Ireland calls out Israel’s deal with EU after school massacre

On August 10, an Israeli airstrike targeting a Palestinian school housing displaced families reportedly resulted in nearly 100 deaths. In response, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris has called for an urgent review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, News.Az reports citing The Canary.

Harris released a statement which begins:

This weekend has brought the grisly milestone of 40,000 deaths in Gaza a step closer.

A report released by the Lancet in July 2024 estimated that the number of deaths is actually far higher than this.

By June 19, 2024, 37 396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.

Collecting data is becoming increasingly difficult for the Gaza Health Ministry due to the destruction of much of the infrastructure. The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35 091 deaths were unidentified.

Its estimate was as follows (emphasis added):

In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.

Harris’s statement continued:

There is growing evidence of a prolonged humanitarian catastrophe, and I am particularly disturbed by the confirmation this weekend by the United Nations that the number of aid deliveries reaching Gaza has halved, from a daily average of 169 trucks in April to fewer than 80 trucks a day in June and July.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also says that only 24 of 67 planned aid missions to northern Gaza this month have been facilitated by Israel.

The United Nations has also assessed that more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders since October of last year.

When people are told to leave, they have nowhere to go, so they often go to schools.

490 of Gaza’s schools have been bombed or damaged since the start of the war, and this weekend’s images from inside al-Taba’een school are gut-wrenching. Ireland condemns outright such awful and wholesale loss of civilian life.

A ceasefire remains urgently needed, and all sides must immediately work in good faith to bring one about.

We have all been horrified by the many undoubted war crimes that have been committed in Gaza. There can be no impunity. Those responsible must be held to account.

Harris’s statement ends:

All the legally binding orders of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] must also be implemented in full.

Too many innocent lives have been lost in 10 months.

News.Az