Tag: israel

South Africa files case at ICJ accusing Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

South Africa has filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of crimes of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza after nearly three months of relentless Israeli bombardment has killed more than 21,500 people and caused widespread destruction in the besieged enclave.

In an application to the court on Friday, South Africa described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

“The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” the application said.

The ICJ, also called the World Court, is a UN civil court that adjudicates disputes between countries. It is distinct from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which prosecutes individuals for war crimes.

As members of the UN, both South Africa and Israel are bound by the court.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank with his country’s past apartheid regime of racial segregation imposed by the white-minority rule that ended in 1994.

Several human rights organisations have said that Israeli policies towards Palestinians amount to apartheid.

South Africa said Israel’s conduct, particularly since the war began on October 7, violates the UN’s Genocide Convention, and called for an expedited hearing. The application also requests the court to indicate provisional measures to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people” under the Convention.

“South Africa is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants,” a statement from South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) said, adding that the country has “repeatedly stated that it condemns all violence and attacks against all civilians, including Israelis.”

“South Africa has continuously called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and the resumption of talks that will end the violence arising from the continued belligerent occupation of Palestine,” the statement added.

Israel has rejected global calls for a ceasefire saying the war would not stop until the Hamas group, whose October 7 attack triggered the current phase of the conflict, was destroyed. Some 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack in Israel. The Palestinian group has said its attack was against Israel’s 16-year-old blockade of Gaza and expansion of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In the latest development in Israel’s war on Gaza, tens of thousands of newly displaced Palestinians in the centre of the Palestinian enclave on Friday were forced to flee as Israel expanded its ground and air offensive in the centre of the enclave.

Israel has faced global condemnation for the mounting toll and destruction and accused of meting out collective punishment on Palestinian people.

‘A very important step’

The court application is the latest move by South Africa, a vociferous critic of Israel’s war, to ratchet up pressure after its lawmakers last month voted in favour of closing down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspending all diplomatic relations until a ceasefire was agreed in Israel’s war with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the United Nations headquarters in New York, said the move was “clearly a very important step to try to hold some accountability to Israel.”

“Now that South Africa is pushing this to the ICJ, it will be on [the UN’s] agenda to try to make a ruling on this very important question,” he added.

On November 16, a group of 36 UN experts called on the international community to “prevent genocide against the Palestinian people”, calling Israel’s actions since October 7 a “genocide in the making”.

“We are deeply disturbed by the failure of governments to heed our call and to achieve an immediate ceasefire. We are also profoundly concerned about the support of certain governments for Israel’s strategy of warfare against the besieged population of Gaza, and the failure of the international system to mobilise to prevent genocide,” the experts said in a statement.

Israel has rejected South Africa’s move as “baseless”, calling it “blood libel.”

“South Africa’s claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis, and constitutes despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the Court,” Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, Lior Haiat, said in a statement posted on X.

“Israel has made it clear that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not the enemy, and is making every effort to limit harm to the non-involved and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip,” the statement added.

“It does rally public opinion to the reality of what’s going on in Palestine, not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

According to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, genocide involves acts committed with the “intent to destroy, either in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

“Where the disagreement lies is whether there is intent or no intent,” Bishara said.

“The three leading Israeli officials have declared the intent, starting with Israeli President Herzog when he said there are ‘no innocents’ in Gaza, the defence minister who said Israel will impose collective punishment on the people of Gaza because they are ‘human animals’,” Bishara said, adding that prime minister Netanyahu also used a biblical analogy in a statement widely interpreted as a genocidal call.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Pressure on Netanyahu amid row over Israel’s plan for ‘day after’ Gaza war | Israel-Palestine conflict News

As Israeli military pounds Gaza and conducts raids in occupied West Bank, Hamas says no deal on captives until ‘aggression’ stops.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing pressure from his right-wing coalition government amid sharp disagreements over the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is nearing its 90th day with no end in sight to the war or a deal for a pause in hostilities.

