A natural touch for coastal defense

Hybrid solutions which combine nature with common “hard” coastal protection measures may offer more benefits in lower-risk areas

UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

 

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THIS ILLUSTRATION SHOWS NATURAL (CORAL REEF) AND SOFT (REPLANTED MANGROVE) MEASURES, FORMING A HYBRID DEFENSE WITH THE CONCRETE SEA WALL. NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS WERE RECOGNIZED AS A KEY OPTION TO TACKLE THE “TRIPLE PLANETARY CRISIS” OF CLIMATE CHANGE, POLLUTION AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AT THE MOST RECENT UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CONFERENCE, COP28, HELD IN 2023. 

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CREDIT: 2024, NICOLA BURGHALL

Common “hard” coastal defenses, like concrete sea walls, might struggle to keep up with increasing climate risks. A new study shows that combining them with nature-based solutions could, in some contexts, create defenses which are better able to adapt. Researchers reviewed 304 academic articles on the performance of coastal defenses around the world, including: natural environments; soft measures (which support or enrich nature); hard measures (such as concrete sea walls); and hybrids of the aforementioned. Soft and hybrid measures turned out to be more cost-effective than hard measures, and hybrid measures provided the highest hazard reduction overall in low-risk areas. Although their comparative performance during extreme events that pose a high risk is not clear due to lack of data, these results still support the careful inclusion of nature-based solutions to help protect, support and enrich coastal communities. 

 

Japan’s dramatic natural coastline, with iconic views of Mount Fuji, wind-blown pines and rocky beaches, has been captured and admired in paintings and prints for hundreds of years. But take a walk by the ocean nowadays and it can be hard to find a stretch that retains its pristine natural seascape. By the early 1990s, a government survey found that around 40% of the coast had been altered with concrete sea walls, filled harbors, stacks of tetrapods and more, adding swaths of gray to the blue-green landscape. Sprawling coastal cities and towns have grown to house most of the population, so protecting homes and businesses from the dangers of tsunamis, typhoon swells and sea-level rise has become an ever-increasing challenge.

 

“Sea walls, dikes, dams and breakwaters, the so-called traditional hard measures, despite being the most popular coastal defenses globally and with proven track records, are facing challenges to keep pace with increasing climate risks”, explained Lam Thi Mai Huynh, a doctoral student from the graduate program in sustainability science at the University of Tokyo and lead author of a new study on coastal defenses. “These hard structures are expensive to build and require continuous upgrades and repairs as sea level rises and climatic hazards become stronger. Although they are good at mitigating certain coastal disaster risks, they can also cause significant disruption to coastal communities and have adverse environmental effects. Furthermore, they often significantly alter the seascape and sometimes alienate local communities from nature and the very environment we seek to protect.”

 

To better understand the performance and benefits of different hard and nature-based coastal defenses, an international team compared the results of 304 academic studies. Nature-based coastal defenses included: “natural” ecosystems, for example, existing mangroves and coral reefs; “soft” measures, which restore, rehabilitate, reforest or nourish natural ecosystems; and “hybrid” measures that combine both nature-based components and hard structures, such as placing concrete breakwaters in front of mangroves.

 

“By incorporating such natural components, we can create coastal defenses that reduce risk and also offer substantial environmental benefits. We believe that such strategies are very promising in many parts of the world, but they are also not a ‘fix-all’ solution,” said Professor Alexandros Gasparatos from the Institute for Future Initiatives at the University of Tokyo.

 

The researchers analyzed three key aspects of each type of defense: 1. risk reduction (how much the measure could reduce wave height and energy, and influence shoreline change); 2. climate change mitigation (including carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions for nature-based measures); and 3. cost-effectiveness over a 20-year period. 

 

“Our results indicate that among all coastal defense options in lower-risk areas, hybrid measures provide the highest risk reduction. Hybrid measures can harness the advantages of both hard and soft measures. They provide the immediacy of an engineered barrier while largely maintaining the ecological functionality of a permeable vegetated zone,” said Huynh. “All nature-based solutions are found to be effective in storing carbon, while both soft and hybrid measures are relatively more cost-effective than traditional hard measures over a 20-year period, though all have positive economic returns.” 

 

These findings provide strong evidence for integrating and upscaling nature-based components into coastal defenses, but the team advised doing so with caution. “All types of coastal defenses have yet to be adequately tested through paired experiments in circumstances of extreme events and high-risk urgency,” warned Gasparatos. “Until there are many more such experiments focusing on this, we must caution against any universal assumptions about the comparative performance of coastal defense options, whether natural, soft or hybrid measures.” 

