The looming ground assault on the last “safe” zone in Gaza

Avishay Artsy

February 16, 2024

Voices from a besieged Rafah.

 

More than four months into the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza residents are struggling to survive winter conditions with insufficient food, drinking water, medicine, and clothing.

The majority of them have fled to Rafah, a city in the south bordering Egypt. With a prewar population of about 280,000 residents, Rafah is now housing nearly 1.5 million refugees, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (and confirmed by satellite images).

It was, theoretically, a refuge from the intense shelling and ground operation Israel launched after Hamas brutally attacked the country on October 7. That sense has been shattered this week. Israeli airstrikes on Monday killed about 100 people, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated a ground offensive might be imminent.

Meanwhile, negotiations have stalled on discussions of a ceasefire deal and a hostage and prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas.

The negotiations, helmed by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar, ground to a halt Wednesday after Netanyahu called his delegates back from a summit in Cairo, accusing Hamas of presenting “delusional” demands in order to avoid a deal.

The relatives of the estimated 130 remaining hostages said the decision amounts to a “death sentence” for their family members languishing in Hamas captivity, about a quarter of whom are presumed dead.

And it leaves the Palestinians sheltering in Rafah feeling even more hopeless. The Today, Explained podcast team spoke with Aseel Mousa, a Palestinian freelance journalist who grew up in Gaza, about how we got here, what it’s like on the ground right now, and what happens next.

How so many Palestinians ended up in Rafah

As Israel started its aerial bombardment — following the October 7 Hamas attacks, which killed about 1,200 Israelis, with more than 240 people taken hostage — it directed Gazans to flee south to avoid the fighting. That was always a fraught directive in a territory the size of Detroit but almost four times its population. But as the war has progressed, more than 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced.

Mousa’s family is among them. On October 13, her family left their home outside Gaza City and sought shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

For about 80 days, they stayed in her grandfather’s house along with about 40 other displaced people.

“The situation there was dire,” Mousa said. “We faced severe shortages of food, running water, and even drinkable water. And also Israel cut off electricity, communication lines, and internet access.”

“And even though Israel claimed that area as a safe area, I lost 10 people of my family,” she added. “Israel targeted the house of my cousins. And as a result, 10 of my relatives were killed. Seven of them were children. And one of them was a woman. And the others were young men.”

Rafah, refuge no more

Mousa’s childhood home and her grandfather’s home in al-Maghazi were both bombed. As Israeli airstrikes intensified, her family fled farther south, to Rafah.

Now, she and over a million other Palestinians are trapped. A sense of despair pervades Rafah, said Matthew Hollingworth of the World Food Programme, where people are scavenging for food, fuel, and shelter amid “damp, cold, and miserable” conditions. Mousa has been documenting their stories.

She called Monday’s assault “a night of terror beyond description” but said compounding the fear of death is the lack of basic supplies:

“The Israeli bombardment is hard in itself, being under fire, under bombardment, she said. “But being under bombardment without even the essential needs — such as food, water, medical supplies, medicines — is making the problem or the tough time harder than enduring it with only bombing.”

Is a ground offensive coming?

Israeli officials say Rafah is Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza, and that a ground offensive is needed to defeat Hamas and bring an end to the war.

The UN warned that such an operation would lead to “carnage.” But Netanyahu brushed aside concerns in a Fox News interview, saying, “I think the people who are telling you, ‘Oh, you can’t do it, you can’t go into Rafah under any conditions,’ are basically saying ‘Don’t win, lose.’”

Moussa says Rafah’s displaced population is dreading a ground invasion, which she said would be “a catastrophe, as … the people now have no place to go to.”

“What can we do?” she said. “We stay. We stay in the houses. In the tents. In the streets. In the shelters, waiting to be killed. We don’t have a plan F. We made the plan A, plan B, plan C. And we have no more plans.”

The threat of an invasion has increased pressure on US and other officials to get diplomatic negotiations back on track — for both an immediate deal and a longer-term solution.

Arab states insist that after a ceasefire deal is reached, a two-state solution is a prerequisite to normalizing relations with Israel and rebuilding a devastated Gaza Strip.

But Mousa and others like her in Rafah have more immediate concerns:

“We don’t have the luxury to think of the aftermath. We only think how to survive day by day. We think of how to flee from being killed.”

 

The Unrepentant West: Olaf Scholz and the Right to Commit Genocide in Gaza

Ramzy Baroud

On February 8, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Washington on an official visit, aimed at working jointly with the United States to make “sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself”.