Netanyahu cancelled a meeting of Israel’s war cabinet on Thursday night that was meant to discuss the plan for the “day after” the war after fierce opposition to the meeting from far-right members of the coalition.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party said the subject was outside of the war cabinet’s mandate. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party announced it was holding its own meeting in protest over his exclusion from the discussion.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are in the larger security cabinet but are not part of the war cabinet, whose main members are Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and opposition leader Benny Gantz.

“[Smotrich] didn’t want that discussion [on the day after] to take place,” Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said on Friday. “He is very much against the Palestinian Authority [PA] having any rule in Gaza post the war.”

Under such pressure, Netanyahu decided the war cabinet would not discuss the issue, which will now be taken up by the security cabinet on Tuesday.

The United States has suggested the PA should rule over Gaza after Israel achieves its stated goal of eliminating Hamas, whose October 7 assault on southern Israel triggered the war.

“Netanyahu cancelled the war cabinet, worried it would fracture his coalition, fracture his government and put his position as prime minister at risk,” Fisher said.

The war cabinet was also meant to “discuss a deal with Hamas – negotiated by the Americans, the Qataris and the Egyptians – about exchanging captives for Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails”, our correspondent added.

‘Between a rock and a hard place’

Ahmed Helal, the Middle East and North Africa director at Global Counsel, told Al Jazeera the cancellation of the war cabinet meeting had been a “long time coming” as the military establishment and political elite have grown further apart.

“The military elite has grown increasingly uncomfortable over the past 10 years, and they’re not pacifists by any means – they are not doves. But they understand what is strategically important for Israel, and they have been pushing against the overly militarist ambitions of the civilian government,” Helal said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to make another trip to the Middle East next week to discuss the Gaza war, in which the Israeli military has killed more than 21,000 people in Gaza alone. The revised death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at 1,139.

The top US diplomat is likely to face regional Arab allies increasingly pushing for a ceasefire, Natali Tocci, director of the Italian think tank Istituto Affari Internazionali, told Al Jazeera.

“At the moment, we don’t see the US actually putting pressure on Israel for a ceasefire,” Tocci said. “However, as that Egyptian role is actually increasing … in calling for a ceasefire, Blinken will basically find himself in between a rock and a hard place.”

Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip, has taken more of a leading role in pushing for a ceasefire, including introducing a plan to end the fighting. It includes captive and prisoner exchanges between Israel and Hamas.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Thursday that the group will not release more Israeli captives without a “complete and full ceasing of aggressive activities against our people through negotiations that are aligned with our people’s interest”.

A Hamas delegation is to visit Cairo on Friday to consider the Egyptian plan to end the war, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported, citing a Hamas official.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Beyond Maghazi: What controversial weapons has Israel used in Gaza war? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

An Israeli official on Thursday acknowledged that the country’s military had used inappropriate munitions during an attack on the Maghazi refugee camp that killed at least 90 people earlier this week.

The official said that Israel’s military would investigate what happened. But while little is known about the specific munitions used in Maghazi, this is far from the first time that Israel’s army has faced criticism over the alleged or confirmed use of controversial weapons in its war on Gaza.

Israel has said its goal is to “completely eliminate” Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on October 7, but the reality on the ground has been the elimination of generations of Palestinians and their entire neighbourhoods. Israel’s war has killed more than 21,300 Palestinians, including at least 8,200 children, in Gaza. Another 7,000 people are missing, presumably buried under the rubble of the 313,000-plus homes that have collapsed from Israeli warfare.

Al Jazeera looks at some of the weapons that have been used in Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombardment of the Gaza Strip:

Dumb bombs

The term ‘dumb bombs’ refers to munitions that are not guided, but are free to fall and destroy wherever they land.

Earlier this month, CNN reported that nearly half of the Israeli munitions used on Gaza have been “dumb bombs”, citing research by the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Somewhere between 40-45 percent of the munitions Israel has dropped on Gaza have been unguided, but these munitions are less accurate and carry a greater risk of inflicting civilian casualties.

Marc Garlasco, a former war crimes investigator for the United Nations, called the US intelligence assessment “shocking”.

