ON SUNDAY night, Israeli planes launched a devastating attack on a tent camp in the Tel Al Sultan neighbourhood in western Rafah which is crammed with displaced Palestinians.
The number of deaths has grown to over 50 in what was the biggest loss of Palestinian lives in any one incident in the Israeli onslaught on Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, women and children were the majority of those killed in the murderous attack.
The Tel Al Sultan tent camp sheltered thousands of Palestinians who had been forced to flee from the east of Rafah city after the Israeli forces issued evacuation orders directing them to so-called ‘safe zones’ earlier this month, as the Zionist regime prepared a ground offensive to reduce Rafah to rubble.
The Wafa news agency, quoting the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, said that many of those who died were ‘burnt alive’ inside tents that melted as at least eight missiles and bombs struck the camp on Sunday night.
This attack on displaced Palestinians has been one of the deadliest since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza. According to the Government Media Office in Gaza 2,000 pound bombs supplied by the United States were used in the attack.
These were the massive bombs that US president Joe Biden announced to great fanfare earlier this month that he would refuse to send to Israel over concerns they would be used in Rafah without a ‘sufficient plan’ to ensure the safety of civilians there from one of the most destructive munitions in the American armoury.
This was yet another ‘red line’ that Biden insisted the Zionist regime must not cross. Like all his red-lines and demands for plans to ensure the safety of Palestinians the Israelis have ignored them, safe in the knowledge that these are mere window dressing designed as an attempt to placate the massive opposition to the genocidal war which is sweeping America and the world.
In the same way, Friday’s ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel must halt its military offensive in Rafah, has also been contemptuously rejected.
In a show of this contempt, the Israeli military admitted it had carried out the attack and acknowledged there had been civilian ‘casualties’, adding: ‘The details of the incident are still under investigation.’
Every single Palestinian man, woman and child killed in this murderous genocide is simply ‘collateral damage’ as far as the Zionists and their imperialist backers are concerned.
The attack, according to eyewitnesses and Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency Sanad, was deliberately targeted on the camp sheltering civilians and the use of 2,000lb bombs guaranteed Palestinians being burnt to death.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, reacted to the ‘horror’ in Rafah saying: ‘The Gaza genocide will not easily end without external pressure. Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspensions of agreements, trade, partnerships and investments, as well as participation in international forums.’
What is clear is that Israel is determined to carry on a war to exterminate the Palestinians or drive them from their land in order to secure its total domination over Palestine. In this they have the complete backing of their allies in the US and UK ruling classes who, despite all talk of red lines, continue to arm and support Zionist genocidal war.
The only force with the power to put an end to this complicity by the US and UK in genocide is the working class. Workers and young people throughout the US, UK and Europe have risen up in support of Palestine despite all the threats and intimidation from the police and threats to declare support for Palestine illegal.
The time has come for this mass movement of youth and workers to force their trade unions to take action by calling general strikes to bring down their governments and end the complicity with genocide by bringing in workers’ governments that will end all support for Israel – workers’ governments will support and arm the Palestinian people in going forward to establish the independent state of Palestine.
This is the way to end Zionist genocide.