 

While acknowledging the limits imposed by the lack of available research on extreme and high-risk situations, Huynh and Gasparatos still believe that this study supports the idea of investing in nature-based solutions for coastal defense in lower-risk areas. Research like this has important implications for policymakers, coastal planners and communities looking to make evidence-based decisions.

 

“I firmly believe that we must think more carefully about the design and function of these barriers in this era of ever-accelerating climate change,” said Huynh. “Not only can nature-based solutions contribute to risk reduction and climate mitigation in many areas, but they can also help reconnect people with nature and support biodiversity. Greening our coastlines can create spaces which enhance quality of life, foster community well-being and inspire environmental stewardship.”

 

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Paper Title:

Lam T.M. Huynh, Jie Su, Quanli Wang, Lindsay C. Stringer, Adam D. Switzer, Alexandros Gasparatos. Meta-analysis shows hybrid engineering-natural coastal defences perform best for climate adaptation and mitigation. Nature Communications. April 9th 2024. Doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-46970-w

 

Funding:

L.H acknowledges the support of Grant-in-Aid Research Fellowship for young Scientist offered by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (23KJ0544). A.G is supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research A offered by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (22H00567).  A.D.S. is supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund (MOE2019-T3-1-004 and MOET32022-0006).

 

Useful Links
Graduate Program in Sustainability Science - Global Leadership Initiative: https://www.sustainability.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/

Graduate School of Frontier Sciences: https://www.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ 

Institute for Future Initiatives: https://ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ 

Gasparatos Lab: https://www.gasparatos-lab.org/ 

 

Research Contact: 

Lam Thi Mai Huynh

Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo

5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa City 277- 8563, Japan.

Email: lam.huynh@s.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp

 

Professor Alexandros Gasparatos

Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), The University of Tokyo

Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033

Email: gasparatos@ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp 

 

Press contact:
Mrs. Nicola Burghall
Public Relations Group, The University of Tokyo,
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8654, Japan
press-releases.adm@gs.mail.u-tokyo.ac.jp

 

About the University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on X (formally Twitter) at @UTokyo_News_en.

 

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-46970-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Meta-analysis shows hybrid engineering-natural coastal defences perform best for climate adaptation and mitigation.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Apr-2024

 

Impact of climate change on marine life much bigger than previously known

Fish and invertebrate animals are far more affected by warmer and more acidic seawater than was previously known. This is the conclusion of a study co-led by NIOZ marine biologist Katharina Alter, based on a new analysis method

ROYAL NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE FOR SEA RESEARCH

 

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REDFIN NEEDLEFISH (STRONGYLURA NOTATA) "HIDING" BELOW THE SEA SURFACE NEAR THE CARRIBEAN ISLAND OF CURACAO. CREDIT: JULIETTE JACQUEMONT (CO-AUTHOR OF THE STUDY).

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CREDIT: JULIETTE JACQUEMONT

Fish and invertebrate animals are far more affected by warmer and more acidic seawater than was previously known. This is the conclusion of a study co-led by NIOZ marine biologist Katharina Alter, based on a new analysis method and published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Lead author Katharina Alter of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) explains why it is essential to summarize and analyze the results of published studies addressing the effects of climate change: “To gain a better understanding of the overall worldwide impact of climate change, marine biologists calculate its effects on all fish or all invertebrate species lumped together. Yet, effects determined in different individual studies can cancel each other out: for example if invertebrate animals such as snails profit from a certain environmental change and other invertebrates, such as sea urchins, suffer from it, the overall effect for invertebrates is concluded to be zero, although both animal groups are affected.”

In fact, snails eat more due to climate change and sea urchins eat less. Alter: “Both effects matter and even have cascading effects: turf algae, the food for sea urchins, grow more while the growth of kelp, the food for gastropods, decreases. The difference in feeding in the two invertebrates causes a shift in the ecosystem from a kelp dominated ecosystem to a turf algae dominated ecosystem, consequently changing the living environment for all other animals living in this ecosystem.”

Important for understanding ecological shifts

Together with colleagues from Wageningen University and 12 other research institutions from the US, France, Argentina, Italy and Chile, dr. Alter developed the new research method that no longer cancels out seemingly contradictory results, but uses both to determine the consequences of climate change on animals’ fitness.

Before the use of this method, ocean warming and more acidic seawater was known to negatively affect fish and invertebrate animals in three general ways: their chance of survival is reduced, their metabolism is increased, and the skeletons of invertebrates are weakened.