“The revelation [that] almost half of all bombs dropped on Gaza by Israel are unguided dumb bombs completely undercuts their claim of minimising civilian harm,” Garlasco wrote on social media.

Other reports have said Israel has regularly used powerful bombs in the densely populated Strip, despite the increased risk of civilian casualties.

Bunker buster bombs

Generously provided to Israel for its war on Gaza by its friend the United States, BLU-109 bombs are designed to penetrate hardened structures before exploding.

The bombs can carry a warhead weighing more than 900kg (1984 pounds) and have previously been used by the US in conflicts including the war in Afghanistan.

“Many people are now questioning in Congress whether continuing to give these “bunker bombs” is a good idea and also calling for more transparency,” Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro said.

This level of weaponry has been used by the US before, but mainly in open areas. To do so in a densely populated area can only lead to one thing – high casualties.

US arms to Israel since the start of the war have also included 15,000 bombs and 57,000 (155mm) artillery shells.

And there’s more: 5,000 unguided MK-82 bombs, more than 5,400 MK-84 bombs, and about 1,000 GBU-39 small-diameter bombs.

JDAMs

There are also about 3,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions or JDAMs – a guidance kit that uses GPS to turn unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions, effectively making the dumb bombs “smart”. However, their effectiveness depends on the quality of intelligence received.

“If the intelligence is faulty, even the most accurate weapon will hit the wrong target,” Elijah Magnier, a military analyst covering conflicts in the Middle East, told Al Jazeera.

An Amnesty International investigation released earlier this month found that the Israeli military used US-made JDAMs to bomb two homes in Gaza in October, killing 43 members of two families.

In other cases, weapon functionality is also crucial, as technical malfunctions can cause smart bombs to miss their targets, and human error during the targeting process can lead to the misidentification of marks.

“In various conflicts, there have been reports of secondary strikes occurring shortly after an initial strike, hitting rescue workers and civilians rushing to help the wounded, significantly increasing civilian casualties,” Magnier said.

Earlier in the war Israel used smart bombs in Gaza as part of a broader military strategy “aimed at accurately targeting militant infrastructure to achieve military objectives” Magnier said, but “with no attempt to limit civilian casualties and infrastructure damage”.

“The effectiveness of these weapons in achieving strategic objectives without causing disproportionate harm is impossible”, Magnier added.

“The principle of distinction, a cornerstone of [international humanitarian] law, requires the invading Israeli army to always distinguish between combatants and military targets on the one hand, and civilians and civilian objects on the other and to target only the former.”

White phosphorus

Use of the colourless chemical weapon is restricted under international humanitarian law, with conditions that it must never be fired at, or in close proximity to, a populated civilian area or civilian infrastructure.

However, evidence of its use by Israel in the war on Gaza was reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW) early in the conflict.

Highly combustible, it can cause fires and smoke to spread quickly.

“Airbursting white phosphorus spreads the substance over a wide area, depending on the altitude of the burst, and it exposes more civilians and infrastructures than a localised ground burst,” Ahmed Benchemsi, communications director for HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division, told Al Jazeera.

Last month a doctor from al-Shifa Hospital told the Toronto Star he had seen patients with deep wounds, with “third and fourth-degree burns, and the skin tissue is impregnated with black particles and most of the skin thickness and all the layers underneath are burned down to the bone”.

Dr Ahmed Mokhallalati said these weren’t phosphorus burns, “but a combination of some kind of incendiary bomb wave and other components”, feeding into claims that Israel also uses war to test unknown weapons.

But what makes white phosphorous even more dangerous, said Nada Majdalani, the Ramallah-based Palestine director for EcoPeace Middle East, is the presence of rain in the air.

“As Gaza enters the rainy season, we expect the rain to fall as acid rain, contaminated with white phosphorus,” Majdalani said. People who use plastic sheets to collect rainwater to drink directly, amid a shortage of drinking water, could be particularly at risk, she said.

