Israeli Forces Carry Out Death Marches in North Gaza

Nora Barrows-Friedman 

Rights and Accountability 

24 October 2024

A man and a woman mourn next to two bodies wrapped in white shrouds

Palestinians mourn beside the shrouded bodies of loved ones killed during an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, 21 October.  Hadi DaoudAPA images

The following is from the news roundup during the 23 October livestream. Watch the entire episode here.

Israel is continuing to systematically destroy the northern Gaza Strip, carrying out ethnic extermination campaigns and forced mass expulsion.

For nearly three weeks, Israel has blocked food, water, medicine and fuel from reaching the areas north of Gaza City, as the remaining reporters and health workers there describe scenes of catastrophic horror.

On Saturday, images and video emerged of what journalists have described as a death march near the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya.

Reporter Hossam Shabat stated that Israeli occupation forces dug a quote “deep hole in one of the squares surrounding the Indonesian Hospital, and placed male Palestinians in it with their hands tied and their eyes blindfolded.”

Shabat had reported that in the days leading up to this death march, the hospital had been surrounded by tanks as Israeli soldiers cut the electricity, bombed the building and targeted the second and third floors with artillery shells.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp, Israeli troops forced families to leave their homes and attacked a school turned into a shelter on Monday.

Hossam Shabat reported that they “lined people up and shot anyone who dared to move. Any male over the age of 16 is being detained, tortured and investigated. Many people who are being lined up are sick individuals, such as amputees, cancer patients and young kids who are being asked to stand in line for hours. The situation is catastrophic.”

Novelist Ahmed Masoud, who has been on this livestream before and has family in Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya, tweeted on Tuesday that his relatives have been separated from each other by gender, with Israeli soldiers detaining the men. He added that he has had no contact with his family members since.

On Tuesday, reporter Anas al-Sharif stated that Israeli drones with loudspeakers ordered more than 10,000 displaced Palestinians to leave a school shelter in Beit Lahiya. People in the school would be bombed or shot if they refused.

These mass expulsions come on the heels of relentless massacres across northern Gaza.

Along with the Indonesian Hospital, al-Awda Hospital was also directly hit in Israeli attacks on Friday. And on Tuesday, the acting director of al-Awda stated that Israeli forces were again besieging the hospital.

Also on Tuesday, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya issued a distress call, saying that Israeli forces had bombed the gate of the hospital and that quadcopter drones were dropping bombs. The upper floors of the hospital were being shot at and that all services had collapsed, he said.

“There are no blood units or tubes to drain bleeding from the chest, and most of the medical supplies are not available,” adding that people who evacuated were shot on the way out of the hospital. Abu Safia warned, “Kamal Adwan Hospital will turn into mass graves.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Munir al-Bursh, the director of the health ministry in Gaza who is currently in the north, said that hospitals “have run out of coffins to prepare the dead, and we have asked people to donate any fabric they have at home.”

Palestinian health officials and the civil emergency corps say that dozens of bodies of people killed by Israeli fire remain scattered on roads and under rubble, with rescue teams unable to reach them.

On 17 October, Israel bombed a UN school in Jabaliya refugee camp hosting displaced people, killing at least 28 Palestinians and wounding 160.

On 19 October, Israel bombed several houses in Jabaliya, killing at least 33 and injuring dozens more.

Later that day, dozens of people were killed in Beit Lahiya as Israeli warplanes razed entire residential blocks.

The Gaza health ministry reported that at least 87 people were killed and people were trapped under the rubble.

Journalist Hossam Shabat reported that Israel has “rigged residential zones” with explosives.

Israeli soldiers, he says, “are setting explosive barrels at night and detonating them during the day, resulting in devastating destruction and death. They are moving closer to densely populated areas, where residents are unable to flee due to surveillance by quadcopters that target anyone who attempts to move. Israel’s goal is to destroy every building in the Jabaliya refugee camp and kill its residents in order to annex the land.”

Starvation deepens

Amid the total closure of northern Gaza to any food, medicine or water, Israeli forces killed six Palestinian men when they tried to access drinking water in Jabaliya camp on Monday, according to Al Jazeera.

Israel also killed workers on their way to repair a water line in the south, in Khan Younis. The international aid group Oxfam stated on Monday that Israel bombed a clearly-marked vehicle belonging to engineers and workers from the Khuzaa municipality in coordination with Oxfam’s partners at the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.

The four men were killed on their way to conduct repairs to water infrastructure in Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis, and their movements had been coordinated with the Israeli military beforehand.

