Israeli airstrikes killed at least 21 Palestinians, including children, across Gaza today. Israel has killed over 500 Palestinians since the U.S.-brokered so-called ceasefire went into effect last October. It comes as the Palestinian Red Crescent says the evacuation of patients and wounded Palestinians via the southern Rafah crossing has been canceled for today. Israel has been tightly controlling the Rafah crossing since it partially reopened on Monday, after two years of total closure. On Tuesday, only five medical evacuees were allowed to leave, and only 12 Palestinians were allowed to reenter Gaza from Egypt. Fifty-six-year-old Huda Abu Abed was among the few people let back into Gaza after Israel’s delayed reopening of the Rafah crossing under last year’s ceasefire.
Huda Abu Abed: “They said the crossing was going to open. You know how long we’ve been waiting for the crossing to open? Because no matter what, there is nothing like your homeland. It is right there. Everything needed for life is available. Everything is there. But our longing for our country, we can’t be distant from it or give it up.”
Meanwhile, two Human Rights Watch employees have resigned after the organization’s leadership blocked a report which called Israel’s denial of the right of return for Palestinians a crime against humanity. Omar Shakir, who led the Israel and Palestine team, said in his resignation letter, “The one topic even at Human Rights Watch, for which there remains an unwillingness to apply the law and the facts in a principled way, is the plight of refugees and their right to return to the homes that they were forced to flee.”
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