[News] Popcorn, cotton-candy and massages. Inside Israel’s new army ‘resort’ in northern Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/popcorn-cotton-candy-and-massages-inside-israels-new-army-resort-in-northern-gaza/?ml_recipient=141786423534552408&ml_link=141786385724999111&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-12-26&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Popcorn, cotton-candy and massages. Inside Israel’s new army ‘resort’ in
northern Gaza By Jonathan Ofir
<https://mondoweiss.net/author/jonathan-ofir/> - December 25, 2024

As human rights organizations amass
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/israels-genocide-in-gaza-is-fully-intentional-and-other-takeaways-from-the-amnesty-international-report/>
reports
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/human-rights-watch-finds-israel-guilty-of-extermination-and-acts-of-genocide/>
on Israel committing genocide in Gaza, Israeli society is producing a wall
of denial, separating itself from the catastrophic reality in Gaza. Nothing
is more evident of that than a new report of a seawater desalination plant
doubling as an Israeli army ‘resort’ in Gaza.

On Monday, Israeli news website Ynet published a piece
<https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rks9n00lsyl> in Hebrew by their
military correspondent Yoav Zeitoun, titled “Desalination facility and
holiday resort with café; Documentation: This is how IDF [Israeli military]
is preparing for prolonged stay in Gaza”.

Zeitoun, who was embedded with the military, visited the resort, which is
located near the beach in the western part of north Gaza. Though the exact
location of the ‘resort’ is not revealed, Zeitoun does mention Jabalia –
the area in north Gaza where Israel has launched a brutal ethnic cleansing
campaign
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/what-is-the-generals-plan-israels-ongoing-ethnic-cleansing-of-northern-gaza-explained/>
in recent months – as being nearby.

Photos and videos reveal the inside of this new ‘resort’ for soldiers:
popcorn machines next to a cotton-candy machine, PlayStation video games, a
lounge with a “hotel” breakfast, and meat on the grill. Elsewhere, a
physiotherapist even gives massages.
*Reality check*

The whole piece is a big celebration. But here is where we should start
making some reality checks, out from this Israeli bubble.

First, the desalination facility is huge. It produces 60,000 liters of
water per day, enough for the soldiers to have clean drinking water and
take showers.

This stands in start contrast to the recent Human Rights Watch report
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/human-rights-watch-finds-israel-guilty-of-extermination-and-acts-of-genocide/>
on Israel’s “extermination and acts of genocide”, which focused mostly on
water. The report noted how, while Israelis consume about 250 liters of
water per day (about 66 Gallons), Gazans today are forced to consume about
2 to 9 liters per day.

Because of the genocide, Palestinains in Gaza are forced to literally drink
the sea, and dehydrated mothers feed their infants baby-formula with
poisonous water. “When we cannot get drinking water, taking a shower is a
dream”, said a woman cited in the report.

But why should the soldiers in the resort care at all? The desalination
facility can produce fresh water which can suffice over 240 Israelis who
each consume about 50 times more water than the average starved, dehydrated
Gazans.

Imagine if the Israelis invested in such facilities for the Gazans, rather
than blowing up their water reservoirs. But they don’t care about that,
despite it being their obligation to suffice the basic needs of the
occupied population.
*A bubble* in a concentration camp

In the report, the journalist Zeitoun laments that the soldiers cannot go
down to the beach.

“The murmur of the waves is well heard in the nearby beach, but IDF does
not permit the soldiers to go down to it, and a pyramid of mounds separates
between the unusual compound and the Gazan beach strip,” he writes.

Admittedly, though not critically, he notes that the soldiers are living in
a bubble:

“Nonetheless, the scenery of the sea and the calm atmosphere do theirs,
completing the bubble-like sense”, Zeitoun writes.

The resort provides military companies (usually around two hundred
soldiers) a resort day every ten days, in circulation. A military logistics
officer describes it to Zeitoun:

“As each company finishes this refreshment day, which they get every 10
days on average, they return in the night to rest in their combat area in
Jabalia, and continue refreshed in their combat missions… As the company
completes its day of fun in this compound, we clean it and set it up anew
in the night, preparing it for the company that will arrive the next day,
and so forth. Just like a conveyor belt”.

