Israel's fourth attack on north Gaza's Jabalia seeks to displace those who remain

The Israeli army committed three massacres in the north and centre of the Gaza Strip as it escalated military operations in these areas earlier this week, coinciding with the first anniversary of the outbreak of the war on 7 October 2023.

The Israeli army entered the north of the Strip, specifically in the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, and unleashed a wave of air strikes.

According to a medical source who spoke to The New Arab, the Israeli bombings killed dozens of people, but ambulances are still unable to retrieve the bodies due to the Israeli ground incursion.

Omar Abu Shamla, a resident of Jabalia camp, told TNA, "The Israeli army and its drones are shooting at everything that moves in Jabalia camp."

"There are martyrs everywhere in the camp, [many] who fell while trying to escape the bombing," he added.

An absurd war

This latest attack by Israel came after its army announced that it had detected rockets being fired from the northern Gaza Strip into southern Israel on 6 October, and issued new orders to residents of these areas to evacuate.

The Ministry of Interior in Gaza called, in a statement, on citizens in northern Gaza in areas like Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Jabalia to "not respond to the occupation's threats to evacuate their homes and move to the southern Gaza Strip."

Mahmoud Abu Rahma's family, consisting of seven members, including three who are under the age of 14, walked four kilometres on foot to flee their home in the town of Beit Lahia to the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, west of Gaza City.

"This is the thirteenth time I have been displaced from my house since the beginning of this war. Despite this, we will remain steadfast here in the northern Gaza Strip and will not move to the southern Gaza Strip even if it costs us our lives," he said to TNA. 

He pointed out that his family was shot at by the Israeli army during their displacement, and his eldest daughter, 17 years old, was previously shot in the leg.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said in a statement to TNA that the Israeli army had demanded three hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, Kamal Adwan, Indonesian, and Al-Awda, to evacuate patients and medical staff, noting that the army had threatened the three hospitals with "destruction, killing, and arrest" if they did not evacuate.

These three hospitals are operating at minimum capacity, and have a total of 317 patients, in addition to about 80 people in intensive care and unable to move.

This latest attack by the Israeli army on Jabalia is the fourth since the war began a year ago.

Abd AlHamid Abu Warda, 38 years old, was sitting on his knees in the courtyard of the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia camp, holding the body of his youngest son, Muhannad, age 12, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Abu Warda told TNA, "Enough is enough. This absurd war must stop. The bloodshed in Gaza must stop."

He explained that his son was killed while his family was fleeing their home in Jabalia camp to the centre of Gaza City, where he was shot by Israeli drones.

The young man, Nabil Masoud, wrote on his Facebook page, "We are in northern Gaza [...] They closed the roads, divided the areas, and besieged us by air and land [...] But they forgot that God's door never closes."

Mohammed Azima said in a post, "Perhaps these are our last hours, perhaps we will be killed in the coming raids."

Israel seeks to displace those who remained

In the centre of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army killed 30 Palestinians during the past Monday and Tuesday, according to medical sources from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Among the dead were 17 who were killed in a single Israeli raid that targeted the home of the Abd AlHadi family on Tuesday night in the Bureij camp in central Gaza.

The spokesman for the Civil Defence Authority in Gaza, Mahmoud Basal, said in a statement to TNA on October 8, "17 martyrs, including children, were pulled out by Civil Defence crews from the three-story home of the Abdul Hadi family, which was targeted by a missile from a warplane in the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip."

A number of citizens were also killed and injured in an Israeli bombardment that targeted the home of the Abu Nahl family in the Al-Sawarah area, west of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, shortly after a man was killed by gunfire from a helicopter northwest of the Nuseirat camp.

The Israeli army justified this latest attack in the north and centre of the Gaza Strip, saying that it aims to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure in these areas, although medical sources indicate that most of the victims are civilians.

However, Khaled Meshaal, head of the political bureau of Hamas in exile, said in statements to Reuters on 8 October that Hamas "will rise from the ashes despite the heavy losses it has suffered, and that it continues to recruit fighters and manufacture weapons."

For his part, writer and political analyst Talal Okal told TNA, "The Israeli army seeks, through these new attacks, to displace the remaining Palestinians in the north of the Strip to the south, after its policy of starving them failed."

Okal explained that the Israeli army seeks to make the northern Gaza area, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia, into a security belt in preparation for the return of settlements to northern Gaza.

He believed that the Arab and international silence regarding these Israeli crimes "encouraged Israel to practice genocide against the Palestinian people systematically."