If such a statement was made soon after the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation of October 7, one may cognize its logic, based on the well-known, inherent bias of both Washington and Berlin towards Israel.

The statement and the visit, however, were conducted on the 125th day of one of the bloodiest genocides in modern history.

The purpose of the visit was highlighted in a press conference by White House spokesperson John Kirby, even though, hours later, US President Joe Biden admitted that Israel has gone “over the top” in its response to the Hamas attack on October 7.

If killing and wounding over 100,000 civilians, and counting, is Israel’s version of self-defense, then both Scholz and Biden have done a splendid job in ensuring Israel has everything it needs to achieve its bloody mission.

However, in this context, who is entitled to self-defense, Israel or Palestine?

On a recent visit to a hospital in a Middle Eastern country which remains confidential as a precondition for my visit, I witnessed one of the most horrific sights one could ever see. Scores of limbless Palestinian children, some still fighting for their lives, some badly burned and others in a coma.

Those who were able to use their hands have drawn Palestinian flags which hung on the walls beside their hospital beds. Some wore SpongeBob T-shirts and others hats with Disney characters. They were pure, innocent, and very much Palestinian.

A couple of children flashed the victory sign as soon as we said our goodbyes. Little kids wanted to communicate to the world that they remain strong and that they know exactly who they are and where they come from.

The children were far too young to realize the legal and political context of their strong feelings towards their homeland.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 (XXIX) has ‘affirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinian people in Palestine (..), the right to self-determination, (and) the right to national independence and sovereignty”.

The phrase ‘Palestinian right to self-determination’ is perhaps the most frequently uttered phrase in relation to Palestine and the Palestinian struggle since the establishment of the UN.

On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) also affirmed what we already know, that Palestinians are a distinct “national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Those injured Palestinian children do not need legal language or political slogans to locate themselves. The right to live without fear of extermination, without bombs and without military occupation is a natural right, requiring no legal arguments and unfazed by racism, hate speech or propaganda.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a world of common sense, but in topsy-turvy legal and political systems that exist to only cater to the strong.

In this parallel world, Scholz is more concerned about Israel being able to ‘defend itself’ than a besieged Palestinian population, starving, bleeding, yet unable to achieve any tangible measure of justice.

Despite this, Israel still does not have the right to defend itself.

Logically, those carrying out acts of aggression should not demand that their victims refrain from fighting back.

Palestinians have been victimized by Israeli colonialism, military occupation, racial apartheid, siege and now genocide. Therefore, for Israel to invoke Article 51, Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations is a mockery of international law.

Article 51, often used by great powers to justify their wars and military interventions, was designed with a completely different legal spirit in mind.

Article 2 (4) of Chapter I in the UN Charter prohibits the “threat or use of force in international relations.” It also “calls on all Members to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other states.”

Since Israel is in violation of Article 2 (4), it simply has no right to invoke Article 51.

In November 2012, Palestine was recognized as an Observer State at the UN. It is also a member of countless international treaties, and is recognized by 139 countries out of the 193 UN members.

Even if we accept the argument that the UN Charter only applies to full UN members, the Palestinian right to self-defense can still be established.

In 1960, General Assembly Declaration No. 1594 guaranteed independence to colonized nations and people. Although it did not discuss the right of the colonized to use force, it condemned the use of force against liberation movements.

In 1964, the UNGA voted in favor of Resolution No. 2105, which recognized the legitimacy of the ‘struggle’ of colonized nations to exercise their right to self-determination.

In 1973, the Assembly passed Resolution 38/17 of 1983. The language, this time, was unambiguous; people have the right to struggle against colonial foreign domination by all possible means, including armed struggle.

The same dynamics that ruled the UN in its early days continue to this day, where Western countries, which represented the bulk of all colonial powers in the past, continue to give themselves monopoly over the use of force. Conversely, the Global South, which has suffered under the yoke of those Western regimes, insists that it, too, has the right to defend itself against foreign intervention, colonialism, military occupation and apartheid.

While Scholz was in Washington to discuss yet more ways to kill Palestinian civilians, the country of Nicaragua made an official request to join South Africa in its effort to hold Israel accountable for the crime of genocide in Gaza.

It is interesting how the colonizers and the colonized continue to build relations and solidarity around the same old principles. The Global South is, again, rising in solidarity with the Palestinians, while the North, with a few exceptions, continues to support Israeli oppression.

Just before I left the hospital, a wounded child handed me a drawing. It featured several images, stacked one on top of the other, as if the little boy was creating a timeline of events that led to his injury: a tent, with him inside; an Israeli soldier shooting a Palestinian; prison bars, with his father inside and, finally, a Palestinian fighter holding a flag.