Hunger

This month, HRW said in a statement that Israel was deliberately depriving Palestinians of access to food, water and other basic necessities.

Under international humanitarian law, creating a situation of hunger with intent against a civilian population is a war crime.

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at HRW, said: “Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare.

“World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population,” he added.

Just a month after the war began, all of northern Gaza’s bakeries closed due to a lack of supplies such as flour and fuel, the UN reported on November 8.

By early February, if the war continues, Gaza could be facing a famine, according to a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a body that measures hunger risks.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 84 | Israel-Palestine conflict News

EXPLAINER

Gaza’s hospitals are running out of supplies and capacity for those injured in Israeli attacks – here is the latest.

Here’s how things stand on Friday, December 29, 2023:

Latest updates and human impact

  • Gaza’s Ministry of Health has announced on Telegram that 20 patients will be allowed to travel outside of the besieged enclave for emergency treatment in Egypt, leaving via the Rafah crossing on Friday morning.
  • An Israeli strike hit a residential building near the Kuwaiti hospital in Gaza’s southern Rafah city. At least 20 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed, a nearby Al Jazeera crew witnessed.
  • Marwan al-Hams, the director of Rafah’s Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital, said that those injured in this attack needed to urgently be taken out of the country for treatment. He urged for more aid and fuel to be allowed inside Gaza.
  • Meanwhile, in north Gaza, an Israeli military air strike hit a group of civilians in the town of Beit Hanoon on Thursday, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
  • So far, 30 people have been reported killed in Israeli attacks in the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza, Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud reported.
  • The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has warned that not enough aid is entering the besieged Gaza Strip, leaving 40 percent of its population “at risk of famine” while Israel hinders the flow of much-needed aid into the beleaguered enclave.
  • Iranian judiciary-affiliated news agency Mizan said on Friday that Iran executed four “saboteurs” linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.
  • The Israeli military has concluded an investigation into the killing of three Israeli captives, saying the incident was preventable but disciplinary action would not be taken against its soldiers as it was not malicious.

Diplomacy

  • A delegation from Hamas will visit Cairo on Friday to discuss Egypt’s ceasefire plan. However, an expected Israeli war cabinet meeting to discuss scenarios for the “day after” the war ends was cancelled, amid objections from far-right ministers.
  • The United States military announced on X on Friday that it shot down a drone and an anti-ship ballistic missile in the Southern Red Sea that was fired by the Houthis on Thursday. It added that this was the 22nd attempted attack by the Houthis since October 19.
  • Ireland’s deputy prime minister Micheal Martin told reporters on Friday that tougher measures should be taken against settlers in the West Bank.

Raids in the West Bank

  • Palestinian man Mohammad Sayel al-Jundi, 38, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers on Thursday night at the Nafaq military checkpoint west of Bethlehem, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.
  • One person was injured after Israeli forces fired live ammunition during a raid in the town of Kafr Aqab, north of occupied East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
  • Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for human rights, highlighted that Israel has killed 500 Palestinians in 2023 in the West Bank, where Hamas is not present.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Dozens of people killed as Israel carries out strikes across Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israeli forces attack cities, towns and refugee camps, killing up to 80 people and forcing thousands more to flee.

At least 20 Palestinians have been killed, including women and children, when an Israeli strike hit a residential building near Kuwait Specialty Hospital in Rafah as the besieged Gaza Strip reeled from a barrage of attacks throughout the day that killed dozens.

“The air strike has completely flattened the residential building that is full of displaced people,” Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum said, reporting on the aftermath of the Israeli strike on Thursday near Kuwaiti hospital.

“Until now, rescue operations by the ambulances and civil defence teams continue to pull the people from under the rubble.”

Palestinian authorities said on Thursday that at least 50 people had been killed as Israel bombards every corner of Gaza, where more than 21,320 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 90 percent of the population displaced.

Israel has stepped up attacks across the length and breadth of Gaza, targeting Beit Lahiya, Khan Younis, Rafah and Maghazi on Thursday despite global outrage and calls for a ceasefire amid the mounting death toll.

