[News] Israeli army says it is staying in north Gaza and won’t let residents return

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/israeli-army-says-it-is-staying-in-north-gaza-and-wont-let-residents-return/?ml_recipient=137437743513863392&ml_link=137437728187877294&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-11-08&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Israeli army says it is staying in north Gaza and won’t let residents return
Qassam Muaddi
November 7, 2024
------------------------------
[image: 251024_Gaza_ZU_009-1536x1209.jpg]
Displaced Palestinians ordered by the Israeli military to evacuate the
northern part of Gaza flee amid an Israeli military operation in Jabalia,
October 25, 2024. (Photo: © Mahmoud Issa/Quds Net News via ZUMA Press
Wire/APA Images)

Israel announced on Thursday that it will expand its offensive on north
Gaza, which has been ongoing since October 5 last month. According to the
Israeli army, military operations that have largely taken place in Jabalia
refugee camp will expand to Beit Lahia.

In Jabalia, Israeli forces have been carpet bombing the remaining
infrastructure of the refugee camp and deploying quadcopter drones among
the civilian population. Eyewitnesses who spoke to *Mondoweiss *last month
reported that the drones fired on fleeing residents
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/inside-israels-ongoing-invasion-of-jabalia-in-northern-gaza/>
waving white flags and targeted individuals using facial recognition
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/witnesses-say-the-israeli-army-is-using-facial-recognition-technology-in-its-assault-on-north-gaza/>.
Simultaneously, Israeli forces have blocked the entry of food and medicine
to all of northern Gaza, pushing inhabitants to leave the area or starve.
Survivors of the ongoing invasion report an “extermination” campaign
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/survivors-of-north-gaza-invasion-report-israeli-extermination-campaign/>
.

Most Palestinians who have been forced to leave Jabalia have fled to Gaza
City, just south of north Gaza. Others have fled to Beit Lahia and Beit
Hanoun within the north, and according to local sources, only a small
number of Palestinians have fled to the southern Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson of the Israeli army, Yitzhak Cohen, said
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/06/palestinians-will-not-be-allowed-to-return-to-homes-in-northern-gaza-says-idf>
in a press briefing that the army has come close to the complete
“evacuation” of the population of north Gaza. The army spokesperson said
that Palestinian residents of the north will not be allowed to return to
their homes. This declaration marks the first official Israeli admission of
the intent to permanently expel Palestinians from north Gaza.

The Israeli army continues to besiege Kamal Adwan Hospital, ten days
after first
raiding the medical compound
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/this-is-an-extermination-israels-assault-on-north-gazas-last-functioning-hospital/>
and forcibly removing most of its patients, medical staff, and the
displaced civilians sheltering there. The hospital’s director, Dr. Husam
Abu Safiyeh, said on Wednesday that Israeli forces have been striking the
upper floors of the hospital, putting patients’ lives in danger. Video
footage <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HkO6ny1e4E> taken from inside the
hospital showed the moment when Palestinian civilians were clearing the
upper floors as Israeli bombs struck the hospital.

Dr. Abu Safiyeh said that Israeli forces had arrested most of the medical
staff in the invasion ten days ago and were blocking the arrival of medical
teams. Abu Safiyeh added that only a few doctors, in addition to himself,
remained to tend to the patients that were left.

Several wounded patients lost their lives at Kamal Adwan due to the lack of
specialized personnel and medical supplies, the hospital director said.

Kamal Adwan is the only remaining functioning hospital in north Gaza.
*Implementing the Generals’ Plan?*

Israel has periodically invaded and besieged north Gaza, including Jabalia,
Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and al-Twam, since October 7 of last year, while
its bombardment of the northern governorate has not stopped throughout the
past year.

Before the war, approximately 700,000 Palestinians lived in the Gaza
Strip’s northern governorate, but the majority of them fled south
throughout the war. Prior to the most recent offensive last month, some
200,000 Palestinians were estimated to have remained in northern Gaza, but
the Israeli onslaught has almost halved those numbers, according to local
Civil Defense crews.

Israel’s current offensive on northern Gaza aligns with the so-called
“Generals’
Plan
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/what-is-the-generals-plan-israels-ongoing-ethnic-cleansing-of-northern-gaza-explained/>,”
a proposal of a group of top Israeli generals that aims to empty Gaza of
its population through a systematic campaign of starvation, mass killing,
and forcible displacement. The plan is based on a vision laid out by
retired Israeli general Giora Eiland
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/influential-israeli-national-security-leader-makes-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/>
in the early months of the war. Eiland’s vision is that Israel should
impose unlivable conditions on the inhabitants of northern Gaza by starving
them out and forcing them to leave for the south. Whoever remains, Eiland
said, would be considered a Hamas member or sympathizer, and thus a
legitimate target. The idea is to drain northern Gaza of its population and
thus isolate Hamas from its social base, forcing it to capitulate or die.

Last September, several Israeli generals endorsed Eiland’s vision and
proposed it to the government. Netanyahu then told Israeli lawmakers that
he was considering the “Generals’ Plan,” as reported by AP
<https://apnews.com/article/hamas-israel-generals-plan-eiland-gaza-219d7eb9a3050e281ccc032d5a56263c>
in mid-October. Two weeks after Netanyahu’s reported meeting with Israeli
lawmakers, the siege on northern Gaza and the ground invasion of Jabalia
began.

Last week, the Israeli army said that it had ended most of its “operations”
in north Gaza and that it would end its offensive there soon. This
announcement gave the impression that Israel would refrain from the full
implementation of the Generals’ Plan, but the Israeli army’s most recent
announcement that the offensive would expand to Beit Lahia indicates that
Eiland’s plan is continuing apace.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20241108/b91e7274/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 251024_Gaza_ZU_009-1536x1209.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 290015 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20241108/b91e7274/attachment-0001.jpg>