 

Water Crisis and untreated Sewage could kill more Gaza Palestinians than Bombs: Threat of Infant Mortality

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al-Arabi al-Jadid reports, “The streets of the Gaza Strip are witnessing a catastrophic environmental crisis due to the mixing of rainwater with sewage water, which is now flooding various roads as a result of a continuous overflow, resulting from the targeting of infrastructure [by the Israeli military], and the inability to drain the necessary quantities of wastewater due to the depletion of fuel, and the complete outage of electricity.”

Some 70% of people in Gaza are forced to drink contaminated water or water with too much salt in it, which is a health hazard, according to Doctors without Borders (MSF). Although each person needs about 3 liters a day of drinking water, and needs four times that for hygiene and other purposes, entire families are getting only 3 liters a day, according to MSf. There is an estimated one toilet for every 500 people.

There is a severe risk of a massive spike in infant mortality from dirty water, not to mention malnutrition from insufficient food being allowed into the Strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on a seldom-considered issue concerning the Israeli assault on the civilians of Gaza, which is the water and sanitation catastrophe. The Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu forced over a million Palestinians of Gaza into the far south of the Strip, Rafah, which is only 20% of its land area. Although the Israelis said that this zone would be safe for noncombatants, they have been bombing it in recent days and say they will invade it. Some two-thirds of the Palestinians so far ethnically cleansed from their homes in the north and center of the Strip have congregated in Rafah.

Although most press reporting has considered mainly the deaths of Palestinian civilians from Israeli bombardment, which have risen to over 27,000, some 70% of them women and children, the deaths from malnutrition and dirty water, i.e. from poor sanitation, have not been reported with the same clarity. Israel has destroyed the Gaza hospital system on the phony pretext that medical complexes are “power centers” and sites of militant Hamas activity. There is no compelling evidence that this narrative is true, and in some instances it has been debunked by US newspapers of record.

Hosny Muhannad, spokesman for the Gaza Municipality, explained to al-Arabi al-Jadid that “the scorched earth policy followed by the [Israeli] occupation [government] during its aggression against the Gaza Strip led to the cessation of many basic service sectors, including the work of municipalities, including repairing main and secondary roads, rainwater drainage, and wastewater drainage from the streets.”

The ground water in Gaza is heavily polluted with sewage and industrial waste. Because of climate change and the rising Mediterranean, salt water has leaked into the aquifer. Only 4% of ground water in Gaza is believed by international health experts to be potable.

Clean water came from three desalinization plants, but the Israelis closed them after October 7 and only restored their production after severe pressure from the Biden administration. However, they deliver water through pipelines. Many of the pipelines don’t work because there is not enough fuel to operate their pumps. Other pipelines have been broken by intensive Israeli bombing.

Neither the some 150,000 remaining Palestinians in North Gaza nor the 1.4 million crowded into Gaza have clean water and sanitation. All 2.25 million Palestinians in Gaza need assistance in these areas.

The UN reports, “Currently only 5.7 per cent of water is being produced from all the water sources in Gaza, compared to pre-war production levels. Safe drinking water and water for domestic use, including personal hygiene, remains very limited.”

There had been 284 groundwater wells. As noted, the water they yielded was problematic. It has a high salt content, which can cause dehydration, and it is often polluted. In ordinary times people could boil it, but people living in tents and shelters without sufficient fuel cannot reliably boil their water. Only 17% of the wells are operating. Some 39 were destroyed by Israeli bombing, and 93 have been damaged.

Needless to say, Gaza City, Rafah and other municipalities cannot run wastewater treatment centers in the midst of this war, in which Israeli pilots and tank commanders have deliberately targeted civilian buildings and infrastructure. None of the wastewater treatment systems are operative. They have either been damaged by bombing, or don’t have enough fuel. There isn’t enough power for solid waste management.

Muhannad told Al-Arabi al-Jadid, “the repeated Israeli targeting of streets and intersections, and the repeated attacks on the already exhausted infrastructure, which caused great destruction in it and hindered its ability to deal with weather depressions and rainwater, which have become traffic obstacles for private vehicles, ambulances, and civil defense”

The bombed out streets are pockmarked so rain water and sewage is standing in these holes.

Gaza is afloat in piss and shit. That is a cholera and hepatitis epidemic waiting to happen.

Infants and toddlers are extremely vulnerable to dehydration from diarrhea, and there is almost certainly an epidemic of dead babies as a result of these unsanitary conditions. Although bombing has killed perhaps 8,000 children (probably many more), the lack of water and lack of clean water will potentially kill many thousands more.