Palestinians in the besieged enclave said they have nowhere safe to flee. Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for Gaza’s Ministry of Health, said on Thursday that more than 200 people had been killed in 24 hours with entire families wiped out.

More than 55,000 Palestinians have been wounded since Israel launched a military offensive in the wake of Hamas attacks on October 7 in southern Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people – the country’s deadliest attack since its founding in 1948.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has become one of the most destructive in modern history, enacting an enormous humanitarian toll and drawing accusations of a campaign of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians.

An Israeli official on Thursday blamed the high death toll in the Christmas Eve attack on the Maghazi refugee camp on improper munitions. More than 70 people were killed in the attack, which caused a global outrage.

Nearly three months into the fighting, Hamas fighters continue to put up stiff resistance against Israeli forces, including in northern Gaza, where continuous Israeli strikes have left the area unrecognisable.

An Israeli siege has also severely restricted access to food, fuel, water and electricity, and UN officials have said an estimated 25 percent of people in Gaza are starving.

“It’s already hard enough as it is, finding your daily meal, finding drinkable water, with this amount of people gathered in one city,” Gaza resident Mohammed Thabet told Abu Azzoum after the strike in Rafah.

“Being this close to the Egyptian border in the far south of the Gaza Strip, people feel like they have nothing else they can do, like you just have to wait and hope for the best.”

Asked if he felt safe in southern Gaza, Thabet said, “After everything we saw, not at all. There is nowhere safe in Gaza.”

The United States has played an indispensable role in Israel’s war, providing it with weapons packages and strong diplomatic support as Israel comes under growing pressure to bring the fighting to an end.

Israel has promised to press on, widening its offensive and pressing farther south into areas where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israel says improper munitions cause of high death toll in Maghazi attack | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The admission by an Israeli official to Kan public broadcaster comes as Israel has been accused of using ‘dirty’ bombs on Gaza.

An Israeli military official has said that the high death toll from an attack on Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza was the result of the use of improper munitions, showing a spotlight on Israel’s military tactics that have created high numbers of civilian casualties.

Speaking to the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, a military official on Thursday said that the raid on Maghazi, which killed at least 70 people, used munitions that were not appropriate for a packed refugee camp.

“The type of munition did not match the nature of the attack, causing extensive collateral damage which could have been avoided,” the official told the Israeli Kan public broadcaster.

“The [Israeli army] regrets the harm to those who were uninvolved and is working to learn lessons from the incident,” the official added.

The statement on the bombing, which the Israeli military had previously said was being investigated, comes amid reports that Israel has regularly used powerful bombs in the tightly packed strip, despite the increased risk of civilian casualties.

Earlier this month, the US news outlet CNN reported that nearly half of the Israeli munitions used on Gaza have been unguided “dumb bombs”, citing a US intelligence assessment. Such munitions are less accurate and carry a greater risk of inflicting civilian casualties.

The Israeli news outlet +972 also previously reported that the Israeli military has loosened its standards regarding acceptable civilian harm from attacks, resulting in a higher portion of civilians killed than in previous rounds of military assaults.

Palestinian authorities say that more than 21,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, more than half of them women and children.

The current round of fighting was preceded by months of rising tensions, but began on October 7 when the Palestinian armed group Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel that authorities there said killed more than 1,100 people and took more than 240 people captive.

The attack on Maghazi is not the first to raise questions about the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, which has transformed entire neighbourhoods in Gaza into mountains of rubble. On Thursday, nearly 100 people have been killed in attacks on various locations across Gaza.

Palestinian authorities said that at least 90 people were killed in Israeli attacks on a residential block in the Jabalia refugee camp earlier this month, and in early December, Israeli attacks killed 700 Palestinians in a single day.

Palestinians in the besieged enclave say they have nowhere safe to flee from Israel’s relentless bombardment, which has also targeted areas that Israeli authorities had told civilians to move towards to avoid fighting.