Using the new method, the international group of marine researchers discovered that climate change has negative effects on additional important biological responses of fish and invertebrates: physiology, reproduction, behaviour and physical development. Alter: “Because this may result in ecological shifts impacting marine ecosystem structures, our results suggest that climate change will likely have stronger impacts than previously thought.”

Up to 100% of biological processes affected

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the air have been causing warmer and more acidic seawater for decades, a trend that is expected to continue in the future. However, it is unknown at which speed and to what extent.

Alter and her colleagues calculated the consequences of three projected scenarios of carbon dioxide increase, and thus of ocean warming and ocean acidification: extreme increase, moderate increase at the current speed and – due to possible measures – mitigated increase. Alter: “Our new approach suggests that if ocean warming and acidification continue on the current trajectory, up to 100% of the biological processes in fish and invertebrate species will be affected, while previous research methods found changes in only about 20 and 25% of all processes, respectively.”

Furthermore, the research shows that measures to mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will help reduce changes in biological processes: in the low carbon dioxide scenario, 50% of responses in invertebrates and 30% in fish will be affected.

Detect hidden impacts

The big gain of the new method, according to Alter, is that more details become known about effects of climate change on species. "The new calculation method weighs the significant deviation from the current state irrespective of its direction - be it beneficial or detrimental - and counts it as impact of warming and acidifying seawater. With our new approach, you can include the broadest range of measured responses and detect impacts that were hidden in the traditional approach."

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-47064-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Hidden impacts of ocean warming andacidification on biological responses ofmarine animals revealed through meta-analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

Are lab-grown brain tissues ethical? There is no no-brainer answer

Insights into ethical and legal ramifications of growing brain organoids from human fetal brain tissue

HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY

Brain organoids, though often referred to as “mini brains,” are not truly human brains. But the concerns over these lab-grown brain tissues, especially when they are developed from human fetal tissues, can be very human indeed.

Researchers from the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University offer valuable insights into the complexities inherent in brain organoid research, making significant contributions to the ongoing discourse surrounding this innovative biotechnology and paving the way for informed decision-making and legal and ethical stewardship in the pursuit of scientific advancement.

Their paper was published on March 4 in EMBO Reports.

Brain organoids are three-dimensional human brain tissues derived from stem cells, which are capable of developing into many different cell types. They replicate the complexity of the human brain in a laboratory setting, allowing researchers to study brain development and diseases in the hopes of acquiring vital insights and making innovative medical advancements.

Traditionally, brain organoids are grown from pluripotent stem cells, an especially potent sub-type that is typical of early embryonic development, but new technologies now make it possible to generate these organoids from human fetal brain cells. This method comes, however, with even more heated legal and ethical debates about brain organoids — debates that are already intense in conventional organoid research.

“Our research seeks to illuminate previously often-overlooked ethical dilemmas and legal complexities that arise at the intersection of advanced organoid research and the use of fetal tissue, which is predominantly obtained through elective abortions,” said Tsutomu Sawai, an associate professor at Hiroshima University and lead author of the study.

The study highlights the urgent need for a sophisticated and globally harmonized regulatory framework tailored to navigate the complex ethical and legal landscape of fetal brain organoid (FeBO) research. The paper emphasizes the importance of informed consent protocols, ethical considerations surrounding organoid consciousness, transplantation of organoids into animals, integration with computational systems, and broader debates related to embryo research and the ethics of abortion.

“Our plan is to vigorously advocate for the development of thorough ethical and regulatory frameworks for brain organoid research, including FeBO research, at both national and international levels,” said Masanori Kataoka, a fellow researcher at Hiroshima University.

“Rather than being limited to issues of consciousness, it’s imperative, now more than ever, to systematically advance the ethical and regulatory discussion in order to responsibly and ethically advance scientific and medical progress,” Sawai said.

Moving forward, the research duo plans to continue supporting the advancement of ethical and regulatory discussions surrounding brain organoid research. By promoting responsible and ethical progress in science and medicine, they aim to ensure that all research involving brain organoids, including FeBOs, is conducted within a framework that prioritizes human dignity and ethical integrity.

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About Hiroshima University

Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 4 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan. English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en

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JOURNAL

EMBO Reports

DOI

10.1038/s44319-024-00099-5 

ARTICLE TITLE

The ethical and legal challenges of human foetal brain tissue-derived organoids: At the intersection of science, ethics, and regulation

 

Tiny brain bubbles carry complete codes

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys demonstrated that vesicles traveling between cells in the brain carry more complete instructions for altering cellular function than previously thought.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SANFORD-BURNHAM PREBYS

 

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THIS PORTRAIT OF EXTRACELLULAR VESICLES WAS TAKEN USING CONFOCAL LASER SCANNING MICROSCOPY. THE MEMBRANE WAS STAINED WITH FLUORESCENT DYE. IMAGE TITLED “Exosomes” COURTESY OF TOMAŽ EINFALT, UNIVERSITY OF BASEL, UNDER Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.

