Palestinians not allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, IDF

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 07 November 2024

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BY BETHAN MCKERNAN IN JERUSALEM AND WILLIAM CHRISTOU IN BEIRUT

JERUSALEM - Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes”.

He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but not the north, since there are “no more civilians left”.

International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

The Israeli army and government have repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining population of northern Gaza to flee to the relative safety of the south during a month-long renewed offensive and tightened siege. Residents still clinging on in the north have said the new operation has created the worst conditions of the war to date. Israel said the push is necessary to combat regrouped Hamas cells.

Rights groups and aid agencies have alleged that despite the denials, Israel appears to be carrying out a version of the so-called “generals’ plan”, which proposes giving civilians a deadline to leave and then treating anyone who remains as a combatant.

It is unclear how many people remain in northern Gaza; last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders. On Wednesday social media footage showed waves of several dozen displaced people carrying children and rucksacks and walking south through flattened areas of Gaza City.

Many had not eaten in days, Huda Abu Laila told the Associated Press. “We came barefoot. We have no sandals, no clothes, nothing. We have no money. There is no food or drink,” she said.

At least 15 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the northern town of Beit Lahiya on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported, but communication difficulties meant there was no official account of the strike from the Gaza health ministry. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Beit Lahiya’s struggling Kamal Adwan hospital, posted a video of patients fleeing from the top floors of the building as it was hit by artillery fire.

Israel cut the territory in two earlier this year by creating what it calls the Netzarim corridor, separating what was once the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip. In Tuesday’s briefing, Cohen also confirmed that northern Gaza has now been split again, to divide Gaza City from the more rural north.

Resettling or permanently reoccupying Gaza is not official Israeli policy, but senior Israeli defence officials recently told the Israeli daily Haaretz that with no other alternatives on the table, the government is aiming to annex large parts of the territory.

Israel’s new war with the powerful Shia Lebanese group Hezbollah, now in its second month, also shows no sign of slowing or stopping. At least 30 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Barja, near Beirut, on Tuesday night, with rescue efforts continuing into Wednesday. Many of those killed were women and children, according to Mahmoud Seif al-Dine, a local municipality employee.

“This was a civilian building in a civilian neighbourhood, there were no indications of anything to do with Hezbollah or weapons. We don’t know why they struck, what we saw were women, children and civilians that were killed,” Seif al-Dine said.

Tuesday’s strike was the second hit on Barja, a Sunni town that is hosting about 27,000 people who have been displaced by Israeli bombing in south Lebanon over the past year. The attack was making residents fearful of welcoming displaced people, said Barja’s mayor, Hassan Saad.

Hezbollah shot a volley of rockets at Tel Aviv and other areas in central Israel on Wednesday afternoon, with at least one rocket falling in the Ben Gurion car park without causing injuries. Videos from the scene showed a car impaled by the remains of a Hezbollah rocket.

The new secretary-general of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said in a speech on Wednesday that the group had “tens of thousands” of fighters at the ready and that nowhere in Israel was “off limits” for its attacks. He added that Hezbollah is now in a “defensive state” in south Lebanon, indicating that Hezbollah fighters were dug in their positions and that the group was prepared for a war of attrition of Israel.

“We believe that only one thing can stop this aggressive war, which is the battlefield – both on the border and inside Israel,” Qassem said. The group has said it is open to a ceasefire, but that has its own conditions to stop fighting.

Israeli forces attack hospital, prevent rescuers as northern Gaza assault continues

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 01 November 2024

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JERUSALEM- Israel continues its assault to isolate and forcibly expel Palestinians in northern Gaza, with hospitals, houses, civilians and rescuers being targeted.

The Israeli military continued its bombardment of areas in and around Beit Lahia and Jabalia camp on Thursday, as the brutal siege of northern Gaza continues for a fourth week.

As part of what many believe is Israel's campaign to destroy residential and civil infrastructure in the north, referred to as the 'General's Plan', Israel repeatedly struck the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.

