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Dozens of people were killed in Beit Lahiya on Saturday as Israeli warplanes razed entire residential blocks just days after the UN warned that tens of thousands of Palestinians are “in grave danger” in northern Gaza.
Reality for Palestinians throughout Gaza, where more than 43,000 people have been killed since last October, with thousands more dead and uncounted under the rubble, is becoming more brutal by the day.
“Supplies essential for people’s survival and humanitarian assistance are blocked at every turn,” a senior UN official told the Security Council this week.
Joyce Msuya, the acting UN relief chief, added on Wednesday that the Security Council and all UN member states “must exert all their influence” to ensure the respect of international humanitarian law.
“The atrocities in Gaza must end, but this cannot happen through words; it must happen through action – urgent, unequivocal action,” she added.
Three prominent Palestinian human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – said this week that civilians in northern Gaza are “are being punished for continuing to refuse to follow Israel’s unlawful forcible displacement orders.”
With no safe place to go, Palestinians in Gaza’s north are fearful that if they flee, they will never be able to return.
Israel’s plan to resettle Gaza by illegally transferring its own civilian population to and annexing the north “is becoming clearer with every day that passes,” the Palestinian human rights groups said.
Demonstrating that point, several Israeli lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party plan to participate in a conference titled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza” to be held on Monday.
Palestinians who are trying to flee from Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, or are moving around in search of food or safety, “are being shot at and killed by Israeli snipers, quadcopters and drones,” the rights groups said.
“Forced displacement under gunfire”
The Palestinian groups said that Israel is implementing a plan spearheaded by Giora Eiland, a close advisor to defense minister Yoav Gallant, aimed at exterminating or expelling Palestinians in northern Gaza.
The scheme involves “laying a full siege, denying the entry of humanitarian aid, forcing Palestinians to leave and unlawfully declaring whoever remains to be a military target,” they added.
Early in the genocide, Eiland had advocated for Israel to allow or encourage epidemics among the Palestinian population in Gaza as a means to “bring victory closer” and “reduce casualties” among Israeli soldiers.
Earlier this week, more than three dozen humanitarian organizations described Israel’s order for some 400,000 Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza as “forced displacement under gunfire.”
“Northern Gaza is being wiped off the map,” the organizations warned, with civilians being starved and bombed and hospitals deprived of essential supplies needed to save the lives of people injured in Israeli attacks.
The groups called for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the Israeli occupation and the halt of weapons transfers “that could be used to commit further violations of international humanitarian law.”
Four human rights groups in Israel likewise called for international action to prevent the forcible transfer of civilians in northern Gaza through siege and starvation.
If third states continue their “wait and see” approach, thereby enabling “Israel to liquidate northern Gaza, they will be complicit,” the human rights groups in Israel added.
“All states and relevant international institutions should act now and use all tools at their disposal – legal, diplomatic and economic – to prevent this,” the Israeli groups said.
Noting that their appeals to the “international community” over the past year have been ignored, the three Palestinian human rights groups called on “free people across the world to exert the maximum pressure on their governments” to end the genocide in Gaza.
US warning
On Monday, the US secretaries of state and defense sent a letter to senior Israeli officials demanding that Israel take measures to improve the provision of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, noting that the amount allowed to enter in September “was the lowest of any month during the past year.”
The US officials gave Israel 30 days to implement a surge in “all forms of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza” to avoid potential restrictions on US military aid.
Meanwhile, this week Washington sent an advanced US anti-missile system to Israel and 100 troops to operate it after a barrage of ballistic missiles fired by Iran hit three military and intelligence installations on 1 October.
It is the sharpest ultimatum delivered to Israel by the Biden administration over the past year. But its timing, with any potential consequence coming only after the US election in early November, has raised the eyebrows of many observers.
US public stances urging more aid are, moreover, undermined by what Washington’s real policy has been over the last year: knowingly falsifying government reports to cover up how Israel has been deliberately blocking the entry of humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
Admitting the reality would trigger provisions in US law that prohibit the transfer of weapons to governments that block humanitarian aid – precisely what Israel has been doing all along with Washington’s knowledge and approval.
