Thursday, November 02, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
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UN: Israel Must Replace Phone Chargers Hamas Lost In Wreckage
Gaza City, November 2 - International pressure came upon Israel today to provide new devices to the Palestinian fighters who can no longer power up their cellphones after access to the original items was severed in airstrikes on Palestinian military positions.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, and heads of several other UN agencies, demanded this morning that Israel replace phone chargers that Hamas and other militant group fighters lost because of IDF activity against command posts, tunnels, missile launchers, and other positions in the Gaza Strip.
"The right to free association is a fundamental human right," declared Grandi. "Denying anyone that over political disagreement - and we can all agree that modern phones are the chief vehicle for free association - is a violation of basic human dignity. Palestinians have been fighting for that dignity for decades."
Grandi made the statement in conjunction with representatives of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Btselem, Médecins Sans Forntières, and several Palestinian human-rights-monitoring groups, all of whom characterized the deprivation by Israel to Hamas of phone chargers as a war crime and collective punishment.
"There is no shortage of innocent content on those phones, and this indiscriminate severing of access to those apps and files is illegal and violates human rights law," stated Sari Bashi of HRW.
"The poor Palestinian mothers won't be able to communicate with their sons," she lamented.
A Btselem activist relayed an account by a Palestinian who had to choose between leaving his phone charger in a tunnel and leaving an Israeli child being held hostage there. "It's a cruel choice Israel forces them to make," cried the activist. "I can't imagine being in that position. But we must force ourselves to imagine it, imagine having to make that choice. There were still limbs on that child for the Palestinian man to cut off, and he was unable to finish the job."
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the chief UN organ for addressing the Palestinian plight, noted its own inability to address the lack of chargers. "Unfortunately, several weeks ago, unknown parties entered our main facility in Gaza and emptied it out of fuel, drinking water, batteries, food, and chargers," the agency stated. "We have asked our contacts in Hamas, who run everything here, and whose rosters overlap with ours, who might have done that and where the supplies might be, and we haven't gotten an answer yet."
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