It should be remembered that one reason given by al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks was that US policy in Iraq in the 1990s was to deny the country chlorine imports for water purification, resulting in thousands of deaths of infants.

OCHA notes, “Two out of out of three desalination plans are partially operating: the Middle Area plant produces an average of 750 cubic metres per day and is distributed via water trucking and the South Gaza desalination plant produces 1,700 cubic metres per day; around 600 cubic metres are distributed via water trucking and 1,100 cubic metres via the water network. The UAE’s small desalination plant located on the Egyptian side of Rafah, operates at full capacity, providing 2,400 cubic metres per day, following the construction of a 3-kilometre transmission line.”

That is 4,850 cubic meters of water per day, or 4,850,000 liters. Each individual needs on the order of 12 liters per day of water for drinking, food, hygiene and cooking purposes, according to the World Health Organization. The 2.2 million Palestinians therefore need about 26.4 million liters a day of water. They are only getting 18% of that from the desalinization plants, assuming it can be distributed to them, which is the only really potable water to be had.

The groundwater is dirty. Some refugees are reduced to cupping their hands amidst the sewage in the streets and drinking from it.

The reason I question whether the water from the remaining desalinization plants is even being reliably distributed is that OCHA says this: “Mekorot Connections: Two of the three water pipelines are not functioning (the Mentar pipeline since the beginning of the conflict, and the Bani Suhaila pipeline since 18 December. The Bani Saeed pipeline is functioning, but is currently producing 6,000 cubic metres per day, which is only 42 per cent of its full capacity. Plans are in place to repair the Bani Suheila pipeline, but there are challenges for safe access, communication, and coordination of repair activities.”

OCHA notes anecdotal reports from aid workers and medical personnel of a rise of hepatitis A cases in Gaza.

Since the building materials for constructing toilets and repairing the sewage system are considered dual use by the Israeli authorities (i.e. they could be used by Hamas for its own infrastructure), they are not being let in at the requisite rate. UNICEF tried to construct 80 family latrines this week. But “the sanitation coverage remains very low. WASH partners continue to construct family latrines, but the lack of cement, wood and other construction materials slows down the progress.”

Finally, OCHA says, “The crisis is exacerbated by a fuel shortage, hindering sewage station operation and leading to environmental and public health concerns. The situation is worsened by continuous restricted access to essential sanitation supplies and services in Gaza.”

 

Imperiled Gazans Do Have Somewhere to Go

Sam Husseini

Many professing solidarity with Palestinians — including alleged legal experts — being slaughtered in Gaza have said they have “nowhere to go.”

It’s not true.

They do.

Somewhere they actually should go.

Their homes in what is now Israel.

The majority of families of Palestinians in Gaza were forced there by Israel in 1948.

See this great thread by Hanine Hassan:

“Who told you that the 1.5 million displaced Palestinians sheltering in Rafah have nowhere left to go? My family, now in Rafah, has a home in Jaffa, from which we were expelled by a fascist German family. The majority of our people in Gaza have homes to go to, all over Palestine.”

As Professor John Quigley has noted: “

“They are entitled to repatriation under international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination which Israel has signed and ratified.” (See his writing on this subject here and here.)

And of course there’s U.N. Resolution 194 of Dec. 11, 1948 which

“Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return…”

The extremely pro-Israel U.S. president, Harry Truman, would state the following year that if

“Israel continues to reject the basic principles set forth” in that U.N. resolution, the U.S. government “will regretfully be forced to the conclusion that a revision of its attitude toward Israel has become unavoidable.”

U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte would report on Sept. 18, 1948:

“It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees, who have been rooted in the land for centuries.”

Actually, Bernadotte wouldn’t report that, because the Stern Gang shot him six times the day before his report was issued. They shot his French assistant no fewer than 17 times. No one was ever brought to justice for killing the mediator.

The prospect of Palestinians going back to their homes continues to bring out the most murderous impulses in Israeli officials. AntiWar.com reports:

“Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir said on Sunday that Israeli forces should shoot Palestinian women and children in Gaza if they get too close to the Israeli border. … ‘We cannot have women and children getting close to the border… anyone who gets near must get a bullet [in his head],’ Ben-Gvir said during an argument with Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi about the IDF’s open fire policies, according to The Jerusalem Post.

“After his comments leaked to the press, Ben Gvir doubled down. In a post on X, the Israeli minister said he ‘does not stutter and does not intend to apologize. All those who endanger our citizens by getting near the border must be shot. This is what they do in any normal state.’”

