UNRWA has the capacity and expertise to support a postwar Gaza. We want to help make this peace work - Philippe Lazzarini in The Guardian

Palestinians ride a donkey cart past destroyed buildings in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, 3 November 2025. Photograph: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

With a ceasefire in place, rebuilding must begin, justice be delivered and healing seriously addressed by Palestinian and Israeli societies

• Philippe Lazzarini is the commissioner-general of Unrwa 

".... The path to recovery in Gaza will not be straightforward. The ceasefire is tenuous, with almost daily breaches testing the resolve of its guarantors. A ceasefire that merely prolongs the absence of war without charting a viable path to peace would only repeat the disastrous mistakes of the past. A truly peaceful future requires a genuine investment in a definitive political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Basic security is needed for recovery to take a firm hold. The ceasefire must be buttressed by an international stabilisation force mandated to maintain calm, protect critical infrastructure and guarantee humanitarian access. Such a force would create the necessary space for Palestinian institutions to be rebuilt.

The success of a stabilisation force, and the transition from emergency to stability, will also depend on providing Palestinians in Gaza with reliable public services and a credible pathway to peace and respect for human rights. This can only be accomplished through a capable civil service that has the trust of the community.

We have previously seen the consequences of underestimating the need to provide stable and effective public services – most strikingly in Iraq, when dismantling the civilian administration in 2003 created a governance vacuum that unleashed years of instability. Gaza’s professionals, administrators and community leaders must be part of the solution, not casualties of political resets.

Unrwa, with its thousands of Palestinian personnel, has the capacity, expertise and community trust required to provide healthcare, education and other public services to a devastated population. For decades, the agency’s teachers, doctors and engineers have formed a vital part of a functioning system of public services for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the region.

In its advisory opinion last month, the international court of justice reaffirmed the professionalism of Unrwa’s staff, underlined the agency’s indispensable humanitarian role and concluded that Unrwa remains an impartial and neutral actor...." READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/10/unrwa-rebuild-gaza-peace-israel-palestine?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead- Many of the children who survived attacks have life-changing wounds... More than 40,000 children have been injured in the war, according to the UN. Gaza is now home to more child amputees than any other place in the world.

The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims....

...  compiled using the 31 July 2025 edition of the list of names of the dead, published by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The list records those killed as a direct result of the Israeli bombardment, not those who die as an indirect result of the war, through starvation or other causes. It does not include bodies that could not be identified or did not pass through a hospital morgue.

For the list of names in this story story we filtered the data to include only individuals under the age of 18. English transliterations of the original Arabic names were sourced from Iraq Body Count, a public database of violent civilian deaths.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the families, aside from the picture of Hind Rajab which was provided by AFP.

READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/08/young-lives-cut-short-on-an-unimaginable-scale-the-18457-children-on-gazas-list-of-war-dead

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Israeli soldiers speak out on killings of Gaza civilians

IDF soldiers tell documentary of opening fire unprovoked and arbitrary designations of who was an enemy

Israeli soldiers have described a free-for-all in Gaza and a breakdown in norms and legal constraints, with civilians killed at the whim of individual officers, according to testimony in a TV documentary.

“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank unit, says in Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, due to be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday evening.

Some of the IDF soldiers who talked to the programme requested anonymity while others spoke on the record. All pointed to the evaporation of the official code of conduct concerning civilians.

The soldiers who agreed to talk confirmed the IDF’s routine use of human shields, contradicting official denials, and gave details of Israeli troops opening fire unprovoked on civilians racing to reach food handouts at the militarised distribution points set up by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/10/israeli-soldiers-breaking-ranks-gaza-civilians-human-shields

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