Rights and Accountability 10 September 2024
The aftermath of a dawn airstrike in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, on 10 September.
UPIIsrael massacred at least 40 Palestinians by bombing tents housing people displaced from other areas of Gaza in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, early Tuesday, according to the government media office in the territory.
The health ministry in Gaza recorded the deaths of 19 individuals whose bodies were brought to hospitals. The media office explained that its higher fatality count includes 21 people whose bodies were not recovered because they were totally obliterated by the heavy weapons dropped on them.
Crews were still searching for missing persons, the government media office added. Video of the aftermath of the strike in al-Mawasi shows a 30-foot-deep crater in the sand where tents once stood:
Israel claimed without proof that it targeted a command center belonging to Hamas, which denied that any of its fighters were present.“This is a clear lie that aims to justify these ugly crimes,” Hamas stated. The resistance has denied several times that any of its members exist within civilian gatherings or use these places for military purposes.”
UN “deplores” attack
The UN human rights office stated that it “deplores” the attack on al-Mawasi, which Israel had unilaterally designated as a “humanitarian zone.”
Instead of ensuring the safety of displaced Palestinians, the Israeli military “continues to choose to use weapons with wide area effects in these increasingly densely populated areas … suggesting a complete disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s population, which stood at 2.3 million before the genocide, has been displaced from their homes. Many people have been displaced multiple times, with no safe place to go.
Even if Israel’s claims that Hamas fighters had embedded themselves in the camp were true, the UN office said, this would not relieve its military of its obligation “to comply with the fundamental international humanitarian law principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack.”
Israel has instructed civilians to move to al-Mawasi, an open coastal area lacking infrastructure to meet the needs of displaced people, when issuing evacuation orders in other areas of Gaza. Israel most recently ordered Palestinians to evacuate to al-Mawasi on 24 August, the UN human rights office said.
In July, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on al-Mawasi, killing dozens of Palestinians. Israel claimed that it had targeted Muhammad Deif, the head of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and the commander of Qassam’s Khan Younis Brigade.
Hamas has not confirmed whether Deif, who survived several previous attempts on his life, was killed.
American officials may have been involved in the July massacre in al-Mawasi. The New York Times reported last month that the US has been involved with intercepting the communications of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and has also “provided ground-penetrating radar to Israel to help in the hunt for him and other Hamas commanders.”
Attacks on shelters in north
Israel has repeatedly struck facilities being used as shelters for displaced people in Gaza, often claiming without evidence that they were being used as command centers by Hamas and other resistance groups, despite the vast tunnel networks used by Palestinian fighters.
On 7 September, the Israeli military attacked the Halima al-Sadia school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians in Jabaliya al-Nazla, northern Gaza. The attack, which occurred without warning, killed four people and injured several others, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
That same day, four Palestinians, including a child, were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed the Amr Ibn al-Aas school north of Gaza City, which was also being used as a shelter.
“Since the beginning of August, the Israeli occupation army has bombed 16 schools being used as shelters in the Gaza Strip,” Euro-Med Monitor stated. All but one of the targeted schools are in the northern half of Gaza.
More than 215 Palestinians were killed in those attacks and hundreds more were injured, the rights group added, noting that Israel has escalated its targeting of civilians in Gaza City and the northern governorates of the territory.
The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza’s north, including facilities serving as shelters, is part of Israel’s strategy to create a coercive environment in order to forcibly transfer the population to central and southern Gaza, according to Euro-Med Monitor.
Israeli plan to depopulate northern Gaza
The rights group pointed to reports in Israeli media about a plan drafted by Israeli reservist commanders and soldiers to depopulate northern Gaza.
The scheme, reportedly presented to Israel’s cabinet and other senior officials, was spearheaded by Giora Eiland, the retired major general and close advisor to Israel’s defense minister who called for creating conditions for the spread of epidemics in Gaza as a form of biological warfare.
It calls for an estimated 300,000 civilians to evacuate northern Gaza in a one-week period, after which the area would be besieged and Hamas fighters would be made to surrender or be killed.
According to Aluf Benn, chief editor of the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz, Israel has entered the second phase of its war, during which it “will strive to complete its takeover of the northern Gaza Strip.”
Benn added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government will subject Palestinians in northern Gaza to “the fate of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh: They were expelled from the region a year ago, overnight, in a rapid move by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Israel’s close ally.”
According to Benn, steps taken toward this new phase include Israel’s recent tapping of a colonel to head the Gaza equivalent of the Civil Administration in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s instruction for the military to prepare to distribute aid in lieu of humanitarian organizations.
“The motive is obvious: whoever distributes the food and medicine has their hand on the power switch,” Benn said.
He added that Netanyahu’s “relinquishment of the return of the Israeli hostages” is intended to deprive Sinwar of leverage in negotiations. Meanwhile, their continued captivity in Gaza will provide “Israel’s justification for continued warfare, siege and occupation.”
The ongoing warfare and siege in turn will compel Palestinians to leave Gaza for good, Benn projects.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said on Tuesday that the military was nearly done fighting in Gaza and would soon turn its focus northward to Hizballah.
There is a growing rift between Gallant and Netanyahu, with the former supporting a negotiated deal to free the captives and end the war in Gaza, and the latter insisting on “total victory” against Hamas.
Israel rams UN convoy with tanks, bulldozer
Euro-Med Monitor accused Israel of “critically undermining Gaza’s polio vaccination campaign.”
On Tuesday, Israel bombed a food stall near “three deconflicted centers designated as safe” for the polio vaccination campaign in the al-Tuffah neighborhood near Gaza City, killing five people.
The human rights group said that it has also documented attacks in southern Gaza that hindered the vaccination campaign.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said that Israeli forces held a convoy headed to northern Gaza for more than eight hours on Monday.
“Staff on the convoy were traveling to roll out the polio vaccination campaign for children in the north,” the agency said.
“This significant incident is the latest in a series of violations against UN staff,” UNRWA added.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said that the movement of the convoy had been coordinated with the Israeli military in advance.
But when the convoy of 12 staff members reached al-Rashid checkpoint, “they were informed that Israeli forces wanted to hold two UN staff members in the convoy for questioning.”
Israeli troops encircled the convoy and fired shots before Israeli military tanks and a bulldozer “proceeded to ram the UN vehicles from the front and from the back, compacting the convoy with the UN staff inside.”
Dujarric added the “bulldozer dropped debris on the first vehicle, while Israeli soldiers threatened staff, making it impossible for them to safely exit the vehicles.”
The convoy was held at gunpoint while “senior UN officials engaged with Israeli authorities in an effort to de-escalate the situation.”
According to Dujarric, “two staff members were interrogated by Israeli forces and then released back to us after seven and a half hours at the checkpoint.”
The convoy returned to base without having completed its mission, Dujarric added.
The Israeli military claimed that “it had received intelligence that terrorists might have concealed themselves within the caravan,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, said on Tuesday that “vaccines, finger markers and cold chain equipment were delivered to the north” of Gaza on Monday.
He added that the agency was trying to deliver more fuel so that vaccinators can reach children and hospitals can “maintain essential services.”
UN agencies and the health ministry in Gaza began the vaccination campaign this month after a 10-month-old baby, now paralyzed in one of his legs, was found to be the first case of polio in the territory in 25 years.
Nearly half a million children were vaccinated in the first nine days of the campaign.
“The children in Gaza deserve lasting peace, not just polio vaccines,” Ghebreyesus said.
At least 41,020 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, and some 94,925 have been injured, according to the health ministry in the territory.
Thousands more are missing and an unknown number of people have died as a result of Israel’s blockade and systematic attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and sanitation and water infrastructure.
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