Indeed, in 2018 the “Great March of Return” began, as Palestinians in Gaza tried to simply walk back to their homes.

On Aug. 31, 2023, The Palestine Chronicle reported: “Gaza to Resume Great March of Return Protests.”

Maureen Clare Murphy at The Electronic Intifada noted in September:

“Protests along the Gaza-Israel boundary resumed in August. Massive demonstrations dubbed the Great March of Return were held on a regular basis for nearly two years beginning in early 2018.

The protests were aimed at ending the Israeli siege on Gaza and allowing Palestinian refugees to exercise their right of return as enshrined in international law. Some two-thirds of Gaza’s population of more than two million people are refugees from lands just beyond the boundary fence.

More than 215 Palestinian civilians, including more than 40 children, were killed during those demonstrations, and thousands more wounded by live fire during those protests between March 2018 and December 2019.

A UN commission of inquiry found that Israel’s use of lethal force against protesters warrants criminal investigation and prosecution and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Excessive use of force against Great March of Return protests is expected to be a major focus of the International Criminal Court’s Palestine investigation, should it move forward.”

The recently slain Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer noted on Oct. 8, 2023:

“The very Israeli snipers that gunned down hundreds of Palestinian marchers in the Great Return March in 2018/19 were neutralised by Palestinian freedom fighters.”

In a recent piece in The New York Review of Books — “Gaza: Two Rights of Return — Most Palestinians in Gaza are now displaced at least twice over. They have a right to choose where to return” — Sari Bashi from Human Rights Watch writes as a Jewish woman married to a Palestinian man whose family was forced from their homes in 1948 and again during the current assault:

“I’ll be relieved if my in-laws are merely allowed to return to northern Gaza and receive support to rebuild a house there.”

Israel is great at that. Committing so many crimes such that some people are relieved that the most recent may be alleviated. In fact, such a posture may well facilitate a festering of chronic injustices — and an incentive for Israel to continue its criminality.

 

Art world takes the stage to defend a Palestinian theater

DanaMills

In the early hours of Dec. 13, Israeli forces raided the offices of the Freedom Theatre, a world-renowned bastion of artistic expression in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The soldiers ransacked the building and defaced it with graffiti bearing Jewish symbols, before violently abducting three members of the theater’s community from their homes: artistic director Ahmed Tobasi, producer Mustafa Sheta, and a graduate of the theater’s performing arts program, Jamal Abu Joas.

Tobasi was released the next day; Abu Joas a week later. Sheta, however, was sentenced to six months in administrative detention — a form of arrest that enables Israel to put anyone it deems a security risk behind bars for an indefinite period, without due process. Sheta, who has joined nearly 3,500 Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli prisons, was able to speak with his lawyer for only 10 minutes before the lawyer appeared in a closed military trial.

While this attack comes in the context of a brutal crackdown across the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, it also represents the latest escalation in Israel’s decades-long persecution against the Palestinian cultural sphere in general, and Jenin’s Freedom Theatre in particular. This time, however, Israel’s aggression has not gone unchallenged, and the response from the global artistic community in solidarity with the theater has been unprecedented.

A targeted assault on Palestinian culture

Founded during the First Intifada as the Stone Theatre by Arna Mer-Khamis, the Israeli army destroyed the theater’s original building during its siege of Jenin amid the Second Intifada. In 2006, Arna’s son, Juliano, re-opened the theater in its current venue — a cultural center in the Jenin refugee camp — with Zakaria Zubeidi. Three years later, an unknown individual threw Molotov cocktails at the building while it was empty, and in 2011, a masked gunman killed Juliano as he left the theater.

The Freedom Theatre sees its work as intertwined with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and refuses to ignore decades of Israeli apartheid, colonization, and military occupation. It provides a space for young people in particular to create a political imaginary different from their daily reality, steeped as it is in pervasive dehumanization, oppression, and violence. It enables them to cultivate a vision of equality and freedom and to act it out, making the imagined tangible. It is, in short, a venue of resistance, which is why the theater has been such a frequent target of Israeli attacks over the years.

Since its inception, the Freedom Theatre has staged over 25 different plays to tens of thousands of people in Jenin and beyond, including through successful international tours. Its repertoire is overtly political, allowing transformative processes to emerge from the creative process itself.

Among the plays presented in the theater are George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” Ghassan Kanafani’s “Men in the Sun,” Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” and original plays such as “Fragments of Palestine,” “Power/Poison,” “Return to Palestine,” “The Siege,” and “Suicide Note from Palestine.” The theater also offers workshops and educational activities for children. 

