Motasem
A Dalloul
(
Middle East Monitor ) – The most well-known football stadium in the Gaza Strip
is chaotic, with masses of people flooding the pitch and seating. Everyone is
carrying a bag on their back and some clothes. Some are helping sick people or
carrying wounded relatives, while others are walking alone, struggling along on
bare feet.
“We
left the bodies of our children killed in Israeli air strikes either under the
rubble or on the street,” an old man explains. He fled northern Gaza under
heavy Israeli bombing.
Today,
the people are not rushing to take their seats and enjoy a football match or a
circus. They look for an empty place to rest after fleeing relentless Israeli
bombing. The stadium is an encampment for displaced persons.
“Thanks
be to Allah, we are safe,” said 72-year-old Hassan Abu Wardeh, who arrived in
the stadium along with his sick wife and 13 children and grandchildren. “After
the start of the third Israeli ground incursion into our area, we remained 25
days in our home,” he told me. “They were the worst days I have ever lived.”
That
started on 6 October, when the Israeli occupation forces attacked Jabalia,
concentrating on its refugee camp. Then the incursion was extended to the other
north Gaza cities, including Beit Hanoun in the east and Beit Lahiya in the
west.
“Since
the start of their incursion, the Israeli occupation forces have been targeting
homes and refugee shelters in Jabalia refugee camp, the beating heart of the
city, clearly to put pressure on the inhabitants to run away,” explained Abu
Wardeh. “However, most people persisted and stayed in their homes. We know that
there is an Israeli plan to force us out of our land.”
Day
after day, the Israeli occupation forces have targeted homes and refugee
shelters alike, killing and wounding hundreds of people. The intensity of the
bombardment meant that all rescue teams in the north had to suspend their
services, including the Civil Defence and Ambulance teams.
Putting
further pressure on Palestinian civilians to force them to leave, the
occupation state has also targeted the three major hospitals in northern Gaza.
Anyone seeking medical assistance and treatment has to go south to Gaza City.
Not
content with dropping bombs and missiles on northern Gaza, said Abu Wardeh, the
occupation forces have also used barrel bombs in the streets to displace the
local population.
They detonate them without warning.
The
sheer cruelty and brutality of the occupation forces saw Abu Wardeh ask his
sick wife, his children and grandchildren to leave the house and move to Gaza
City. His brother, who lived next door, moved 19 members of his family north to
Beit Lahiya.
“I
stayed at home along with two of my children and one of my grandchildren,” he
said. “Five hours after the evacuation of the house, an Israeli missile turned
it into rubble. It was a miracle that we survived.” It took another five hours
for volunteers and neighbours to pull him and his children out from under the
rubble.
“My
grandson suffered from light bruises. I was happy that we were alive, but was
very sad to hear that seven homes in our neighbourhood were bombed at the same
time and 27 neighbours were killed. Only seven bodies were retrieved; the rest
are under the rubble.”
This
is how the Israeli occupation regime has been forcing the displacement —
“evacuation” — of the northern Gaza Strip. People are killed, wounded or
abducted. Hospitals have been destroyed, medical staff have been killed or
arrested, and humanitarian aid is stopped from reaching the area. At the same
time, the regime destroys entire residential compounds and is building massive
sand barriers to separate northern Gaza from Gaza City.
Abu
Wardeh, whose parents were forced out of Al-Majadal during the 1948 Nakba, is
afraid that he is facing a new Nakba. The regime drops leaflets telling the
people that they must leave their homes because they are in the middle of an
“operation area”.
Then
the occupation forces destroy their homes and destroy their refugee shelters.
During
the ongoing incursion, the Israeli forces have killed more than 2,200 people in
northern Gaza alone. A further 6,300 have been wounded while more than 1,000
have been detained — basically abducted — including children.
Spokespersons
for the Israeli occupation army have declared several times that they will not
allow the Palestinian residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli regime is carrying out ethnic cleansing as
part of the “Generals’ Plan” laid out by one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s military aides. Fanatical Jewish settlers are waiting expectantly
to build illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory.
“I
am afraid that we will never return to Jabalia,” added Abu Wardeh. “In any
case, I am still hoping to return not to Jabalia, but to Al-Majdal.”
The
right of return upon which his hope depends is entirely legitimate. It still
seems a long way from happening though.
The
views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily
reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.
Jake Johnson
A group of U.S. senators led by
Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a press conference Tuesday urging their
colleagues to support resolutions that would block the sale of tank rounds,
bomb kits, and other weaponry to the Israeli government, which has repeatedly
used such arms to commit horrific war crimes in the Gaza Strip over the past 13
months.
"The truth of the matter is,
from a legal perspective, these resolutions are not complicated; they're cut
and dry," said Sanders (I-Vt.), who introduced the joint resolutions of
disapproval in September alongside several other members of the Senate
Democratic caucus.
"The United States government
is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who
believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions," Sanders
continued, pointing to U.S. statutes prohibiting the sale of weaponry to
countries violating internationally recognized human rights or obstructing
American humanitarian aid.
Sanders was joined at Tuesday's
press conference by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris
Van Hollen (D-Md.), each of whom made their case to fellow senators ahead of a
scheduled floor vote on Wednesday.
"What's unfolding before our
very eyes right now is mass starvation and the spread of disease," said
Welch. "Is the United States and its foreign policy... forced to be blind
to the suffering before our very eyes?"
Surrounding the senators as they
spoke were photographs of destruction and emaciated children in Gaza, where
most of the population is displaced and crowded into small segments of the
enclave as Israeli bombs rain down and famine takes hold.
The resolutions will hit the floor
for a vote Wednesday with the backing of a broad coalition that includes Jewish
Voice for Peace Action, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, J Street,
the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Oxfam, and other
organizations and activists.
"For over a year, the Biden
administration has funded the Israeli government's brutal genocide of
Palestinians in Gaza, despite overwhelming opposition from across the
country," said Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace
Action, which said it has driven more than 56,200 letters and more than 20,790
phone calls to senators imploring them to support the measures.
"These joint resolutions of
disapproval are one of the last chances that Senate Democrats have before
Republicans take control in January to uphold human rights, honor the will of
the American people, and stand on the right side of history by blocking weapons
to the Israeli military," Miller added.
Since the October 2023 Hamas-led
attack on Israel, the U.S. has supplied its ally with more than 50,000 tons of
weaponry and approved billions of dollars in additional arms and military
equipment to be delivered in years to come. U.S. military support has helped
Israel carry out a large-scale military assault on Gaza, killing more than
43,000 people so far—a majority of them women and children.
To sustain the flow of American
weapons, the Biden administration has contradicted the findings of its own
experts and outside analysts by declaring publicly that it has not found Israel
to be illegally blocking U.S. humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile,
aid groups on the ground say humanitarian assistance has plummeted to an
all-time low in recent weeks, with an average of just 37 aid trucks entering
Gaza per day in October.
During Tuesday's press conference,
Sanders said the "most important point to be made" ahead of
Wednesday's vote is that "the United States of America is complicit in
these atrocities."
"That complicity must end, and
that is what these resolutions are about," said Sanders. "It is time
to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and
American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation
of our moral values."
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