The academic is publishing a book about his month spent in the Palestinian enclave between December and January with MSF. A veteran of war zones, he says he has "never experienced anything like it."
Bi-weekly Brief--May 26
Pariah status looms as Israel accelerates its genocidal campaign
“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country,” said Yair Golan in a May 20th radio interview. Golan is former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army and current head of the Democrats party. He ignited a firestorm in Israel by declaring that “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”
Netanyahu called him a “traitor” and his words “disgraceful antisemitic blood libels.” The World Jewish Congress immediately cancelled an appearance by Golan while Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said he “must be ostracized from public life” and the Justice Minister Yariv Levin urged that he be stripped of his major general rank. Katz later barred him from reserve duty, and from wearing his uniform and entering military bases. But in a May
21st editorial, Haaretz asserted that “Yair Golan spoke a truth that is uncomfortable to the Israeli ear” and the following day ran another editorial headlined “Israel is well on the way to becoming a pariah state.”
The West edges towards pressuring Israel
By the time the Gaza Media Office reported that at least 326 deaths had been linked to malnutrition and a UN official stated that 14,000 babies could die of starvation within 48 hours if aid did not reach them, the West finally appeared poised to act. Trump on May 16 admitted “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza – which Israel had long flatly denied – and 26 Democratic senators endorsed Sen. Res 224 calling on the White House and other government agencies to “urgently use all available diplomatic tools” to free the hostages, end the blockade and bring about “a durable end to the conflict in Gaza.”
On May 19, the foreign ministers of 22 countries and the EU issued a joint statement calling for “the full resumption of aid immediately.” On May 20, the UK suspended negotiations on a free trade agreement with Israel and sanctioned three settlers (including the settler ‘godmother’ Daniella Weiss who is featured in the film ‘The Settlers’), in addition to two settler outposts and a construction company. It did not, however, implement a total embargo on weapons to Israel which had been a demand of the half a million demonstrators in London on May 17. The UK along with Sweden, Canada and France are reportedly considering broader sanctions, while 17 (of 27) members of the EU (Israel’s largest trading partner) supported having a closer look at the legal basis of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Here Lynn Boylan, an Irish member of the European Parliament, excoriates the body for doing nothing for much too long. On May 21, Pope Leo XIV described the situation in Gaza as “heart-rending” and appealed to Israel to let in humanitarian aid.
On the same day that the Pope took that message to thousands in St. Peter’s Square, Israeli soldiers fired warning shots at a delegation of 25 ambassadors and diplomats from 31 countries - Italy, Canada, UK, China, France, Russia, Spain, Portugal and the European Union among them - who were attempting to visit the Jenin refugee camp during a tour arranged by the PA and reportedly coordinated with the army. They were forced to run for cover. The army apologized for the “inconvenience caused” while various countries immediately summoned Israel’s ambassadors to account for the incident.
Also on the same day a defiant Netanyahu gave his first press conference within Israel since December 2024. He called Britain’s sanctions “shameful” and stated that the war would only end when “Hamas lays down its weapons, steps down from power, returns all the hostages, Gaza is demilitarized and we implement the Trump plan” (he later on called it his “genius plan”) of relocating Gaza’s population. Gaza journalist Muhammad Shehada explains why calling on Hamas to disarm is a “red herring” here. Netanyahu rebuffed the widespread view that Trump’s truce with Yemen, his administration’s direct negotiation with Hamas and Iran, his lifting of Syrian sanctions, and his visit to the Middle East without stopping in Israel suggested a growing rift with the US. Instead, Netanyahu declared, both countries are in “full coordination” on the need to deny Iran nuclear weapons and expel Hamas from Gaza.
A cudgel to attack critics
The killing on the night of May 21 of two young Israeli Embassy staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC by alleged perpetrator Elias Rodriguez who shouted“Free Palestine” while being detained may have defused some of the pressure building up on Israel. While world leaders offered Israel their condolences, Netanyahu wasted no time putting responsibility on Israel’s critics: "We are witnessing the horrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against the State of Israel. The blood libels against the Jewish state cost in blood — and must be fought to the bitter end." He called “Free Palestine” today’s version of “Heil Hitler” and claimed protestors were bent on annihilating the Jewish people.