The plays are so powerfully political in part because the theater cannot be separated from its violent surroundings. Jenin has long been a locus of Israeli oppression, but in the past few years it has come to witness military raids on an almost weekly basis. Since October 7, these raids have further intensified, with Israeli forces killing 90 Palestinians in Jenin alone over the past four months.

The December arrests of three members of the Freedom Theatre community thus took place in a dual context: the violence regularly inflicted on Jenin, and the targeted assault on Palestinian culture since the war on Gaza began — a campaign that has included the destruction of an iconic bookstore, Gaza’s main library, the Central Archive Building, and the Rashad al-Shawwa Historical Cultural Centre. These attacks have been read through the lens of cultural genocide: efforts to erase the culture, language, and religion of a specific group.

Yet Israel’s apparent goal of silencing Palestinian cultural critics has backfired. With much of the world aghast at Israel’s brutality in the context of the war on Gaza, the effect of its latest attack on the Freedom Theatre has been to raise the theater’s international profile even higher. After decades of silence in the face of apartheid, occupation, and daily violence experienced by Palestinians, global public discourse and opinion seem to be decisively shifting.

Across the world, public figures are speaking out against Israeli aggression, university campuses are consumed by debates on the issue, and marches of solidarity with Gaza are attracting record numbers of people. There has also been a seismic shift in the world’s understanding of how specific sectors of Palestinian life face routine harassment, dehumanization, and a structural denial of human rights. One such sector, often overlooked but crucially important, is performance arts.

Solidarity from the stage to the streets

Although the Freedom Theatre’s international solidarity networks have been robust for many years, this latest assault on the theater — occurring as it did in the context of Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza — generated an unprecedented response from the global artistic community. Open letters garnered hundreds of signatories from industry professionals, while major players like PEN America have released solidarity statements.

In New York, the theater and performing arts community gathered on Dec. 19 for a rapid response rally, standing in solidarity with the Freedom Theatre and with Palestine more generally in protest of the continued detention of the theater’s members. The rally featured a lineup of speakers who shared personal remarks and performances, including excerpts read from the Freedom Theatre’s “The Revolution’s Promise.”

Other actions in solidarity with the theater took place in France, Scotland, Mexico, Italy, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, more than 1,000 leading lights in the theater world, including such luminaries as Caryl Churchill, Maxine Peake, Vicky Featherstone, and Dominic Cooke, called for the immediate release of Sheta, Abu Joas, and other residents of Jenin who were detained during Israel’s Dec. 13 raid.

Among a global sweep of solidarity with the Freedom Theatre, UK culture workers have come out firing against the silencing of support for Palestinians within their industry. A new collective named Cultural Workers Against Genocide has critiqued arts organizations in the UK for their hypocrisy, noting that “expressions of solidarity readily offered to other peoples facing brutal oppression have not been extended to Palestinians.”

Paul W. Flemming, general secretary of Equity, the UK’s performing arts and entertainment union, told +972 that the union had sent funds to the Freedom Theatre in the wake of the attack. “Members expect their union to take the same approach in Palestine and Israel as we’ve taken over Ukraine and Russia — supporting artists and trades unionists to survive and fight for peace, dignity, and freedom of expression for artists, irrespective of nationality or background,” he said.

On Nov. 29, scores of workers in the culture sector in London staged a walk-out, with the support of the Freedom Theatre, over the silence of cultural institutions and organizations regarding violence in Palestine. The following day, another open letter was published — signed by luminaries in the UK including Olivia Coleman, Juliette Stevenson, and Hassan Abdulrazzak — which stated: “Far from supporting our calls for an end to the violence, many cultural institutions in Western countries are systematically repressing, silencing and stigmatizing Palestinian voices and perspectives.”

There has also been on-stage solidarity. On Nov. 29, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the Ramallah-based Ashtar Theatre called on theater companies around the world to read out the Gaza Monologues. Narrated by 33 young people in 2010, following Israel’s first war on the Strip after withdrawing its settlers and soldiers, the play seeks to bring the voices of Gaza’s young people to the world.

The words written back then echo painfully today: “I dream of having ONE day of safety, I’m sure the world is too busy to remember our situation; six years have passed since we wrote our monologues and we are still under siege … When can we live in peace like the rest of the World?” Companies around the world responded to Ashtar Theatre’s call, including in several venues in the United States, South Africa, and across South Asia and the Middle East.

