ISRAEL has ramped up its siege of northern Gaza with the UN warning that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives are at risk, as concerns grow that Benjamin Netanyahu aims for a territorial expansion.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was hunting Hamas militants, but suspicions are forming that Israel’s Government is executing a plan it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.
The plan intends to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those who stay as combatants – leading to a siege.
Israel has reportedly insisted that the plan has not been adopted.
However, some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented daily, but with a major difference.
Palestinians in northern Gaza were not given a realistic chance to evacuate, effectively leaving them trapped.
“It is impossible for me to leave my house because I do not want to die out there,” Ramadan, a 19-year-old in Beit Lahiya whose family has been displaced seven times over the course of the 13-month war, told the Guardian.
“There is a lot of shooting and all kinds of bombing. Gatherings are being bombed, shelters are being bombed, and schools are being bombed. The area is overcrowded, so that even a small bomb kills and injures a lot of people.”
“Even if there are people who want to go south, they can’t because there is no safe road,” Ramadan said.
Israeli ground troops have laid siege to three areas in northern Gaza, Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and the Jabalia refugee camp, where there are around 75,000 people.
According to reports the reality for almost all the 400,000 trapped across the northern half of Gaza is that there is no escape from Israel's siege.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency UNRWA, made an emergency appeal on October 22, calling for “an immediate truce, even for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”.
Reportedly there was no response from the Israeli authorities, whose official position is not to deal with UNRWA.
The UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Agency (OCHA) reported that, as of Thursday, “no bakeries or public kitchens in north Gaza are operational, and only two of 20 health service points and two hospitals remain operational, albeit partially”.
“With no electricity or fuel allowed since October 1, only two of eight water wells in Jabalia refugee camp remain functional, both of them partially,” OCHA said.
In an emergency statement on Friday, the heads of OCHA and 14 other UN and independent aid agencies raised the alarm that the area was at the brink of an abyss.
“The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” the appeal said. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”
The residual health facilities inside the besieged zone, the Kamal Adwan, al-Awda, and Indonesian hospitals, have all been reportedly targeted by the IDF.
This week Kamal Adwan was raided by the IDF, its medics detained, and once the soldiers withdrew, the hospital was bombed, destroying supplies recently delivered by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Kamal Adwan hospital has been reduced from a hospital helping hundreds of patients, with dozens of health workers, to a shell of itself,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Wednesday the international community should stand firm to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.
The US and other western allies of Israel have so far been reluctant to use the leverage of their arms supplies to influence policy or openly condemn its constant bombing of Palestinian people.
On 21 October, the radical movement Nachala held a festival on the Sukkot holiday called “Preparing to Settle Gaza”.
It was attended by senior members of Netanyahu’s cabinet as well as representatives of his Likud party.
The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on his way to the event that the Gaza strip is “part of the land of Israel”, adding that settlements were the only true form of security.
