‘THE MASSACRES that are being committed on the ground by the Israeli army indicates that there is a plan being implemented at an unprecedented speed to empty the land of its inhabitants and eliminate the Palestinian presence,’ the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on Tuesday.
Accusing Israel of systematically and extensively working on expelling and displacing Palestinian citizens from northern Gaza through massacres and destroying everything, it continued: ‘The residents who refuse or are unable to evacuate their homes are treated as terrorists and face killing and direct targeting.
‘Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on Tuesday morning, October 22, demanding the residents of Beit Lahia, including those in shelters and hospitals, forcibly evacuate the area and head towards the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia, where the occupation forces have a checkpoint, before forcing the residents to leave northern Gaza in its entirety, as happened during the past two days to thousands who were in shelters around the Indonesian Hospitals,’ Euro-Med pointed out.
The new Israeli displacement order also targets the civilians at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, which receives the largest number of casualties, according to Euro-Med.
During the first days of the recent Israeli aggression in northern Gaza, the medical crews at the Kamal Adwan had refused to respond to a similar evacuation order.
‘The Kamal Adwan Hospital is facing major challenges in its work as a result of the lack of blood units and medical consumables, which have run out, and the ongoing bombardment around the building, in addition to the exhaustion of the medical staff who received hundreds of killed and wounded citizens during 18 days,’ Euro-Med said.
‘Israeli forces bombed most of the shelter centres in Jabalia camp and Jabalia (city), targeting the displaced people to force them to comply with the orders and plans of displacement.
‘They also targeted them while they were responding to that – an incident that happened once again on Monday when they attacked Al-Fawqa School, killing 17 Palestinians and injuring dozens,’ Euro-Med affirmed.
Euro-Med called on the UN anew to declare the northern Gaza Strip a disaster area, take immediate action in this regard, and force Israel to stop its genocidal crimes there.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said on Monday that after 17 days of Israeli ethnic cleansing operations in northern Gaza, hospitals in the area are facing the risk of complete collapse due to assaults by the occupation forces and their prevention of medical teams from moving to rescue victims.
It warned of a total collapse of hospitals in northern Gaza, rendering them inoperative during the most severe and challenging times of emergency, as the Israeli military offensive continues and intensifies for the sixteenth consecutive day.
In a statement, the centre reported that the occupying forces deliberately bombed and targeted the upper floors of the Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals early Saturday, October 19, 2024, trapping patients and medical staff inside, while escalating their bombings and targeting residential neighbourhoods and civilian homes above their inhabitants.
The centre warned against the repeated intentional targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the bombing of these facilities, and the killing of patients, medical staff, and displaced persons, as well as their siege and forced evacuation.
Hospitals in northern Gaza have previously been stormed, destroyed, and targeted during the occupation’s incursions in December and May, and were later partially repaired.
The rights centre said that the occupying forces insist on repeatedly targeting hospitals, leaving civilians without medical facilities to treat them, which constitutes part of the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces.
Dr. Marwan Sultan, director of the Indonesian hospital, reported that Israeli occupation forces intensified their bombardment and gunfire toward the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya around midnight on Saturday, October 19.
Israeli military vehicles reached the vicinity of the hospital around 4.30am, firing heavily and launching several shells toward its entrance and the upper floors, where about 40 patients and injured individuals, along with 15 medical staff, were present.
He added that this caused a power outage at the hospital and significant panic among the patients and medical staff, noting that approximately five shells hit the second and third floors, resulting in no injuries, as those floors were under repair.
However, the continued power outage led to the death of two patients in the intensive care unit.
Simultaneously, the occupying forces bombed the upper floors of Al-Awda Hospital in Tel al-Zaatar in Jabalia, injuring several medical staff, one of whom is in critical condition, according to reports from the Al-Awda Health and Community Association.
Since October 5, the occupying forces have imposed a strict siege that deprives the civilian population in northern Gaza of any basic supplies necessary for survival.
Through orders for forced evacuation, they seek to empty what remains of the population by using hunger and denial of medical treatment as weapons to achieve their military objectives, reflecting their ongoing commitment to committing acts of genocide.
After more than two weeks of intense military attacks, and with residents refusing to leave some besieged neighbourhoods in the city of Jabalia and its camp, as well as other areas in northern Gaza that have become completely isolated from Gaza City, tens of thousands of civilians are trapped in their homes between death and starvation.
Human rights organisations believe that leaving the health system in northern Gaza on the brink of complete collapse, along with the siege and targeting of its facilities by the occupying forces, amounts to a death sentence for thousands of injured and sick individuals, violating international and humanitarian laws. This calls for urgent international intervention to save civilians and halt the Israeli genocide.
The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said the Agency’s staff in the Gaza Strip cannot find ‘food, water or medical care’.
Lazzarini said that ‘nearly three weeks of non-stop bombardments from the Israeli Forces as the death toll increases’.
‘Our staff report they cannot find food, water or medical care. The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied,’ he added.
‘In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die. They feel deserted, hopeless and alone. They live from one hour to the next, fearing death at every second,’ he noted. ‘Throughout the war over the past year, some UNRWA staff stayed in the north and did the impossible to provide aid to internally displaced people.’
‘We kept some of our shelters open despite heavy bombardments and attacks on our buildings. On behalf of our staff in northern Gaza, I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places. This is the bare minimum to save the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict.’
- Thousands of Israeli colonists on Tuesday evening stormed the top of the Jabal Sabih in the Beita town, south of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, according to a local official.
Mahmoud Barham, head of the Beita Village Council, said that thousands of colonists, including Yossi Dagan, head of the settlements council in the northern West Bank, broke into the top of Jabal Sabih (Sabih Mount) to participate in a concert.
The top of Jabal Sabih has become a scene of weekly rallies by Palestinians against the pillage of their land.
In late June, the Israeli occupation authorities imposed punitive measures on the Palestinian Authority and approved five flashpoint colonies, including Evyatar, initially established in 2021 atop Jabal Sabih, which enjoys a strategic location as it overlooks the Jordan Valley, a fertile strip of land running west along the Jordan River which makes up approximately 30% of the occupied West Bank.
Colonial outposts are established informally by colonists without prior approval from the Israeli government. They are often formalised or legalised a few years after establishment.
Following relentless Palestinian protests against the land grab, the government struck a deal with settler leaders that saw dozens of settlers evacuated from the outpost in July 2021, leaving a military presence in the area.
Far-right and pro-settler leaders, including Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, had vowed repeatedly to return settlers to the outpost.
Seizing the two hilltops represents a panoptical defensive tool as they would grant the Israeli occupation with a panoramic view over the Jordan Valley and the whole district of Nablus. This is why the Israeli occupation authorities have assigned them a place in its colonial settlement expansion project.
The construction of the two colonial outposts atop Mount Sabih, south of Beita, and Mount Al-Arma, north of the town, besides to a bypass road to the west is an Israeli measure to push Palestinian villages and towns into crowded enclaves, ghettos, surrounded by walls, settlements and military installations, and disrupt their geographic contiguity with other parts of the West Bank.
The number of settlers living in Jewish-only colonies across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law has jumped to over 700,000 since the signing of Oslo Accords in 1993.
Israel’s nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a ‘national interest’.