Other Israeli officials piled on, claiming that by criticizing Israel, European leaders were “legitimizing the murder of Jews” and emboldening terrorists. Trump and other US officials immediately attributed the killing to antisemitism, and it will no doubt be used to fuel the campaign against pro Palestinian protest activity.
The Philadelphia-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention deplored the murders while urging the world not to weaponize them “in pursuit of ideological, authoritarian and expansionist goals.” Among other measures, it called for an end to all arms shipments to Israel “which should have been done long ago,” the suspension of diplomatic relationships with Israel and the ousting of Israel from the UN as an Apartheid state.
Buying time to change the “course of history”
On May 19, Netanyahu’s office released a video in which he explained that having barred all aid from entering Gaza since March 2, Israel would be allowing in a “minimal” amount of food and medicine. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that this was strictly a public relations exercise. “Our best friends in the world – senators I know as strong supporters of Israel – have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge. They come to me and say, ‘We’ll give you all the help you need to win the war…but we can’t be receiving pictures of famine.”
At a press conference, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, long a champion of starvation and ethnic cleansing, reassured supporters that only a tiny bit of food will be entering – but it will be enough to allow “our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.” He added, “Truth be told, until the last of the hostages return, we should also not let water into the Gaza Strip. But the reality is that if we do that, the world will force us to halt the war immediately, and to lose.” Instead, Israel will win the time to carry out Gaza’s “total destruction” and force the population into the south “and from there, God willing, to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan. This is a change of the course of history – nothing less.”
On May 19, five trucks carrying baby food entered the Gaza Strip – and then stopped, leaving their cargo undistributed for days. Israel initially refused to work with UN agencies on the grounds that they would permit food to be transferred to Hamas, and the widely-reviled US-Israel plan for ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ hubs run by private US contractors - that UN and human rights organizations say they will shun - is not scheduled to be up and running before the end of May.
The army claimed nearly 200 trucks had entered through the Kerem Shalom Crossing by May 22 and after a three-day delay, a tiny fraction of the amount of food necessary to stave off starvation was beginning to be distributed by UN teams. The following day, as a drone strike killed six armed Palestinians who were protecting the trucks from looters, the army claimed 388 trucks had entered the Gaza Strip since the blockade was lifted, while aid groups said the actual figure was 119. But “very little aid had been distributed” according to the May 25th Guardian. Nine thousand truckloads worth of food, medicine, water and fuel remain stuck at the border while the horror surrounding the delivery of what the UN head called “a teaspoon” of aid is shown in this video.
The logic of mass destruction
Meanwhile, Israel has again displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the north and center of the Gaza Strip, including residents of Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Deir El Balah, and issued displacement orders to over 80 percent of the population. It has been carrying out “the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods” in the words of the UN. According to the courageous Israeli publication +972 Magazine, “the systematic destruction of residential buildings and public structures has become a central part of the Israeli army’s operations, and in many cases, the primary objective,” preparing the ground for mass ethnic cleansing. Neighborhoods and schools have been flattened from the sky, blown up with explosives, or demolished by D9 Armored Caterpillar bulldozers.
As Netanyahu told a government committee, “we are destroying more and more homes –they have nowhere to return to. The only expected result will be a desire for Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.” Presumably at this point Israel and the US would attempt to turn Gaza into what Trump declared on May 15th he wants it to be: “a freedom zone.”
The carnage has been unspeakable, with missile strikes hitting tented encampments and hospitals crowded with patients. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 716 Palestinians were killed and 2,104 wounded during the May 15-21 period alone. Seven journalists were among the dead in this period, including five who were killed in separate strikes on May 18, bringing to at least 214 the number of Palestinian journalists who have perished since October 7, 2023.
On May 23, Israel slaughtered nine siblings under 12, the children of Dr. Alaa and Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar who work at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. After Israel dropped massive bunker buster bombs on Khan Yunis’ European Hospital on May 13 – ostensibly to demolish a Hamas command center which it later admitted was under a different building - its air strikes hit a Palestine Red Crescent medical clinic, Al Awda Hospital, Al Aqsa Hospital, Jordanian Field Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital, Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, the Indonesian Hospital, the medical supplies warehouse of Nasser Medical Complex, and a displaced persons tent adjacent to Al Kuwaiti Field Hospital during the single week of May 15-21.