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CREDIT: TOMAŽ EINFALT

In findings published in Cell Reports, senior author Jerold Chun, M.D., Ph.D., and team also discovered that the biological instructions within these vesicles differed significantly in postmortem brain samples donated from patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers call the tiny brain bubbles under scrutiny in this study small extracellular vesicles (sEVs). These tiny biological water balloons are produced by most cells in the body to ferry a wide variety of proteins, lipids and byproducts of cellular metabolism, as well as RNA nucleic acid codes used by recipient cells to construct new proteins.

Because this biologically active cargo can easily elicit changes in other cells, scientists are interested in brain sEVs as a medium for passing along normal as well as bungled instructions for misfolded proteins that accumulate in the brain as neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease progress.

To be a potential contributor to the buildup of unwanted proteins, sEVs would have to carry blueprints with sufficient information to enable other cells to produce the problematic proteins. Most previous research had indicated that the messenger RNA (mRNA) carrying plans for proteins were chopped into too many shorter fragments to allow recipient cells to change their construction patterns.

“We found quite the opposite to be true in our study,” says Chun, professor in the Center for Genetic Disorders and Aging Research at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “We identified more than 10,000 full-length mRNAs through the use of a relatively newer DNA sequencing technique called PacBio long-read sequencing.”

The team isolated sEVs from the prefrontal cortex of 12 postmortem brain samples donated from patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and 12 from donors without Alzheimer’s disease (or any other known neurological disease). Nearly 80% of identified mRNAs were full-length, allowing them to be transcribed by recipient cells into viable proteins.

“To corroborate the results of long-read sequencing in the human samples, we also looked at vesicles isolated from mouse cells,” says first author Linnea Ransom, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “We found similar averages of between 78% and 86% full-length transcripts in three brain cell types: astrocytes, microglia and neurons.”

In addition to analyzing and validating the results regarding the length of mRNAs in brain sEVs, the researchers compared the sequence of genes reflected in the sEV mRNA transcriptome. In Alzheimer’s disease samples, 700 genes showed increased expression whereas nearly 1500 were found to have reduced activity.

The scientists determined that the 700 upregulated genes are associated with inflammation and immune system activation, which fits within known patterns of brain inflammation present in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers also found many genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in prior genome-wide association studies also were present in Alzheimer’s disease sEVs.

“The changes in gene expression contained in these vesicles reveal an inflammatory signature that may serve as a window into disease processes occurring in the brain as Alzheimer’s disease progresses,” says Chun.

Following this study, Chun and team will dig deeper into how cells package sEVs and how the enclosed mRNA codes lead to functional changes in other brain cells affected in Alzheimer’s disease. Better understanding of sEVs and their mRNA contents may enable the discovery of biomarkers that could be used to improve early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and potentially other neurological conditions, while identifying new disease mechanisms to provide new therapeutic targets. 

“Additionally, sEVs naturally occur as a vehicle for transporting biologically active cargo between cells, so it also may be possible to leverage them as a targeted delivery system for future brain therapies” says Chun.

Additional authors on the study include Linnea S. Ransom, Christine S. Liu, Emily Dunsmore, Carter R. Palmer, Juliet Nicodemus, Derya Ziomek and Nyssa Williams, all at Sanford Burnham Prebys.

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging (R01AG065541 and R01AG071465), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32GM007752) and Rotary International.

The study’s DOI is 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114061.

Immunofluorescence was used to validate primary cell culture purity.  Image courtesy of the Chun lab.

Negative-stain transmission electron microscopy was used to confirm the isolation of small extracellular vesicles in mouse neurons (shown above), as well as in mouse astrocytes and microglia. Image courtesy of the Chun lab.