Netanyahu doubles down on “maximum pressure”
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has dashed any prospect that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Wednesday would revive a diplomatic track to end the war and secure the release of Israeli and foreign captives held in Gaza.
On Saturday, the Israeli military dropped leaflets over southern Gaza showing Sinwar’s corpse and bearing the message that “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza.”
“Whoever drops the weapon and hands over the hostages will be allowed to leave and live in peace,” the leaflet read in Arabic, echoing a statement made by Netanyahu after the announcement of Sinwar’s killing on Thursday.
On Friday, while confirming Sinwar’s death, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya reiterated that the captives in Gaza would not be returned to Israel until after the war ends.
All indications are that Netanyahu is maintaining his “maximum pressure” strategy in Gaza and Lebanon, increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic regional – or even global – military confrontation involving the US and Iran.
Netanyahu accused Iran of attempting to assassinate him after a drone reportedly launched from Lebanon hit his home in Caesarea, central Israel, on Saturday.
The prime minister’s office stated that Netanyahu and his wife were not at the home when it was attacked, and there were no casualties.
Iran distanced itself from the drone strike, with the spokesperson of Tehran’s mission to the UN telling American media outlets that Hizballah in Lebanon carried out the operation.
Meanwhile, Washington is “investigating a leak of highly classified US intelligence about Israel’s plans for retaliation against Iran,” CNN reported on Saturday.
The leaked documents, dated on 15 and 16 October, began circulating on Telegram on Friday, according to CNN, which said that one of three people familiar with the matter confirmed their authenticity.
The leak of top secret documents outlining Israel’s tactical plans would be a “serious breach” that could challenge “future coordination between the US and Israel,” Mick Mulroy, a former senior defense department official and retired CIA officer, told CNN.
“Extermination” in northern Gaza
The Israeli military escalated its attacks on Jabaliya, the largest of the refugee camps established in Gaza after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the nearby cities of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Israeli troops besieged several shelters housing displaced civilians before storming them on Saturday. Videos circulated on social media showing dozens of detained men, and potentially also boys, blindfolded and their hands bound:
Palestinians warned that Israel was obliterating Jabaliya camp, and a communications blackout in the area prevented people from knowing the fates of their loved ones as the military reportedly blew up entire residential blocks in Beit Lahiya.
Eid Sabbah, the director of nursing at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, said that four or five residential blocks were razed to the ground in Israeli airstrikes.
The hospital had received around 70 fatalities and dozens of injured people, while more victims remained trapped under the rubble, Sabbah said.
“We ask God Almighty to have mercy on our nation’s children and to lift this cloud and burden from us and our nation’s children,” he added.
“And to lift the siege on Kamal Adwan hospital and all the hospitals, for life to return to normal, and for the entire world … to speak up before it’s too late, before our nation is exterminated.”
Al-Awda and Indonesian Hospital – the only other hospitals that have remained functional in northernmost Gaza – were directly hit in Israeli attacks on Friday.
“In the past two weeks, Israeli forces increased their pressure on these hospitals to be evacuated, but patients had nowhere to go,” Muhannad Hadi, the UN humanitarian coordinator in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said on Saturday.
Two critical patients died at Indonesian Hospital because it lost electricity when its generator was hit in the attack, according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization.
Hadi said that Kamal Adwan hospital was treating more than 370 patients, most of them trauma cases, and “is running critically low on beds, medicine, medical supplies and fuel.”
Hadi added that Israel had not fulfilled an urgent request by the UN to access northern Gaza to rescue injured people trapped in the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Palestinians killed at UN school
Scores of people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians in Jabaliya refugee camp on Thursday.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said on Friday that it was “the third such attack” on its facilities “this week alone.”
At least 231 UNRWA staff have been killed since Israel’s offensive on Gaza began last October, according to Lazzarini.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that it had “submitted an urgent request for the Israeli authorities to facilitate the evacuation of a few dozen people reported to be alive and trapped under rubble.”
“In previous instances, OCHA accompanied rescue teams whose access was facilitated too late, resulting in only dead bodies being recovered,” the UN office added.
Reprinted from The Electronic Intifada
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