These solidarity campaigns show that there is a growing understanding of the responsibility and commitment of theater makers to their comrades in Palestine — a development that is especially significant in the context of the deliberate attempts to silence Palestinian voices within the culture sector. In October, for example, the Frankfurt Book Fair hastily canceled the award ceremony for Adania Shibli simply because she is Palestinian. The blowback to that decision, combined with the campaigns in the theater world, suggest a fundamentally new path forward for the arts community.

Subversion and liberation

As the world rallies around the Palestinian cause, the attack on the theater and the solidarity campaigns that this provoked exemplify our current moment: the cruelty that Israeli apartheid brings to the everyday lives of Palestinians, but also the change in how the world reacts to this dehumanization.

Two months after the raid on Jenin’s Freedom Theatre, its producer Mustafa Sheta remains in administrative detention. But it is clear the global arts community is not returning to (show) business as usual, and will continue to fight for Palestinian freedom. The arts have always been a powerful mechanism of subversion and liberation, which is precisely why Israel is cracking down on Palestinian cultural life.

On Feb. 13, it was announced that the Freedom Theater has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The theater responded: “The Freedom Theatre is an artistic movement made possible by the collective effect of thousands of people, starting from Jenin Refugee Camp in Palestine and rippling across the world.”

Oscar Wilde, the renowned Irish playwright, once wrote: “I regard the theater as the greatest art form of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” As Israel’s attacks on Palestinians reach ever more extreme and gruesome magnitudes, those who love theater and have dedicated their lives to it appear ready to stand in solidarity with the Freedom Theatre and defend humanity everywhere.

 

A Cry in the Darkness: “Please Come, Come Take Me”

Jeffrey St. Clair

First Hind Rajab went missing, then her rescuers.

But missing isn’t the right word. Hind is missed. So are the people who tried to save her.

So much depends on using the right words now. On being precise.

Hind didn’t go missing. Her rescuers didn’t go missing.

Hind was trying to escape. Her rescuers were trying to save her.

But you can’t escape from a tank in a small black Kia. Not a tank filled with soldiers who’d fire on a small black Kia, driving away from them. Not a tank armed with the latest explosive shells provided on an emergency order by the US government. Not a tank that would shoot at a frightened young girl.

Six-year-old girls who like to dress up as princesses in pink gowns don’t simply go missing in Gaza City these days. They don’t just disappear. They are disappeared.

Hind Rajab was in her own city when the invaders in tanks came. What was left of it. By late January, 60 percent of the homes in Gaza City had already been destroyed by Israeli missiles and bombs. Hind’s own kindergarten, which she’d recently graduated from had been blown up, as had so many other schools, places of learning, places of shelter and places of safety in Gaza City. (78% of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged amid Israel’s incessant bombing, according to a new report by Relief.net. The 162 school buildings directly hit served more than 175,000 kids.)

But to be a child in Gaza City now is to be a target. There are no safe streets, no sanctuaries. The places where you once felt most at home are now the most likely to be bombed. There are no escape routes. Every corner you turn might put you face-to-face with a tank or in the laser-sights of a sniper or under a Hermes drone.

Hind was missed, but she wasn’t missing. Hind was hiding. Hiding in a car shredded by shrapnel and bullets. Hiding in a car with dead and dying relatives: her aunt, her uncle, three of her cousins. Hiding in a car bleeding from wounds to her back, her hands and her foot. Hiding with her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamadeh, who was also hurt, bleeding and terrified.

Layan had grabbed her dead father’s phone and called the Red Crescent Society. She begged them to come rescue her and Hind. “They are shooting at us,” Layan pleaded. “The tank is right next to me. We’re in the car, the tank is right next to us.” Then there was the sound of gunfire and the line went silent. The dispatcher asked, “Hello? Hello?” There was no answer. The connection had cut out.

The Red Crescent operator called back. Hind answered. She told them Layan had been shot. She told them everyone else in the car was now dead. She stayed on the line for three hours. The dispatcher read her lines from the Koran to calm her.

“I’m so scared,” Hind said. “Please come, come take me. You will come and take me?”

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine your daughter picking up the phone from the dead hands of her cousin, who’d been shot to death only seconds before right in front of her?

The dispatchers told Hind to keep hiding in the car. They told her that an ambulance was coming. They told her that she would soon be safe. Hind had been able to tell Rana Al-Faqueh, the PRCS’s response coordinator, where she was: near the Fares petrol station in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. Her own neighborhood. She told them the entire neighborhood seemed to be under siege by the Israelis.

It was approaching 6 in the evening. The street was now in shadows. It had been three hours since she and her family had been shot. Three hours in the car with the bodies of her dead relatives. Three hours under fire with darkness closing in.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” Hind told Rana.