Aid agencies, including the UN, have decried Israeli targeting of schools, hospitals and residential areas, with the Israeli bombing of Gaza considered the most destructive in recent history.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israeli settlers hang donkey head on Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem | Israel-Palestine conflict

NewsFeed

An Israeli man has been arrested for desecrating a Muslim cemetery by hanging the head of a donkey in its grounds in occupied East Jerusalem.

Published On 28 Dec 2023

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israeli forces confiscate cash during raids in occupied West Bank | Israel-Palestine conflict

NewsFeed

Israeli forces conducted large-scale raids across cities in the occupied West Bank targeting money exchange outlets and seizing millions of dollars they allege is being used to finance resistance groups.

Published On 28 Dec 2023

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

‘Piles of body parts’: Gaza’s Maghazi residents find families ‘in pieces’ | Israel-Palestine conflict

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – It has been four days since Gaza’s smallest refugee camp was pounded in yet another series of Israeli air strikes, but Palestinians there are still digging up the bodies of their loved ones from under the rubble.

The onslaught in central Gaza’s Maghazi late on Sunday killed at least 90 people, including children and many who were internally displaced.

In one of the deadliest attacks on the Gaza Strip since Israel launched a war on the enclave on October 7, residents including Ashraf al-Haj Ahmed said the assault happened “suddenly” and without prior warning.

“At around 11:30pm that night, we witnessed a series of large explosions that shook the entire camp,” al-Haj Ahmed told Al Jazeera.

At least three homes were completely destroyed [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

His relative’s home was among those that were flattened to the ground. Al-Haj Ahmed recalled running towards it as soon as the bombardment woke him up, just a few blocks down.

At the scene of the attack, he found a four-storey building destroyed “on top of those who were living in it”.

“There must have been around 40 people, among them are the owners of the house, as well as displaced families who were taken in,” he said.

At least three houses in the overcrowded camp were hit by Israeli air strikes. Officials in Gaza said seven families were among the casualties.

While the official number of those who were killed stands at 90, residents of the camp near Deir el-Balah say in reality, the figure is much higher as entire residential blocks were wiped out.

“In each home, there’s a minimum of 50 people,” another Maghazi resident told Al Jazeera. “A lot of them are displaced Palestinians from other parts of Gaza who were forced to flee their homes.”

Israel’s attacks have not spared homes and shelters that displaced people have fled to [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

The camp normally houses 30,000 people, according to the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA). But with the displacement of Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment in other parts of the enclave, the number of people there has risen to an estimated 100,000.

“We pulled out so many body parts that we can’t even estimate the total number of deaths yet,” the second resident said.

“They’re all in pieces, and we’re pulling them out with our bare hands,” he added. “We’ve now gathered at least two piles of body parts.”

‘Dark and painful night’

Israel’s attacks have not spared homes and shelters that people have fled to.

Despite being on the southern side of the Strip, an area that Israeli forces deemed “safe” and ordered civilians from the north to flee ahead of their ground offensive, Maghazi has been subjected to intense artillery and air raids.

It was also attacked last month when at least 50 Palestinians were killed. The vicinity of the camp was also subjected to intense Israeli shelling over the last week.

Abu Rami Abu al-Ais is among those who have been sheltering in Maghazi ever since he left his home in the al-Zahra neighbourhood. He said Sunday’s attack was not the first time he and his family members had been hit.

“We had a home in al-Zahra, which came under attack. After coming here, the house we were staying in was bombed again,” al-Ais, whose daughter is badly injured, told Al Jazeera.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

He echoed al-Haj Ahmed’s experience and said there had been “no warnings whatsoever” prior to the strikes.

Al-Ais said in previous assaults on the enclave, Israeli forces would sometimes warn residents of a building to evacuate a few minutes before an attack, either by throwing leaflets or via speakerphones. But during this offensive, there had been no such warnings.

“The rockets fall on the heads of innocent people sleeping in their homes,” he said. “They [Israel] want to commit a complete genocide.”

Al-Ais said people are still collecting the remains of their friends, neighbours and relatives with their bare hands.

“We found the remains of women and children who were blown up. Their body parts have been scattered over a span of about three blocks,” due to the intensity of the strikes, al-Ais said.