CREDIT

The Chun lab

JOURNAL

Cell Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114061 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Human tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Human brain small extracellular vesicles contain selectively packaged, full-length mRNA

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Apr-2024

COI STATEMENT

J.C. has been or is a consultant or scientific advisory board member or has received research support for projects unrelated to the current work from the following: Aardvark Therapeutics, Aardwolf Therapeutics, Abbott/Abbvie, Amira Pharmaceuticals, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Autobahn Therapeutics, Biogen Idec, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, Bristol Myers Squibb, Celgene, GSK, Inception Sciences, Janssen Research and Development, Longboard Pharmaceuticals, MindX, Mitsubishi Tanabe, Neurocrine Biosciences, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Ono Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Pipeline Therapeutics, RuiYi, ShouTi, Simulyve International, Structure Therapeutics, Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Travecta Therapeutics, Trevena, and Vial. J.C. has an employment relationship with Neurocrine Biosciences, a company that may potentially benefit from the research results. J.C.’s relationship with Neurocrine Biosciences has been reviewed and approved by the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

Israel blocking more food than other aid in hunger-stalked Gaza: UN

Geneva (AFP) – Israel is blocking far more convoys carrying food aid within Gaza, where famine is looming, than convoys carrying other kinds of aid, the UN said Tuesday.

Issued on: 09/04/2024

Palestinians jostled to obtain food aid in February in the northern Gaza Strip, where an estimated 70 percent of people face famine conditions 

A spokesman for the United Nations' humanitarian agency pointed to statistics from March showing that it was much more difficult to get clearance for delivering food than other aid in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

"Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70 percent of people face famine conditions, are ... three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian convoys with other kinds of material," Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, which is facing a humanitarian catastrophe six months into the war that erupted after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack inside Israel.

Israel meanwhile charges that the main problem is with UN aid distribution within Gaza.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that manages the flow of aid, said Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter, that "741 humanitarian aid trucks were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip over the last 2 days".

"Only 267 aid trucks were distributed by UN aid agencies inside Gaza (out of which 146 carried food)," it said.

"The aid is available, distribution is what matters."
'Meaningless'

Laerke said such comparisons were "meaningless" for a number of reasons.

He pointed out that the trucks screened by COGAT were "typically only half-full. That is a requirement that they have put in place for screening purposes".

The trucks are then reloaded, filling them up fully, before moving on to the warehouses.

"Already there, the numbers will never match up," Laerke said.

He also insisted that "counting day to day and comparing makes little sense because it does not take into account the delays that happen at the crossing and the further movement to warehouses".

He pointed to delays linked to the crossing point opening hours and the fact that Israel has barred Egyptian drivers and trucks from being in the same area at the same time as Palestinian drivers and trucks.

"That means there's not a smooth handover," Laerke said.

The main problem though was then getting authorisation and assurances that aid distribution can go ahead unimpeded, he said.

While Israel complains about UN distribution, "half of the convoys that we were trying to send to the north with food (in March) were denied by the very same Israeli authorities".

Laerke stressed that "the obligation is on the warring parties, and in particular... on Israel as the occupying power of Gaza, to facilitate and ensure humanitarian access does not stop at the border".

"It also pertains to movements inside Gaza."

‘All we think about is how to stay alive’: the horror of daily life for those trapped in Gaza


Peter Beaumont and Kaamil Ahmed

THE GUARDIAN
Sat, 6 April 2024 

Children queuing for food aid in Rafah: the UN says 1.1 million people are expected to live with catastrophic hunger within three months.Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Two hundred and fifty calories represents two slices of supermarket wholemeal bread sold in the UK. Twelve per cent of recommended nutrition intake. Today in northern Gaza, already in the grip of a “catastrophic” level of hunger as defined by the UN, it represents an entire day’s calorific intake.

Six months into Israel’s war against Gaza, which followed Hamas’s brutal surprise attack on southern Israel’s border communities on 7 October last year which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw almost 250 ­others taken hostage, acute hunger has become pervasive in the coastal strip.

For those who have money, food is in perilously short supply. For those with none – and with Israel, according to UN officials and other agencies, having obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid for months – finding sustenance has become a matter of life and death.


According to the IPC, the UN-backed hunger-monitoring mechanism, 1.1 million people, half of Gaza’s population, are expected to live with catastrophic hunger within three months if the violence does not escalate.

“Before the war we were in good health and had strong bodies,” one mother recently told the British-based aid agency Oxfam. “Now, when I look at my children and myself, we have lost so much weight. We try to eat whatever we find, edible plants or herbs, just to survive.”

Another mother of six echoed this account to the World Health Organisation, explaining that in the markets wild plants are mainly available at high prices with “no vegetables, no fruits, no juice… no lentils, no rice, no potatoes or eggplants, nothing”, leaving many to survive by eating mallow, a common leafy weed. In a ruined and besieged Gaza, threatened constantly by bombs, artillery and drones, life is defined by a refrain repeated by many. “I’m still alive. I’m still breathing.”

“I don’t know if I still feel anything other than fear, sadness and frustration,” says Mohammed Mortaja, one of hundreds of thousands who have been displaced to the southern city of Rafah, even now a place under threat of a new Israeli offensive.