The water situation is particularly dire, as so much of the water infrastructure has been destroyed or relies on fuel that is no longer available. According to OCHA, the latest displacement of the population and creation of new restricted military zones means Palestinians can no longer access most of Gaza’s still functioning desalination plants, wells, reservoirs, wastewater pumping stations and solid waste collection facilities. OCHA writes: “The situation is especially dire in Al Mawasi, which is not connected to the water network and relies entirely on fuel-powered water trucking.” Al Mawasi is the small coastal area in the south crammed with tents towards which the population of the entire Gaza Strip is being pushed.
More walls and annexation on the agenda
The high tech above-and-below ground sensor-equipped ‘iron wall’ that Israel completed around Gaza in December 2021 at a cost of $1.1 billion may not have kept the country safe, but no matter. Rather than trying to reach genuine peace with Palestinians and its neighbors, Israel prefers to have another go at securing its population by wall building – this time with a $1.4 billion, 264 mile long high tech barrier along the border with Jordan. According to Defense Minister Israel Katz, “This is a strategic move that will bolster national security, reinforce our hold on the Jordan Valley, ensure Israel’s sovereignty for years to come – and deal a blow to Iran’s efforts to turn the eastern border into a terror front.”
Israel’s Security Cabinet has also reinforced its hold over the entire Area C of the West Bank by passing a measure which Finance Minister Smotrich hailed as tantamount to ‘de facto’ annexation of 60 percent of the West Bank. In the words of Peace Now, the land registration process required by the measure “is a mega theft of Palestinian lands in Area C” which “will result in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the State.” Settler Smotrich rejoiced that “Israel is taking sovereign responsibility for the territory... This will provide legal certainty, support settlement expansion, block the PA’s takeover efforts and eliminate the threat of a Palestinian terror state.”
And so Israel’s land grab accelerates, with some 60 Palestinian communities being ethnically cleansed from Area C by settler violence since October 2023. In a May report the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People states that it is “shocked to see the size and scale of the colonial expansion …Colonial outposts have increased, as have the attacks and clearances of refugee camps, changing the geographical DNA of the occupation, increasingly leaving the administration in the hands of violent settlers….Throughout the official visit, it became evident that what the world is witnessing could very well be a second Nakba….The world cannot stay silent.”
Keeping hope alive
If governments have been slow to respond to the genocide unfolding before the world’s eyes, civil society has not. From massive marches, to solidarity hunger strikes, to the people’s Gaza Tribunal that is being held in Sarajevo all day on May 26-28 (it is being live screened on https://www.youtube.com/@gazatribunal – bear in mind the six hour time difference), the global outrage has been unabating.
Young people especially have refused to stay silent, no matter what life-changing repercussions they may face. To keep despair at bay you should watch the graduation speech delivered at George Washington University in Washington DC by Cecilia Culver, and listen to the audience’s response. The future lies with them.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
Wall posts
Israel Continues to Destroy Water Sources: Civilians Targeted While Digging Well in North Gaza
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of a group of Palestinian volunteers and activists by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Sunday, 18 May 2025, in al-Saftawi area in northern Gaza Strip, while they were digging a water well to serve the residents amid the inability of Gaza’s municipalities and local bodies to supply them with water. Footages capturing the incident revealed the IOF’s horrific crime, as they directly and unjustifiably targeted civilians in blatant disregard for the principle of distinction, which ensures protection of civilians and their property. This crime reflects the IOF’s deliberate destruction of water sources, with the aim of turning Gaza into an unlivable zone and forcibly displacing northern Gaza Strip’s residents.