“It was a very dark and painful night for Maghazi,” he recalled. “The widespread and sheer destruction is indescribable.”

Residents of Maghazi refugee camp have called for an urgent ceasefire [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Infrastructure, such as roads leading to the camp, were also destroyed.

Al-Ais said there are no excavators that can help speed up the process of recovering people from under the blocks of concrete.

The lack of much-needed fuel to operate bulldozers and vehicles means that – just like civil defence teams in Gaza – residents are digging with only their bare hands to try and pull out as many victims from under the rubble as they can.

Israel has blocked the entry of fuel since it imposed a total siege on the already blockaded Strip at the start of the war, and has only allowed a very small amount of aid in through the Rafah border crossing.

“We don’t need food, we don’t need water, we don’t need coffins,” al-Ais said. “What we need is a ceasefire and for this war to end.”

Al-Haj Ahmed, agreed. “Shame on the Arab world. We don’t just need aid, we need you here personally. Come and stand with your brothers,” he said.

Attacks on refugee camps and civilian infrastructure have become common since October 7. The Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza has been targeted several times, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.

Civilian infrastructure – including schools, hospitals, ambulance vehicles, and places of worship – has also been subjected to bombardment.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, while nearly 1.9 million – more than 80 percent of the 2.3 million people who live in Gaza – have been displaced.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Israeli minister Gantz says situation on Lebanon border ‘demands change’ | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Comments from the Israeli war cabinet member are the latest to hint at the possibility of an escalation with Hezbollah.

Senior Israeli minister Benny Gantz says the situation on the country’s border with Lebanon “must change”, hinting at the possibility of military escalation with the armed group Hezbollah.

Gantz, a member of Israel’s emergency war cabinet, told reporters on Wednesday the chance of a diplomatic solution to exchanges between Israel and armed groups in southern Lebanon is fast running out.

“The situation on Israel’s northern border demands change,” Gantz told a news conference.

“The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out, if the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the [Israeli military] will do it.”

The remarks are the latest to raise concerns that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza could explode into a wider regional conflict, drawing in Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah.

Israel and Hezbollah, along with a handful of smaller armed groups that operate in southern Lebanon, have settled into a steady rhythm of tit-for-tat exchanges since the current round of fighting between Hamas and Israel started on October 7, when the group launched an attack on southern Israel that killed more than 1,100 people.

Since then, Israel has been relentlessly bombing Gaza in a “genocidal” campaign, killing more than 21,000 people, most of them women and children, and displacing nearly its entire 2.3 million residents.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza triggered tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border, as intermittent exchange of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah were reported in the deadliest clashes since the two sides fought a full-scale war in 2006.

Tens of thousands of people in Israel and Lebanon have also been displaced, and more than 150 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, killed on the Lebanese side since the exchanges began, according to a tally by the AFP news agency. The figure includes 20 civilians, including three journalists, the agency said.

On Tuesday, a Hezbollah attack injured 11 people in northern Israel while an Israeli attack on Bint Jbeil killed three people, including one Hezbollah fighter.

“Israeli warplanes are currently targeting towns that are even very far from the border,” Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Hashem reported from Bint Jbeil.

“The fact is that this area is now becoming a complete warzone, it’s becoming very dangerous, very risky, to go around, with the fact that you’re always anticipating an Israeli drone,” he added.

Thus far, however, such exchanges have stopped short of a more serious confrontation that would come with a steep cost for both sides, as well as civilian populations who live in communities near the Israel-Lebanon border.

The limited nature of the fighting had eased initial concerns about a larger war. But in recent weeks, Israeli officials have suggested that they could take stronger actions against Hezbollah, even as Israel’s campaign in Gaza comes under growing scrutiny.

Speaking on Wednesday on a tour near the border, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Israel may target Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a move that would almost certainly spark a larger conflict with the formidable armed group with strong links to Iran.

“We will operate to make the most of the diplomatic option,” Cohen said. “If it doesn’t work, all options are on the table.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version