“Every morning the sun rises and you are alive. Your daily journey is to remain alive – between the search for water and food and escaping from the bombing and occupation.”

Mortaja says he is completely focused on survival and no longer pays attention to the news. After six long months, hope, too, has been set aside, replaced by a numb sense of dislocation.

“I’m no longer tempted by words like truce or ceasefire. I don’t care about anything – I just search for what can satisfy my hunger and my thirst and I wait anxiously for my death.”

More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including more than 13,000 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

In half a year of violent conflict, that in turn followed years of an Israeli blockade of the coastal strip which served more to strengthen Hamas than to undermine it, Gaza is defined today more by what has been lost than what remains of a once-vibrant society.

Apartment blocks and whole neighbourhoods have been flattened. Hospitals have been reduced to ruins, now roamed by dogs and stinking of sewage. Universities have been blown up and agriculture destroyed. Electricity and with it the ability to process potable and waste water has been fatally disrupted, contributing to the rampant spread of disease.

As of last month, satellite images analysed by the United Nations Satellite Centre concluded that 35% of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged in the offensive. Life itself has been atomised as the war has driven over 80 percent of the population of 2.3 million out of their homes to seek shelter mainly in the south in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.

Aid deliveries have been throttled by Israel’s closure of land crossings into Gaza, while recent air drop operations are limited in scale and have on several occasions led to deaths after problems with parachute failures and aid dropping into the sea.

The question for Gaza is where the war goes from here. An avalanche of international condemnation of Israel for its killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity last week in a protracted drone strike that hit their cars, one after the other, follows anger at the high and escalating death toll and a growing famine.

And while Israel, under US pressure following the aid worker deaths, has agreed to open more border crossings to allow in more aid, some international officials, including the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, believe it is too little and too late to prevent starvation.

“Israel and its allies must ensure that aid can now flow freely to avert a famine, and that there will be a protection system for humanitarian workers that guarantees our security. Most of all we need protection for Palestinian civilians, who have been indiscriminately killed during these last six months,” said Jan Egeland, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s secretary general.

Alongside the threat of famine, the biggest question is what happens to Rafah, home to 1.5 million people, which Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he plans to attack despite the objections of Washington and other allies.

Ahmed Masoud, a Gazan human rights activist now living in Rafah after being displaced six times over the past six months – a typical experience – says he has lost 40 of his friends, his home and his job. Now he fears losing his mental health.

“All we think about is how to stay alive and struggling to get water and food. Once the night comes, we think more about being killed - especially because we hear 24/7 the sound of Israeli warplanes, especially the drones,” says Masoud, who describes a constant battle to keep his mental health which he fears may not survive the war.

“I’m so lucky that I still have my mind and I haven’t lost it yet.”

But Rafah now is no longer a safe zone – though it has never been exempted from airstrikes – and the population says rumours have built of a looming Israeli invasion.

“Everything is destroyed around us. We feel that at any moment now they will enter Rafah,” said another Palestinian living in the city, who did not want to be named. “We are waiting to evacuate Rafah at any moment. We will probably go towards the sea, to the beach.”

Masoud says everyone in Rafah is waiting for an invasion but they do not know where to go.

The corrosive and all-pervading sense of fear has driven those with contacts abroad to issue desperate pleas to borrow money to pay the heavy bribes required by Egyptian “brokers” – sometimes ­amounting to tens of thousands of dollars for a single family – to escape across the border.

“The American administration wants a clear plan to evacuate people to safety. To be honest, I don’t know what ‘safe area’ they’re talking about,” he says. “It’s a really big fear but we’ve got used to being killed, to hearing sad news, so we have nothing to lose. So here we are, waiting for our destiny.”

Despite the growing international pressure to stop the fighting, including the recent passage of a resolution to that effect in the UN Security Council, ceasefire negotiations centred on a release of the dozens of Israeli hostages held by Hamas – many of whom are believed to have died in captivity – remain stuck despite the scale of the suffering.

Hamas says Israel’s forces must leave Gaza. Israel says it must finish its destruction of Hamas.

Yet despite Israel’s claims to have killed around 13,000 Hamas fighters and dismantled the group’s military capabilities across most of Gaza there is no sign that Hamas is finished, with its fighters regrouping in areas where Israel previously declared victory.

Michael Milshtein, a former high-ranking Israeli military intelligence officer who is an expert in Palestinian studies at Tel Aviv University, says Israel faces two unappealing choices: accept a hostage and ceasefire deal that acknowledges Hamas has survived, or step up the military campaign and conquer Gaza in the hope that Hamas will eventually be destroyed.