The Government Media Office in Gaza says Israeli forces have prevented the entry of “more than a quarter of a million trucks of aid and goods” since the war began last year, adding that it was part of Israel’s strategy of “reinforcing the starvation policy and using it as a weapon of war against civilians and against children, especially by preventing the entry of food, baby milk and nutritional supplements.”

Capitulating to Israel’s severe restrictions or outright preventions of aid deliveries by land into Gaza as people starve, international air-dropped parcels have somewhat resumed.

One of those parcels killed a 3-year-old boy, Sami Ayyad, in the southern city of Khan Younis on Saturday, according to his relatives and reported by CNN.

“The family was eating breakfast when pallets dropped from airplanes and careened towards the displacement area,” CNN reported, quoting the boy’s grandfather, who is also called Sami Ayyad.

Several family members, the network added, “attempted to take cover inside their improvised tents but the falling parcel killed the 3-year-old instantly, Ayyad recalled. Sami’s aunt and cousin were also wounded on their foot and face, respectively, Ayyad added.”

Ayyad told CNN that he was “sitting here with the boy, and the moment I left him … the package fell on him … There was only a second between me and him. I carried him and started running.”

“We have no hospitals. I ran like crazy, but the boy died instantly. I couldn’t save him. Blood started coming out of his nose and mouth.”

Young farmer killed

Our contributor Yousef Aljamal said on Monday that a young man he interviewed for a story we just published on The Electronic Intifada was killed.

Yousef Abu Rabee, a farmer and food provider, was killed Monday in a drone strike near his plant nursery after he was delivering fresh produce to people in Beit Lahiya.

In the days before he was killed, Yousef Aljamal writes, Abu Rabee posted a short video on his Instagram account documenting him and another person ducking for cover on a narrow street. They had come under fire while distributing parcels of food in bright blue plastic bags, the gunshots audible in the video.

Yousef Aljamal, who interviewed Abu Rabee at length about his agricultural project in northern Gaza, writes: “That Palestinian farmers were even able to plant during a genocide is a marvel, and the loss of any food producer is devastating to society as a whole while Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war.”

“The killing of a young farmer like Abu Rabee, who provided a lifeline to his community, leaves other Palestinians in Gaza’s north, where almost no food has been allowed in since the beginning of the month, much more vulnerable.”

Meanwhile, Michael Fakhri, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, admonished members of the so-called international community this week in a UN hearing.

“One year ago, I stood before you and told you that food is increasingly used as a weapon against civilians,” Fakhri said.

“Exactly one year ago, I, amongst other mandate holders, raised the alarm for the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, you did not take sufficient action, and as my colleagues and I predicted, Israel’s war proved to be a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have faced genocide for a year, with no signs of Israel abating.”

He added: “What the world has learned is no amount of facts and figures, no amount of horror, no amount of death and pain is enough to trigger a global response to starvation and genocide.”

Broadening assaults on Lebanon

Turning northwards, Israel has escalated its bombing attacks against civilians across Lebanon in recent days. Israeli forces carried out several strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday, including one near the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the capital’s main government hospital.

The attack killed more than a dozen people, including a child, and injured more than 50, according to Lebanese health authorities.

Administrators at the Sahel Hospital in south Beirut reported that the medical facility was evacuated following warnings issued by Israel.

On Monday, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed that Hizballah was holding millions of dollars in gold and cash in assassinated leader Hasan Nasrallah’s personal bunker underneath the Sahel Hospital, the same kinds of baseless claims of hidden military bunkers underneath hospitals in Gaza that Israel made in order to justify bombing them.

On Monday, Israeli airstrikes targeted residential apartment buildings in southern Beirut.

The number of people killed since Israel’s offensive in Lebanon began has risen to more than 2,500 with nearly 12,000 more injured. And some 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – have been displaced from their homes.

On Sunday, signaling a further broadening of its assault on civilian life, Israel bombed branches and offices of al-Qard al-Hassan, a credit union that gives out small loans to citizens, but that Israel claims is part of the financial infrastructure of the Lebanese resistance group Hizballah.

Highlighting defiance

Finally, as we always do, we wanted to share videos of people expressing defiance and resilience in the face of Israel’s widening campaign of destruction.

This video shows a woman in Lebanon making coffee in her destroyed home:

And this video, recorded and shared by the Gaza Sunbirds paracycling team, shows one of its members in the central Gaza Strip preparing bread and manakish amid the rubble of his home, enjoying this classic Palestinian breakfast.