“Is there gunfire around you?” Rana asked.

“Yes,” Hind said. “Come get me.”

Then the line went dead again. This time for good.

An ambulance had been sent, but it never arrived. Her rescuers came for her, selflessly entered the zone of fire, but never reached her. Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, had gone to the hospital anxiously expecting her daughter any minute, but she never showed up.

Before the ambulance was dispatched, the Red Crescent Society told the Gaza Health Ministry and the IDF about Hind’s call. They told them she was a frightened, wounded six-year-old girl in a black Kia that had been mangled by tank fire. They told them where she was and that an ambulance was coming. They asked that the ambulance be given safe passage to Hind.

After they’d coordinated a plan for her rescue, the RCS dispatched an ambulance crewed by two paramedics: Ahmed al-Madhoon and Youssef Zeino. As Ahmed and Youssef approached the Tel al-Hawa area, they reported to the Red Crescent dispatchers that the IDF was targeting them, that snipers had pointed lasers at the ambulance. Then there was the sound of gunfire and an explosion. The line went silent.

A frantic search began for Hind, Ahmed and Youseff. But no one could enter the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. No Palestinians, at least. Not even to find a little girl. Not even after the tapes of the harrowing calls for help by Layan and Hind had been made public. The IDF had sealed it off.

When CNN reporters, whose deferential posture toward the Israeli regime has recently been detailed by the Guardian, contacted the IDF about Hind and the two paramedics, giving them the coordinates of the car, the Israelis said they were “unfamiliar with the incident described.” Four days later, CNN inquired again about the fate of Hind, Ahmed and Youseff and the IDF replied they were “still looking into it.” The Israelis didn’t look too deeply into “the incident.” The evidence was right before them, done by their own hands, likely captured on footage from their own soldiers, tracked by their own drones.

It would be 12 days before the Israelis withdrew from Tel al-Hawa; 12 days before anyone reached Hind, whose body had been left by the Israelis to decompose in the black Kia next to Layan and Layan’s father and mother and her three siblings (also children); 12 days before anyone discovered what happened to the ambulance sent to rescue her; 12 days before anyone found Ahmed and Youssef, left where they had been shot.

The headlines in the corporate press said Hind’s body had been “found.” But found isn’t the right word. Hind wasn’t missing. Her rescuers knew where she was and were killed because they almost reached her. The Israelis knew where she was, right where they’d killed her and her family. The media made the double massacre sound like a mystery. But there was nothing mysterious about it. By late January, the killing of Hind and her family and the Israeli attack on a Palestinian ambulance had become routine. Since October, at least 146 ambulances have been targeted by the IDF and more than 309 medical workers killed.

Who will rescue the rescuers?

The massacre on that street in Tel al-Hawa took place three days after Israel had been put on notice by the International Court of Justice that it needed to stop committing acts of genocide, stop killing civilians, stop killing children and health care workers–a ruling that Israel has not just ignored but openly defied. Instead, Israel blames the victims of its atrocities. Tel al-Hawa was a closed military zone, the IDF says. Any Palestinians moving on the streets were legitimate targets, the IDF says. The rules of engagement were those of the US troops at My Lai: shoot anything that moves. Even young girls and the paramedics who rushed to treat their wounds.

The black Kia, its windows blown out, the body of the car gashed by shrapnel and riven with bullet holes, was found by Hind’s relatives exactly where Layan and Hind had said it was: right next to the gas station. It was found where it had come under fire from an Israeli tank. It was found near the PRC ambulance that had been sent to rescue Hind, itself shredded by Israeli tank shells and gunfire.

Was Hind alive to see the ambulance approach? Did she think she was finally going to be brought to safety? Did she watch her rescuers come under fire? Did she witness Ahmed and Youssef be killed by the IDF? Was she still alive, alone, as the sky drew dark, left in the chill of the night, knowing now no one was coming to save her?

It’s an excruciating scenario to contemplate, but think about it we must because the pleas of Layan and Hind have given voice to an awful abstraction: 13,000 murdered children in Gaza.

We don’t know most of their names. We don’t know how most of them were killed. We didn’t hear their screams for help in the enveloping darkness.

But Layan and Hind have spoken. We have heard their last words, piercing through the gunshots around them, words that still resonate across the weeks, as Israel prepares its assault on Rafah, the last refuge of 600,000 displaced Palestinian children, many sleeping in tents after fleeing their bombed homes, most of them surely feeling just like Hind: “I’m so scared. Please come, come get me…”