As well as injuring several personnel, Israeli forces also deliberately targeted critical facilities within the hospital, including the desalination plant for the kidney dialysis department, the engineering and maintenance department, and water tanks inside the hospital, according to Al Jazeera.

Additionally, the bombing of the third floor led to the destruction of the medicine warehouse, causing a fire that destroyed medical supplies received just five days ago from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Israel has also blocked rescue teams from accessing those killed and injured.

In nearby Jabalia, the Israeli army is occupying the decimated camp to prevent civilian residents from returning to it, until the area is reshaped in line with Israeli security plans, according to The New Arab’s Arabic language sister outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed citing Israeli media.

Israeli forces have continued the large-scale demolition of houses in the camp, while preventing rescuers from accessing those trapped under the rubble.

On social media site X, Gaza-based journalist Motasem A Dalloul shared photos of houses in Jabalia being blown up by Israeli forces on Thursday, writing:

"[I]sraeli occupation forces destroy entire residential buildings in Jabalia. No paramedics or any rescue teams are there to check whether there are casualties or not! We continuously receive calls from people trapped in the blockaded refugee camp for 27 days!"

This comes as the Gaza Civil Defence said in a statement on Thursday, as seen by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that it has been forcibly shut down in all areas of the northern Gaza Strip due to the ongoing Israeli siege on the area.

The statement highlighted that thousands of Palestinians are trapped in the area without humanitarian and medical care.

The Civil Defence called for direct intervention from UN bodies to ensure the delivery of aid into the affected areas, and also called for intervention to allow the remaining rescue, ambulance and firefighting vehicles to resume work.

The statement said that Israel is indiscriminately firing at anyone, including civilians and rescue workers, who approach areas such as Beit Lahia or Jabalia.

There are potentially thousands of Palestinians, dead or alive, trapped under the rubble in northern Gaza alone.

Eid Sabah, nursing director at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, told Reuters that bodies and wounded were still under the rubble from Israel’s massacres in the town with Israel blocking rescuers from reaching them.

Israel’s continued assault on northern Gaza comes as CIA chief William Burns is expected in Cairo on Thursday to resume peace talks, according to Al-Ahram.

This comes days after Burns was in Doha for talks with Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Israeli and Egyptian security officials.

Despite the US presence and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi launching a new initiative for a ceasefire deal in Gaza, one that Hamas has said it will “study”, any deal is unlikely to occur before the US elections on 5 November.

Burns' regional visit also coincides with Israel failing to meet a US deadline on aid entry.

The US has given Israel until 12 November to "surge" all assistance or potentially face cuts to American military aid. However, aid entry to Gaza in October has fallen to its lowest level since the start of Israel's war on the Palestinian territory.

Only 852 aid lorries have crossed into Gaza this month, compared with about 3,000 lorries in September. A total of 502 have entered since the letter, with an average of 35 lorries crossing each day between 14 and 29 October.

As of Wednesday, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 43,163 Palestinians, the majority of whom are civilians, and wounded at least 101,510.

Israeli campaign leaves Lebanese border towns in ruins, satellite images show

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 28 October 2024

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By Maya Gebeily and Milan Pavicic

BEIRUT - Israel's military campaign in southern Lebanon has caused vast destruction in more than a dozen border towns and villages, reducing many of them to clusters of grey craters, according to satellite imagery provided to Reuters by Planet Labs Inc.

Many of the towns, emptied of their residents by the bombing, had been inhabited for at least two centuries. The imagery reviewed includes towns between Kfarkela in southeastern Lebanon, south past Meiss al-Jabal, and then west past a base used by U.N. peacekeepers to the small village of Labbouneh.

"There are beautiful old homes, hundreds of years old. Thousands of artillery shells have hit the town, hundreds of air strikes," said Abdulmonem Choukeir, mayor of Meiss al-Jabal, one of the villages hit by Israeli attacks.

"Who knows what will still be standing at the end?"

Reuters compared satellite images taken in October 2023 to those taken in September and October 2024. Many of the villages with striking visible damage over the course of the last month sit atop hills overlooking Israel.