According to our staff’s monitoring, at approximately 18:15 on Sunday, Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile at a group of activists, who were digging a water well near al-Waleed Petrol Station in a-Saftawi area, north of the Gaza Strip. As a result, seven people were killed, and they were identified as: ‘Awni Mohammed ‘Awni Abu al-Nour (18), Ibrahim Mohammed Isma’il Khela (27), Isma’il Mohammed Isma’il Khela (29), Anas Ramadan ‘Abed al-Razeq Shanan (29), Fawzi Nafiz Mohammed al-Dadad (36), Hasan Mohammed Abu Warda (30), and Tareq Ziyad Mohammed Tanboura (24). Additionally, 5 others sustained various injuries. It is worth noting that the targeted activists were digging the well due to water scarcity in the area and the inability of Gaza’s municipality to pump water into residents’ houses.
This crime was not a separate incident but came as part of a vicious campaign to kill civilians without deterrence and destroy Gaza’s roads, water and health infrastructure over the past 19 months. The Israeli war machine has destroyed more than 330,000 linear meters of water networks and 655,000 linear meters of sewage networks, in addition to approximately 2,850,000 linear meters of roads and streets. Furthermore, 719 water wells have been targeted,1 and complete or partial damage was inflicted on 89% of the water and sanitation sector’s assets. This has resulted in water insecurity for more than 91% of the Gaza population, with 65% of them receiving less than six liters per person per day,2 constituting a deliberate violation of the right to life and human dignity.
According to UN reports, the destruction of Gaza’s water facilities has reached catastrophic and unprecedented levels, as 71% of municipal seawater desalination plants have been destroyed (100% in northern Gaza and Gaza City), along with 69% of water production wells (up to 88% in some areas), and 66% of water tanks. Additionally, the main seawater desalination plant in northern Gaza, which produced 10,000 cubic meters per day,3 was destroyed. Oxfam reported that due to this destruction and fuel shortages, water production has decreased by 84%, worsening the population’s suffering and deepening the crisis of access to safe drinking and domestic water amid the near collapse of the infrastructure.4
PCHR affirms that in this compound crime, the IOF killed innocent civilians struggling to secure their right to water, amid an IOF’s deliberate strategy that violates all international laws and conventions by depriving the Gaza Strip’s population of water and food sources. This materialized through systematic starvation and dehydration, using them as weapons of war aimed at subjugation and displacement of residents, thereby imposing harsh living conditions that align with the elements of genocide, as outlined in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The intent of this strategy is to deliberately inflict conditions of life on Gaza Strip residents calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. The seriousness of these actions lies not only in their transformation of water resources into tools of oppression but also in reflecting a form of ecocide,5 which severely undermines Palestinians’ rights to life, food, land, and dignity, as stipulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In light of the above, PCHR stresses the urgent need for the international community to condemn these crimes and immediately halt them. PCHR also calls on the member states of the Security Council to awaken their collective conscience and work on issuing a binding and immediate resolution to stop the war, ensure the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and enhance their access to water and essential food supplies by activating Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter against Israel. PCHR also calls on the High Contracting Parties to the four Geneva Conventions to pressure and obligate Israel to open safe humanitarian corridors for the delivery of water, fuel, and aid relief, and to allocate urgent resources to repair the damaged water and sewage networks, ensuring the restoration of the bare necessities of life for Gaza’s population.
Gaza’s Government Media Office, Press Release No. (817), an update of the most important statistics of the genocide war on Gaza. ↩︎
Report: Humanitarian response by the UN and humanitarian partners during phase one of the ceasefire. link: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-humanitarian-response-by-the-un-and-humanitarian-partners-during-phase-one-of-the-ceasefire/ ↩︎
“Gaza Strip: WASH Infrastructure Damage Assessment”, Analysis of data presented in WASH Cluster Meeting note (12 June 2024) based on finding of UNOSAT (3 June 2024). ↩︎
Oxfam, Report: How Israel has weaponized water in its military campaign in Gaza, June 2024, link: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621609/bp-water-war-crimes-180724-en.pdf;jsessionid=70739990D729E028EB247E737686F0FD?sequence=1 ↩︎
[1] Laurent Lambert, “Ecocide as Genocide: A Human Security Approach to ‘Utter Annihilation’ in Gaza”, October 06, 2024 Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/Lists/ACRPS-PDFDocumentLibrary/ecocide-as-genocide-a-human-security-approach-to-utter-annihilation-in-gaza.pdf ↩︎