It’s about making people forget they’re in Gaza. The officer continues:

“You remember that you are in Gaza, yes? We give a feeling of home, with
ice-coffee, espresso, protein drinks, toast and Shakshukas in various
flavors for breakfast, and of course also fruit and ice cream when the
weather is warm. We make dreams come true for the soldiers”.

While the soldiers’ dreams are coming true, having cappuccinos and grilling
meat, Palestinians in Gaza are living in famine-like conditions.

Two days ago, I talked with my friend Ditte, just before the demonstration
against the Israeli genocide, in Copenhagen. She updated me about her
beloved Fadi in Deir al-Balah, she said he managed to get some meat to eat
just the other day – it was the first time in 4 months, and he was ecstatic
about it. He never complains, she says, despite living in a tent and now
freezing in the night.
‘*Zone of Interest*‘

But it is not merely the soldiers who need to dream – it is the Israeli
population at large. When Orly Noy, chair of B’tselem and journalist, shared
<https://www.facebook.com/share/15NtXyQpMy/> a post about this horrendous
piece on her Facebook page yesterday, several commentators were drawn to
associations with the film Zone of Interest
<https://mondoweiss.net/tag/the-zone-of-interest/>, a film from last year
which focused on a family of Nazis living right against the walls of
Auschwitz, in their own bubble of normalcy.

In response to the Ynet piece, Noy published a piece in the Local Call
publication , titled “Sweet cotton-candy at the heart of the valley of
killings.” She writes:

“Thus, soldiers sit in the valley of killings, grilling meat in stands that
work non-stop, and do not know where the smell of burnt meat that fills
their nostrils originates from – whether it is from the carcasses of the
animals that were brought there for them, or from bodies of the people in
whose beach they may not wade.”

But this is arguably even worse than “Zone of Interest”, because the
soldiers are not outside of the concentration camp – but inside it. That
Gaza is a concentration camp has been said
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/influential-israeli-national-security-leader-makes-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/>
for decades. Now, with Israel’s systematic extermination, it is indeed an
extermination camp. The bubble is surrounded with death from all sides.

The Ynet piece is reminiscent of another report from February this year,
published by Haaretz. The piece
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/how-haaretz-has-aided-israels-genocide-in-gaza/>
was a feel-good story about how soldiers make food from goods that they
steal from Palestinian private kitchens, in homes that they stole.

In that wretched and crass piece, the authors sought futilely to provoke
moral righteousness, noting that while they occupied and looted the homes
of the Gazans they displaced, the soldiers nonetheless cooked “with mixed
feelings”.

But it would appear that Zeitoun and Ynet’s piece goes even beyond that.
There is no attempt to assuage any guilt that the soldiers may have. There
are no mixed feelings.

There are in fact, no feelings at all for the Palestinians, who just next
to the resort, are starving and drinking dirty water. The Palestinians
simply do not exist in the entirety of the piece, not even as a reflection.

The total absence of Palestinians from the narrative, who are undergoing a
genocide committed by the soldiers at this resort, reveals the reality of
where Israeli society now exists. This is the conceptual preparation for
the Israelis who are now at the next stage of their colonization of
Palestine.

It is the conceptualization that Gazans do not exist. It is a land without
a people, for the Israelis who always need more land.
*Permanent presence* in Gaza

Towards the end of his piece, Zeitoun is pushing the idea that the resort
also serves the purpose of normalizing a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/israeli-army-says-it-is-staying-in-north-gaza-and-wont-let-residents-return/>,
as is also indicated in the title.

“It does not seem as if the forces will move out of [Jabalia], and it’s
already clear that we are not speaking of a mere raid, which is a
short-term military operation that includes entry and exit from enemy
territory,” he writes.

“In the gigantic separation corridor of Netzarim [Wadi Gaza, about 2.5
miles wide cutting Northern Gaza off from east to west] as well as the
Philadelphi route [in the south, separating Gaza and Egypt], the IDF has
already built similar refreshment facilities, which include also pedicure
stations to treat soldiers’ feet, but not at such scope and level as in
this new “holiday resort”.”
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