October 14, 2024
Ann Arbor(Informed Comment) – One reason for which Palestinians in northern Gaza are
resisting attempts of the Israelis to expel hundreds of thousands of them
from what is left of their residences is that the center and the south of the
country are still being indiscriminately bombarded by the Israeli military.
Early on Monday morning (today), the Israeli army shelled the courtyard of
al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip,
setting fire to refugee tents there. Initial reports said that 3 people were
killed and 40 injured, though observers expect the casualty toll to climb. Some
images from the scene released on social media showed patients in the courtyard
hooked up to IV drips being engulfed by flames.
Israeli attacks
on hospitals are common. The UN High Commission on Human Rights has accused
Israeli authorities of deliberately destroying the medical infrastructure of
Gaza.
Meawhile,
Israeli shelling of a school at the Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza killed 15
children and a woman and injured 80 others. Israel has bombarded 191
displacement centers in Gaza during the past year, presumably because their
automated attack programs, Lavender and Go Daddy, discovered known members of
al-Qassam Brigades there, and hit them without regard for the civilians around
them.
The Israelis
also bombed the Mufti School in Nuseirat Camp, where thousands of displaced
children and women had sought shelter.
Haaretz reports
that senior Israeli military officers are saying privately that the
negotiations for the release of the remaining 101 Israeli hostages in Gaza are
being abandoned and that Israel will seek to seize substantial portions of the
Gaza Strip. The annexation of territory by military force is forbidden by the
United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.
The officers,
reports Yaniv Kubovich, said that the recent offensive in North Gaza was
launched without consultations. That statement is likely a code for Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hardliners on his cabinet ordering the army in
abruptly and without military rationale. The officers seemed confused about why
the Israeli government is expelling the 400,000 Palestinians of Gaza from the
north. Israel had announced months ago that Hamas was cleared from North Gaza.
Kubovich wonders
if the current North Gaza campaign is intended to implement the “surrender or
starve strategy” that had been proposed by retired General Giora Eiland, which
envisaged that all inhabitants of northern Gaza would be expelled to the south.
Anyone who declined to leave would be deemed Hamas and could be legitimately
targeted and cut entirely off from food and other humanitarian aid. Only the
Palestinians who allowed themselves to be pushed out of their homes and who
risked random Israeli bombardment could hope to get so much as an occasional
meal in the south of the Strip.
The new campaign
against the civilian population of northern Gaza involved ordering the 162nd
Division to relocate from southern Gaza to the north. There, it was positioned
to launch a wider ranging attack on the Jabalia refugee camp. Kubovich reports
that military circles do not see a military justification for this campaign.
Ground and air
operations against Jabalia have been ongoing for the past week, as Israeli
officers demanded everyone leave, which one volunteer French nurse on the
ground called “a direct death sentence” on the 400,000 civilians. On Saturday,
an Israeli bombardment killed 22 and wounded more than 90 persons, including
women and children, according to Al Jazeerah
Expulsion of an
occupied population is a crime of humanity according to International
Humanitarian Law, including the Rome Statute that underlies the International
Criminal Court. The ICC prosecutor has asked for warrants for Prime Minister
Netanyahu and the International Court of Justice is considering a case brought
by South Africa against Israel charging it with the commission of genocide in
Gaza.
Mohammed
al-Hajjar
The
Israeli military has attacked tents housing displaced people at Al-Aqsa
Hospital in central Gaza, creating a fire which killed four people and wounded
scores of others.
Medical
sources cited by Wafa news agency said that the blaze, which broke out
following Israeli bombardment early on Monday morning, also wounded around 7o
others in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
Palestinians attempt to extinguish a fire at the site of an Israeli
strike on tents sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah on 14
October (Reuters/Ramadan Abed)
Footage
on social media showed tents ablaze and people desperately attempting to douse
the fires and rescue people caught in it.
"I
was sleeping in a building nearby, some 300 metres away, and woke up to the
sound of the bombing," Bilal Ezzat Khudari, who is originally from Gaza
City but now lives in Deir al-Balah, told Middle East Eye
"I
rushed to the hospital to see what happened and saw the bombing had caused a
fire, which then set off gas canisters used by people and led to a bigger
inferno.
"The
fire was 10 to 15 metres tall. It was so big people couldn't help. It kept
spreading, and every now and then something would blow up inside, pushing the
rescuers back."
Khudari
said he saw people inside the blaze being burned alive.
"I
saw at least three charred bodies. One of them was a janitor. He had nothing to
do with anything.
"There
was a falafel vendor who worked and slept here. His wife and son both died in
the fire. His son was a good guy, an engineer."
It
was the seventh such attack targeting the Al-Aqsa Hospital complex, according
to the Palestinian government media office in Gaza.
Israeli
army spokesperson Avichay Adraee confirmed that the Israeli air force had
conducted the attack, and said that the hospital was a "command and
control centre" used by Hamas. He provided no evidence for the claim.
Since
the war began, Israeli authorities have frequently stated that civilian
infrastructures such as hospitals and schools were being used by Hamas as
command and control centres, without providing any evidence.
Maha
al-Sarsak, a displaced Palestinian from Gaza City sheltering at Al-Aqsa
Hospital, said her mother had heard a drone in the sky at 1am.
"As
soon as we laid down, the strike hit the hospital's courtyard," she told
MEE. "Around seven minutes later there was a fire."
Sarsak
and her mother ran away hurriedly. But two members of the al-Dalou family, she
said, were unable to leave in time.
"They
came out charred skeletons," she said tearfully. "I saw death with my
own eyes. It was frightening."
"I
saw something burning inside the fire and thought it was a mattress but I then
realised it was a woman."
"May
God burn you in hell Netanyahu," Sarsak added, referring to the Israeli
prime minister.
'Everyone
here was innocent'
Mahmoud
Wahi, who was also seeking refuge at the hospital, said the attack had given
him "chills".
"I
saw people burning alive and couldn't do anything to help," he told MEE.
Wahi
strongly disputed Israeli claims that Hamas was operating in the hospital.
"This
is a lie. There was no such thing... Everyone here was innocent," he said.
"My two-year-old niece was wounded. Is she a resistance fighter?"
Wahi's
father said that he had "nothing left" due to the Israeli attack.
"No
clothes, no tent. Nothing left. I was asleep when the bombing happened and we
ran as soon as it happened. We left everything inside," Abo Mohammad Wadi
told MEE.
Elsewhere,
Israeli artillery shelling targeted a school used as shelter for Palestinian
civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Sunday night, killing at least 22
people, including children.
"A
strike hit a hospital courtyard, burning the tents where people were
sleeping," the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said on X.
"Just
before this, an Unrwa school sheltering families was hit in Nuseirat. That same
school was going to be used as a polio vaccination site today."
In
Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza, Israeli shelling on a food distribution
centre killed 10 Palestinian aid seekers on Monday.
Ibrahim
Rabea, a Jabalia resident, told Middle East Eye the attack targeted a gathering
of people who arrived at the centre to collect the remaining aid there, after
they ran out of food in their homes.
At
least 10 were killed and 40 others wounded in the bombing, according to initial
estimates.
Those
killed and wounded were left strewn on the streets "with no ambulances, no
civil defence and no one able to rescue them," said Rabea.
Jabalia
has been under an Israeli siege blocking the entry of food and water for nine
days.
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