A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Wednesday detailed the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are implementing an ethnic cleansing campaign.
At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order since there was nowhere safe to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed assault on the north on Beith Lahia and neighboring Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, where it imposed a full siege to starve out civilians.
The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
“There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes,” IDF spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.
Google Maps screenshot that shows the cities of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia
The Haaretz reporters traveled to Beit Lahia and al-Atatra, a neighborhood northwest of the city, and described the destruction they saw. “In [al-Atatra] and Beit Lahia, there isn’t a single house that people can return to and live in. The area looks like it was hit by a natural disaster. There are no civilians to be seen among the ruins,” the report says.
As an attempt to remove any remaining civilians, the Israeli military fires artillery into Beit Lahia at night. “Those who want to return can’t do so, because the army prevents it. The bottom line is that it makes no difference what the IDF calls its actions. The army has begun the stage of cleansing the northern Strip while it prepares to hold onto the area for a long time to come,” the report reads.
Israeli media has reported that the Israeli military is carrying out a version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for ethnic cleansing drawn up by retired IDF generals. The plan calls for the complete evacuation of all Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza to below the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. Under the plan, if civilians don’t leave, they are to be treated as combatants and killed either by military action or starvation.
While the Israeli military claims its cleansing campaign is about removing Hamas, the IDF commander in charge of Beit Lahia, Col. Yaniv Barot, acknowledged they found no significant militant infrastructure in the area. “Barot says his mission is to continue to locate and eliminate terror infrastructure and Hamas activists. But he says that in the course of the most recent operation, no underground infrastructure, heavy war materiel or weapons production sites were found,” the report says.
The Haaretz report said the activity on the ground proves that the Israeli military is bisecting northern Gaza, potentially to pave the way for the construction of Jewish settlements, an idea strongly supported by many Israeli ministers and members of the Knesset.
The Biden administration has claimed it opposes any implementation of the “general’s plan” and the advancement of settlements but has continued to provide military aid for the ethnic cleansing campaign.