,
very complicated in the West Bank because we cannot move medications, we
cannot move medical teams.
And the worst situation is in the so-called Area C, which represents
no less than 60% of the West Bank, where settlers are continuously
attacking Palestinians. The other day, Israeli terror settlers attacked
the village of Qusra, in Nablus area, killed three Palestinian
civilians. The army, the Israeli army, came and killed a fourth one. The
next day, when the people were having the funeral of these four
Palestinians killed, the settlers came back again and killed two more
people, a father and a son — six people in one village in less than 24
hours. The terror of settlers is everywhere.
But in addition to that, the Israeli army is conducting a wide-range
campaign of arresting Palestinians. According to my information, no less
than 750 Palestinians have been arrested during the last week. And the
number is growing, which means that the number of prisoners in Israeli
jails is more than 6,300 now, many of whom are held under the so-called
administrative detention, which means they don’t know why they are in
jail, they don’t have any legal due process. Their lawyers cannot even
defend them, because they don’t know what they are charged for,
including 260 children who are in Israeli jails at the moment.
Add to that the fact that already more than 75 Palestinians have been
killed. And the Israeli army, now thinking that everybody is busy with
what’s happening in Gaza, they are now conducting military operations
against Palestinian civil areas, including Tulkarem refugee camp and,
before that, Jenin refugee camp. And this can go on. So it’s a very
dangerous situation and a very risky situation for all Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN:
Dr. Barghouti, we only have a minute, but what about, and why then, the
Palestinian Authority violent crackdown on demonstrations, with the
12-year-old Palestinian girl, Razan Nasrallah, shot and killed in Jenin?
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI:
That was also a crime, committed by Palestinian security forces, and it
should not have happened. It is unacceptable to encounter demonstrators
with gunfire. That is unacceptable. We’re not calling, of course, for
chaos or internal division here among Palestinians. We have enough of
what we have in front of us with fighting Israelis. But the reality is
that the behavior of the security apparatus is unacceptable, including
suppression of freedom of expression. People were mad. They were angry
at what was happening in Gaza, about the killing of people inside that
hospital. And maybe they made some — I mean, they went out of control.
But responding to that by shooting Palestinians, that’s the last thing
that we can accept or we should accept.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa —
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: And for this —
AMY GOODMAN: — Barghouti, I want to —
DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Sorry. I just wanted to say that they have to also abide by international law and stop this wrongdoing.
AMY GOODMAN:
Dr. Barghouti is a Palestinian physician, activist, politician, serves
as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
Coming up, we’ll hear the voices of the historic Jewish-led protest
in Washington, D.C. Thousands came out, hundreds were arrested, calling
for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Back in 20 seconds.