He said expectations that the Israeli military’s current approach can destroy Hamas or force it to surrender are “wishful thinking”.

Amos Harel in Israeli newspaper Haaretz was even more blunt, describing a stagnated war, burnt-out troops and an ever-increasing insensitivity to Palestinian lives where “the notion that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza’” is rife among the combat troops.

“Today it is clear to everyone – other than blind followers – that the promises of ‘total victory’ that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made every other day are totally worthless,” he wrote.

For now, all that can be said with any certainty is that a war launched with unrealistic expectations will drag on longer yet amid Israel’s growing international isolation.

And that those paying the heaviest price are Gaza’s Palestinian civilians.

'Unbearable': Gaza families try to identify Al-Shifa dead

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinian nurse Maha Sweylem came to the gutted shell of the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza hoping yet dreading for news of her husband, whom she said was a doctor there.

Issued on: 09/04/2024 -

Palestinian forensic and civil defence workers recover human remains from the grounds of Al-Shifa hospital devastated by a two-week Israeli raid 

World Health Organization teams arrived at what was Gaza's biggest hospital Monday to help identify the bodies that litter the ruins.

The Israeli military said it battled with Palestinian militants there during two weeks of fierce fighting last month, with the WHO saying that patients were trapped inside.

Sweylem told AFP that she had not seen her husband, Abdel Aziz Kali, since he was arrested by the Israel military during the assault. She does not know if he is dead or alive.

The nurse recalled how the Israeli army had quickly surrounded the hospital last month and then used loudspeakers to order that "'everyone must surrender. Game over.' Then, they started shooting at all the entrances, preventing anyone from moving.

"I spent four days there with my two little daughters, without any food or drink. They cried from hunger. When they arrested my husband, he had not eaten for three days," she said.

AFP asked the Israeli army if they know of Kali's whereabouts, but there was no immediate response.

The Israeli military have long accused Hamas and Palestinian militants of using hospitals and other medical facilities as hideouts and command posts, and their patients as shields.

Motasem Salah, director of the Gaza Emergency Operations Centre, said the scenes Monday at the sprawling medical centre were "unbearable".

"The stench of death is everywhere", he said, as a digger went through the rubble and rescue workers pulled decomposed bodies from the sand and ruins.

Salah said Gaza lacked the forensic experts needed to help identify the dead or determine what had happened to them. So they are relying on "the expertise of the WHO and OCHA (UN humanitarian office) delegation."

They are trying "to identify the decomposed bodies and the body parts that were crushed" from wallets and documents, he said.

Relatives were also there "to ascertain the fate of their sons, whether they have been killed, are missing, or have been displaced to the south," said Amjad Aliwa, the head of Al-Shifa's emergency department.

He said they wanted to identify "their sons and ensure they receive a proper burial. However, we lack the necessary equipment, and time is not on our side. We must complete the job before the bodies decompose," Aliwa told AFP.
'Partially buried, limbs visible'

Salah said the psychological impact of this "unwatchable" process on the families is unbearable, in another WHO video from the scene shared with AFP.
The Israeli military have long accused Hamas and other Palestinian militants of using hospitals as hideouts and command posts © - / AFP

"Seeing their children as decomposing corpses and their bodies completely torn apart is a scene that can't be described. There are no words for it."

Several worried relatives walked among what the WHO said were "numerous shallow graves" outside the devastated emergency department and the administrative and surgical buildings.

"Many dead bodies were partially buried with their limbs visible," it said in a statement after its first visit to the site Friday.

"Safeguarding dignity, even in death, is an indispensable act of humanity," the WHO insisted.

A "place where life was given, is now a place that now reminds (us) only of death," said Athanasios Gargavanis, the WHO surgeon leading its mission on Monday. "Hospitals should never be militarised."

For the past six months, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the besieged, densely populated Gaza Strip, killing at least 33,360 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The Gaza war began after an unprecedented cross-border attack by Hamas fighters on October 7 that resulted in the death of 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP toll from official Israeli figures.

AFP video images from Al-Shifa on Monday showed the remains of several bodies being recovered from one of the courtyards of the hospital and put into body bags.

For the son of one of the missing, Ghassan Riyadh Kanita, whose 83-year-old father Riyadh had taken refuge in the hospital, the news was not good.

"My nephew called us and he told me that they found the body at the entrance of Al-Shifa. We came and they told us that they found the body."

