--“Entire Families Vanished:” Israeli Air Force Burns up 20 Refugee Tents, kills 40, in Strikes on Humanitarian Zone
Juan Cole 09/10/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al Jazeera Arabic reports that the Israeli occupation army committed yet another massacre on Monday evening, targeting a tent encampment of internally displaced refugees in the al-Mawasi area of the district of Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip. Civil defense said that 40 persons were killed, and another 60 injured. The bodies of the dead were still being recovered.
Powerful flames swept through the tents, burning up at least 20 of them. The rockets left a impact craters 9 meters / yards deep. There were some 200 tents at al-Mawasi, so ten percent were burned up by these air strikes.
The civil defense spokesman said that entire families had vanished into the sand during the bombardment, adding that early estimates indicate that we are confronting one of the ugliest massacres since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza.
The spokesman said that the Israeli air force had used heavy missiles in its raid on the tents of the refugees.
The Israeli military justified the killings in what they had designated a safe zone on the grounds that it included a Hamas command center.
As I have pointed out before, what the Israeli military likely actually means is that their drones, using biometric data, identified a couple members of the al-Qassam Brigades in the area and struck at them without regard to civilian casualities. The Israeli rules of engagement allow up to 20 civilian deaths per militant killed, so a death toll of 40 might indicate that two members of the al-Qassam Brigades were taken out. No civilized military has such a permissive ROE when it comes to civilian casualties. The extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to kill all 30,000 members of the al-Qassam Brigades in revenge for the October 7 attacks. It is not permitted, however, in the international law of war to simply murder enemy combatants who are not armed and not engaged in battle, and who are surrounded by civilians. Since October 7 was planned and executed by a small cadre of perhaps elite 3,000 commandos, it is possible that many rank and file Qassam Brigades members did not even know about it.
In a statement, Hamas denied that any of its gunmen were in the area of the airstrike.
Almost all of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza have been expelled from their homes repeatedly by the Israeli military, which has turned virtually the entire territory into refugee settlements. Ironically, 70% of Gaza families were made refugees in 1948 from their homes in Beersheba and elsewhere in southern Israel, so they have now been chased from their homes once again by the Israelis who had occupied their original domiciles in 1948. All Palestinians have been made like Jesus in Matt 8:20 : “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that the Israeli military has ordered Palestinians out of parts of northern Gaza where it was earlier agreed there would be a military pause so that children would receive polio shots. Only about a third of the children who must be vaccinated have been, with the Israeli air force pausing bombing runs in the morning and the early afternoon for makeshift vaccination centers, but resuming them in the late afternoon and evening. This procedure discourages families from gathering for the shots and endangers the health workers administering them.
Only half of the necessary medicines are now available in the Strip, with insulin supplies running very low, which is a death sentence for those with diabetes.
OCHA says that Israeli aerial and ground assaults persist throughout the Gaza Strip, inflicting additional civilian casualties, expulsions, and razing of residences and other non-military infrastructure. Ground maneuvers, especially in Beit Hanoun, southwestern Gaza City, eastern Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, and both east and south Rafah, with intense combat, are also still being reported, along with Palestinian rocket launches toward Israel.
Between the afternoons of September 5 and 8, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health (MoH), the Israelis killed 94 Palestinians in Gaza and 307 were injured.
From October 7, 2023, to September 8, 2024, at least 40,972 Palestinians were killed and 94,761 sustained injuries, as reported by the MoH in Gaza.
OCHA reports these Palestinian casualties at the hands of the Israeli military for this past Friday through Sunday:
” On 6 September, six Palestinians, including four women, were reportedly killed and five others injured when a residential building was hit near Bader Mosque in Az Zaytoun area, in Gaza city.
On 6 September, seven Palestinians were reportedly killed when a house was hit in An Nuseirat Refugee Camp in northern Deir al Balah.
On 6 September, five Palestinians were killed, including two women and two unidentified corpses recovered in pieces, and at least 10 others were injured when an apartment was hit in Al Yarmouk street, in central Khan Younis.
On 7 September, five Palestinians, including two children and two women, were reportedly killed, and others injured, when a house was hit in Al Bureij Refugee Camp in northern Deir al Balah.On 7 September, at least eight Palestinians, including a boy, were reportedly killed and others injured in western An Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in northern Deir al Balah.
On 7 September, six Palestinians, including two children and three women, were reportedly killed and others injured when a house was hit near the entrance of Al Bureij refugee Camp, in northern Deir al Balah.
On 8 September, five Palestinians including the Deputy Director for the Civil Defence (PCD) were reportedly killed and others injured when their house was hit in Jabalya. According to the PCD [Palestinian Civil Defense], the number of PCD staff killed so far has risen to 83.”
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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:
“40 killed, 60 wounded In Israeli Strike On Al Mawasi: Gaza Civil Defense | Dawn News English”
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