After nearly a year of exchanging fire across the border, Israel intensified its strikes on southern Lebanon and beyond over the last month. Israeli troops have made ground incursions all along the mountainous frontier with Lebanon, engaging in heavy clashes with Hezbollah fighters inside some towns.

Lebanon's disaster risk management unit, which tracks both victims and attacks on specific towns, said the 14 towns reviewed by Reuters had been subject to a total of 3,809 attacks by Israel over the last year.

Israel's military did not immediately respond to Reuters questions about the scale of destruction. Israel's military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Oct. 24 that Israel has struck more than 3,200 targets in south Lebanon.

The military says it is attacking towns in southern Lebanon because Hezbollah has turned "civilian villages into fortified combat zones," hiding weapons, explosives and vehicles there. Hezbollah denies using civilian infrastructure to launch attacks or store weapons, and residents of the towns deny the assertion.

A person familiar with Israel's military operations in Lebanon told Reuters that troops were systematically attacking towns with strategic overlook points, including Mhaibib.

The person said that Israel had "learned lessons" after its last war with Hezbollah in 2006, including incidents in which troops making ground incursions into the valleys of southern Lebanon were attacked by Hezbollah fighters on hilltops.

"That is why they are targeting these villages so heavily - so they can move more freely," the person said.

The most recent images of Kfarkela showed a string of white splotches along a main road leading into a town. Imagery taken last year showed the same road lined with houses and green vegetation, indicating the houses had been pulverized.

Further south, Meiss al-Jabal, a town 700 meters (yards) away from the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line separating Israeli and Lebanese territory, suffered significant destruction to an entire block near the town centre.

The area, measuring approximately 150 meters by 400 metres, appeared as a swatch of sandy brown, signalling the buildings there had been entirely flattened. Images from the same month in 2023 showed a densely packed neighbourhood of homes.

'ANY SIGN OF LIFE'

At least 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israel's strikes and more than 2,600 have been killed over the last year - a vast majority in the last month, Lebanon's government says.

Residents of the border villages have not been able to reach their hometowns in months. "After war came to Meiss al-Jabal, after the residents left, we no longer know anything about the state of the village," Meiss al-Jabal's mayor said.

Imagery of the nearby village of Mhaibib depicted similar levels of destruction.

Mhaibib is one of several villages - alongside Kfarkela, Aitaroun, Odaisseh, and Ramyeh - featured in footage shared on social media showing simultaneous explosions of several structures at once, indicating they had been laden with explosives.

Israel's military spokesman said on Oct. 24 that a command centre for Hezbollah's elite Radwan unit lay under Mhaibib, and that Israeli troops had "neutralised the main tunnel network" used by the group, but did not give details.

Hagari has said that Israel's goal is to "push Hezbollah away from the border, dismantle its capabilities, and eliminate the threat to northern residents" of Israel.

"This is a plan you take off the shelf," said Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. "Militaries plan, and they're executing the plan."

Seth Jones, another senior vice president at CSIS, had earlier told Reuters that Hezbollah used frontline villages to fire its shorter-range rockets into Israel.

Lubnan Baalbaki, the conductor of Lebanon's philharmonic orchestra and son of late Lebanese artist Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki, said his family had been purchasing satellite imagery of their hometown of Odaisseh to check if the family house still stood.

The house had been transformed by Abdel-Hamid into a cultural centre, full of his art works, original sketches and more than 1,000 books in an all-wood library. Abdel-Hamid passed away in 2013 and was buried behind the house with his late wife.

"We're a family of artists, my father is well-known, and our home was a known cultural home. We were trying to reassure ourselves with that thought," Baalbaki, the son, told Reuters.

Until late October, the house still stood. But at the weekend Baalbaki saw a video circulating of several homes in Odaisseh, including his family's, exploding.

The family is not affiliated to Hezbollah and Baalbaki denied that any weapons or military equipment were stored there.

"If you have such high-level intelligence that you can target specific military figures, then you know what's in that house," Baalbaki said. "It was an art house. We are all artists. The aim is to erase any sign of life."