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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Popcorn, cotton-candy and massages. Inside Israel’s new army ‘resort’ in northern Gaza</h1>
<span class="gmail-post-author"><span class="gmail-by">By</span> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/author/jonathan-ofir/" title="Posts by Jonathan Ofir" class="gmail-author gmail-url gmail-fn" rel="author">Jonathan Ofir</a></span>
<span class="gmail-meta-sep"></span>
<span class="gmail-date-link">- December 25, 2024</span> </div><div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element"><br></div><div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">As human rights organizations <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/israels-genocide-in-gaza-is-fully-intentional-and-other-takeaways-from-the-amnesty-international-report/">amass</a> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/human-rights-watch-finds-israel-guilty-of-extermination-and-acts-of-genocide/">reports</a>
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. </div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<p>On Monday, Israeli news website Ynet published a <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rks9n00lsyl">piece</a>
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”.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/what-is-the-generals-plan-israels-ongoing-ethnic-cleansing-of-northern-gaza-explained/">ethnic cleansing campaign</a> in recent months – as being nearby. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<h2><strong>Reality check</strong></h2>
<p>The whole piece is a big celebration. But here is where we should
start making some reality checks, out from this Israeli bubble.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>This stands in start contrast to the recent Human Rights Watch <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/human-rights-watch-finds-israel-guilty-of-extermination-and-acts-of-genocide/">report</a>
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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<h2><strong>A bubble</strong> in a concentration camp</h2>
<p>In the report, the journalist Zeitoun laments that the soldiers cannot go down to the beach.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>Admittedly, though not critically, he notes that the soldiers are living in a bubble: </p>
<p>“Nonetheless, the scenery of the sea and the calm atmosphere do theirs, completing the bubble-like sense”, Zeitoun writes.</p>
<p>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: </p>
<p>“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”. </p>
<p>It’s about making people forget they’re in Gaza. The officer continues:</p>
<p>“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”. </p>
<p>While the soldiers’ dreams are coming true, having cappuccinos and
grilling meat, Palestinians in Gaza are living in famine-like
conditions. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<h2>‘<strong>Zone of Interest</strong>‘</h2>
<p>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, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/15NtXyQpMy/">shared</a>
a post about this horrendous piece on her Facebook page yesterday,
several commentators were drawn to associations with the film <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/tag/the-zone-of-interest/">Zone of Interest</a>,
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. </p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/influential-israeli-national-security-leader-makes-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/">said</a>
for decades. Now, with Israel’s systematic extermination, it is indeed
an extermination camp. The bubble is surrounded with death from all
sides. </p>
<p>The Ynet piece is reminiscent of another report from February this year, published by Haaretz. The <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/how-haaretz-has-aided-israels-genocide-in-gaza/">piece</a>
was a feel-good story about how soldiers make food from goods that they
steal from Palestinian private kitchens, in homes that they stole. </p>
<p>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”. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>It is the conceptualization that Gazans do not exist. It is a land
without a people, for the Israelis who always need more land. </p>
<h2><strong>Permanent presence</strong> in Gaza</h2>
<p>Towards the end of his piece, Zeitoun is pushing the idea that the resort also serves the purpose of normalizing a <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/israeli-army-says-it-is-staying-in-north-gaza-and-wont-let-residents-return/">permanent Israeli presence in Gaza</a>, as is also indicated in the title.</p>
<p>“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. </p>
<p>“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”.”</p>
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