The term hell on earth has been used frequently in the last 12 months as Israeli forces relentlessly pummelled and systematically annihilated the Gaza Strip.
In November 2023, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza described what remained of life in the enclave as "hell on earth", following intensifying Israeli bombardment and a raid on al-Shifa hospital in what was part of a sustained and systematic demolition of Gaza’s healthcare systems.
Then in April 2024, a doctor in Gaza used the same terminology as she detailed a rise in infections, amputations, famine and malnutrition.
Recently, the spokesperson for UNICEF declared that children in Gaza are enduring the real-world embodiment of hell on earth.
Yet in Northern Gaza today, even hell on earth is not a fitting representation of the reality on the ground. It would in fact amount to a profound understatement.
Indeed, since early October, the Israeli army has been responsible for apocalyptically brutal scenes in the north. The backdrop is the so-called ‘General’s Plan’. The vision laid out by retired Israeli General Giora Eiland is that Israel should impose unlivable conditions on the inhabitants of northern Gaza by starving them out and forcing them to leave.
Speaking to Haaretz in mid-October, three Israeli reserve soldiers in Gaza confirmed the plan is being implemented. “The goal is to give the residents who live north of the Netzarim area a deadline to move to the south of the strip. After this date, whoever will remain in the north will be considered an enemy and will be killed.” Meaning those who do not leave their houses are effectively rendered combatants.
UN officials have ergo urgently warned that the “blatant disregard for basic humanity” means in Northern Gaza, “the entire population is at risk of dying”.
But as Israel embarks on a campaign of systematic extermination, it is imperative that what is taking place is not viewed exclusively as an isolated operation but the continuation of Israel’s long-standing colonial ambitions.
In early October, Israel ordered the approximately 400,000 residents in the north to move to so-called ‘humanitarian areas'. Many have refused to leave their homes in what has become a ‘death camp’. “There are dead bodies everywhere”, say the local Palestinians. “Quadcopters fire at anything that moves”.
Northern Gaza is a living nightmare
Residents of surrounding areas in northern Gaza like Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya have been under intense and relentless bombardment for over a fortnight now.
Many of the displaced have sheltered in hospitals; sites supposed to be protected under international law. Still there is no reprieve.
Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three of the last operational hospitals in Northern Gaza, was ordered by Israeli forces to be completely forcibly evacuated in early October. The hospitals have since been besieged and regularly struck, killing scores of innocent civilians in the process. Israeli forces recently bombed an oxygen centre at the Kamal Adwan hospital, killing a number of children.
“There is death in all types and forms in Kamal Adwan hospital”, one orthopaedic surgeon sheltering in the hospital explained.
Israel has also deliberately ensured no food or aid has been allowed to reach northern Gaza since the beginning of October. Oxfam and several other rights organisations have warned northern Gaza is being erased, with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor concluding that Palestinians who remain in Northern Gaza are effectively staring two bleak options in the face: be killed by bombardment or starve to death.
One video shows a 13-year-old boy being struck by an Israeli missile, lying on the ground, signalling desperately for assistance. When a crowd gathers to help, they too are hit by an Israeli missile.
Footage has also emerged showing blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainees being transported by Israeli forces.
Journalists on the ground have described death marches where any male over the age of 16 is detained and tortured.
"Ideas such as deliberately opening fire close to a population” are out in the open, says Haaretz reporter Amos Harel. If that barbarous approach sounds eerily familiar, it’s because it’s straight from the playbook of immorality that Israel has perfected over several decades.
In 1988, then Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the architect of the ‘break their bones’ doctrine, which demanded Israeli soldiers deliberately disable Palestinians. 36 years later, more than 10 children a day are having their limbs amputated in Gaza.
Not that Israeli soldiers ever needed invitations to showcase their inhumanity. “I’m bored so I shoot” and “shoot first and ask questions later” were popular sentiments expressed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, documented in July, as they gloated about leaving Palestinian corpses in the street, flattening buildings and setting homes ablaze.
Therefore, striking the latest carnage in the north of Gaza as inexplicably linked to some military fantasy presents it as an anomaly. An exception to the norm. That is to fundamentally misunderstand what has always been Israel’s strategic objective: the systematic ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestinians, the destruction of Palestinian society and the perpetual oppression of the Palestinians.
Israel has sustained itself by persisting with the practice. And the logic has embedded itself into the fabric of society.
In fact, specifically regarding Gaza, mass expulsion and dispossession were on the agenda almost immediately after October 7. The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence was in October 2023 recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents.
This was echoed in the same period by the Misgav Institute, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s former adviser, which advocated for the “relocation and final settlement” of the entire Gaza population. It emphasised the need to capitalise on the ‘unique and rare moment’ that had been presented.
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The uncanny resemblance to the first Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion’s words in 1937, where he stipulated “the Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen” is not lost. Indeed, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And when it comes to colonisation, there is no such thing as coincidence.
Beyond mass expulsion, Israeli officials have been tripping over themselves in the last 12 months to unambiguously lay out the depraved ways they want to carry out the crime of genocide in Gaza.
Gaza will become a “city of tents”, outlined one Israeli official. “The focus is maximum damage”, the Israeli army spokesperson declared. “Burn Gaza”, said an Israeli lawmaker. “We’re rolling out the Gaza Nakba” insisted one minister. Keen not to be excluded in the contest of savagery, the Israeli minister for social equality recently made clear that “what the Arabs need today is a Nakba”.
It’s also far too easy to dismiss the enthusiasm for Palestinian mass slaughter as confined to the Israeli political and military elite.
At a recent conference in which senior Israeli figures doubled down on how Palestinians in Gaza will soon ‘disappear’- as they set their sights on settling Gaza and engaging in yet more Palestinian land theft - Israeli citizens were eager to share their vision too. “We should kill them, every last one of them”, remarked one Israeli. Another said that Gaza whilst inhabited by Palestinians is akin to an infection; it requires urgent cleansing.
So whilst in Northern Gaza there is a particular sickening and sinister viciousness that characterises the systematic extermination taking place, the strategy is regrettably the same as it has been for 76 years.
There is a territory and it is populated by Palestinians. That is the ultimate crime in the eyes of Israel. And for that the Palestinians must be wiped out.
The Israeli army is merely carrying out what has ostensibly long been the aspirational consensus across Israeli political, military and civil society.
Hamza Yusuf is a British Palestinian journalist and writer based in London.
Follow him on X: @Hamza_a96
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.