© 2024 AFP

Israel Gaza war: West's continued support for Israeli government risks the collapse of its moral authority – Joyce McMillan

Israel had a right to respond militarily to the Hamas October 7 attacks, but the West’s failure to stop or lessen the current nightmare in Gaza is destroying its credibility and influence in the world

Columnists
By Joyce McMillan

SCOTSMAN
Published 5th Apr 2024


Head along to the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, this month, and you will see, in the brilliant musical Hamilton, a show that speaks volumes about the world we have lived in, these last 250 years. On one hand, this fast and furious account of the founding of the United States – as performed by a superb young mainly black company – offers a huge tribute to the immense potential, even now, of the American dream of a nation founded on the great enlightenment principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Yet, at the same time, the show also – both implicitly and explicitly – begins to expose the cracks in that dream, in the exclusion from power and full citizenship of women, enslaved black people, and many others; and I have been thinking about it a great deal, as I cast a grim eye over the current state of global politics. For as every government in the world has now acknowledged, the toll of death and destruction in Gaza, over the last six months, has been shocking almost beyond words. In a confined space smaller than the island of Arran, more than two million people – from a population of 2.5 million – have been displaced from their homes, which in many cases have been reduced to rubble.

More than 30,000 Gazans have been killed, including more than 12,000 children; and on Wednesday, the Guardian reported that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is using drones powered by artificial intelligence to select targets, on the basis that an average of 20 collateral civilian deaths is acceptable, for each Hamas individual targeted. Furthermore, allegedly targeted attacks on aid workers have taken place at a time when, according to the United Nations and other aid agencies, more than a million people in Gaza are facing famine, and the whole population is increasingly malnourished.

The people of Gaza, in other words, are not only being bombed towards oblivion, but are being subjected to an entirely human-made famine and drought, with terrible consequences; and it is perhaps not surprising that six months into the conflict, even those Western governments which at first stood most staunchly by Israel’s right to defend itself, after the brutal Hamas attack on south Israel on October 7, are beginning to change their tune, particularly – of course – since this week’s fatal Israeli attack on a group of aid workers which included British and Australian citizens.

An extremist government

In truth, though, this week’s talk of finally ending arms supplies to Israel comes much too late. The form of action taken by Israel after October 7 – the collective punishment of a whole people, and the devastation of Gaza’s cities and civilian infrastructure – has, most experts agree, been in blatant breach of international law from the outset. Nor is it remotely anti-semitic or even anti-Israeli to point this out. Millions of Jewish people worldwide, and hundreds of thousands in Israel itself, are well aware of these facts; and of how the country’s long-term future, long guaranteed by the West, is being jeopardised by its current extremist government.

Gaza ceasefire: When even aid workers trying to prevent famine are being killed,...

For the truth is that something is dying in Gaza, alongside those thousands of children, their parents and grandparents; and that other, invisible victim is the long age of Western hegemony and leadership, across large parts of the globe, in which the story of the founding of the United States played such a key part, and on which the continued existence of Israel has long depended.

It began with empire, of course – Spanish, British, French, Dutch – but then thrived on the rapid expansion of US economic power. It survived the trauma of the Second World War, and saw perhaps its finest hour with the founding of the UN, in 1945. And as recently as the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, leaders like George Bush Senior and Tony Blair still thought that they could roll out a New World Order which would combine extensive lip service to UN principles with very little real restriction on the vast power of Western clients and corporations. Small wonder that when the late Robin Cook became UK Foreign Secretary in 1997, he issued a clarion call for an “ethical foreign policy” which would take seriously the international law and UN principles that the West claimed to embrace, or risk an eventual collapse of Western credibility and global influence.

West’s ambivalence towards its values

And now, it seems that that moment of collapse has arrived. That the horror of the Hamas attack of October 7 justified a military response from Israel is not in doubt; but the failure of the Western powers to prevent or even modify the current nightmare in Gaza has utterly destroyed the global moral authority of the states most deeply involved, including the United States and the UK, and has opened our governments to possible legal action for complicity in what is at best a forced and brutal act of ethnic cleansing.

Whether any of those embryonic structures of international law will even survive this current age of political chaos, though, must now be in doubt. Fifty-six years ago in Washington, Martin Luther King dreamed of the day when his country would “live out the meaning of its creed” – that is, of the great enlightenment declaration that all humanity is truly created equal, with an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Yet now, the West’s ever-more visible ambivalence about those values – and the terrible, reactionary culture wars that now tear us apart, whenever any government seriously tries to implement those principles – seem on the point of bringing to ruin the whole world order the West once tried to build. And with “strong man” authoritarian leaders like Presidents Xi and Putin increasingly dominating the global stage, the consequences of that self-inflicted collapse could be brutal indeed; possibly for ourselves, certainly for our children, and perhaps for many struggling generations to come.