Editor’s note: Due to the wide-ranging power outage in the Gaza Strip, the following report by Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj was conveyed to editors via voice note.
The situation in Khan Younis is horrific. Since Israel told the residents of northern Gaza to flee south, people came here thinking it would be a safe haven and that there wouldn’t be anymore more airstrikes, destruction, or targeting of civilians. The opposite has happened.
The shellings continue. It was a bloody night in Khan Younis yesterday. Indiscriminate bombing. Terrifying noises that we’ve never heard before, not even in Gaza. Every missile made the ground shake and houses tremble.
Up to this moment, people are fleeing to the south from the Zaytoun and Shuja’iyya areas in Gaza City in the north. Entire families carry what belongings they can and even fasten furniture to their cars. They make their way to the city of Khan Younis, to Nuseirat.
In the southern Bureij region — which was designated by the Israeli army as a “safe zone” where civilians were directed to flee — Israel committed a massacre in a school sheltering refugees. In Khan Younis, another family was also targeted by an airstrike, in which 30 people were killed as their house was brought down on top of them. These massacres are being committed on a daily basis. They are targeting civilians directly in their homes, in schools, and in public streets. Since last night and until this afternoon, over 100 people have been martyred in these so-called “safe” areas. The Israeli army tells people to go there and then bombs it. This started on the very first day of the evacuation to the south when a convoy of civilian cars fleeing Gaza City was hit with an airstrike.
The Gaza Health Ministry has started calling on Gaza residents who may have stockpiled fuel in their homes ahead of the cold winter months to donate it to the Ministry. Hospitals are about to run out of power, and when they do, they’ll be turned into morgues.
The most noticeable thing in Khan Younis is the incredibly long lines outside bakeries and supermarkets. There’s also a food shortage. People are scouring stores for flour, rice, beans, lentils, or anything else they can get their hands on. Few are successful. Merchants say that the shortage is due to the cutting off of supplies from the north, since most of these products are typically brought in from Gaza City. Existing food reserves have already been exhausted.
All of this is in the middle of a near-total blackout. We’re struggling to charge our devices or find a place with electricity or an internet connection. Before the war, people were already used to partial blackouts and would use car batteries to light their homes at night during scheduled power cuts. But even those batteries have run out. Some have resorted to searching for candles.
Every home in southern Gaza is unbearably overcrowded. There isn’t a house that doesn’t have three or four families staying under its roof. All of them without electricity, batteries, light, or even food. Water is being rationed.
The Gaza Health Ministry has started calling on Gaza residents who may have stockpiled fuel in their homes ahead of the cold winter months to donate it to the Ministry. Hospitals are about to run out of power, and when they do, they’ll be turned into morgues. The hospitals in the so-called “safe zone” in the south are receiving evacuation orders by the Israeli army. The Kuwait Specialized Hospital in Rafah was only given a two-hour notice under threat of bombardment. The hospital staff has refused to leave.
In light of recent news that there is going to be a ground invasion starting Sunday, people in Khan Younis are dreading Biden’s expected visit to Palestine this coming Wednesday. Many think that upon his arrival, he will once again give Israel the green light to wipe Gaza off the map.
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A battle between Palestinians and Israelis also deserves to be mentioned: the Battle of Al Karameh (1968) wherein the Israeli military announced that the objective of Operation Karameh was to “decapitate” the PLO leadership, specifically Arafat, Abu Jihad, Abu Iyad and others (that did not happen). Israeli Commander-in-Chief, Haim Bar-Lev promised a “clean” operation. Today we would use the term “surgical strike. (that did not happen).
In the end everyone, Jordan, Israel and the PLO declared victory. Israel, having sacrificed its myth of invincibility, lamely claimed its incursion had “succeeded” because the town and refugee camp of Al Karameh had been leveled. Small profit for the loss of so many soldiers, tanks, vehicles and even an aircraft. And reputation. For the PLO the results of the battle of Al Karameh was a boon: Just three days after the battle Arafat’s main problem was how to house and feed the more than five thousand international volunteers who descended on Amman to join Fatah. Funds poured in from Gulf States and weapons, training, ammunition and much else was offered to Fatah from revolutionary groups such as the IRA and governments in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Within twelve months of the battle Fatah/PLO, which had no international footprint before the battle, had opened offices in more than 80 countries.
No one, absolutely no one, can predict the effects Operation Al Aqsa Flood will generate therefore it may be the better part of wisdom to abstain from prediction and remember that truth is the first casualty of any war, and no battle plan survives the opening salvo.
Question for Any Zionist: Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to remind Zionists of the hundreds of times Israel’s military has invaded, raided, attacked and/or occupied Arab lands? Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to remind Zionists that Operation Al Aqsa Flood, while violent, tragic and shot through with human suffering was not “unprovoked”?
View here 898 Palestine posters on the subject of Gaza
This is such a terrible situation. I am now painfully aware just how much the American people have been deliberately fed the propaganda, and shielded from knowing the truth, by the leaders in the country AND the media. No wonder they think all Palestinians are terrorists, and that there is NO root cause for this endless violence. They are ignorant of the truth. Suddenly I see the US media becoming the propaganda arm for Israel. No one questions the wisdom of our tax payer money to the tune of billions of dollars going to fund this occupation, or giving the apartheid nation weapons that they use on civilians, and no one mentions that every time the war criminals attack Gaza, most casualties are always the defenseless civilians.
Human Rights organizations have accused both Hamas and Israel of war crimes, and it is unfortunate that the US supports one side. The side that has now been equated to Hamas. Israel is trying to out terrorize Hamas, and numbers will support that.
Israel is worse than Russia, when it comes to children.
“Ukraine: Child casualties in Ukraine rise 7% over the summer with over 540 children killed in 18 months of war.”
“Ramallah, October 14, 2023—More than 724 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli military’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip since October 7. ”
The updated number here will be far more.
Israel, once again using excessive force, and Israel’s Gaza campaign has gone ‘beyond right to self-defense’. The massacre of innocents.
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Operation al Aqsa Flood may eventually prove to be a congruent historical parallel to the North Vietnamese launching of the Tet Offensive (also on a national religious holiday – January to September 1968). The North Vietnamese, much I assume like the Palestinians, knew well in advance that they were likely to be trounced militarily (they were) even as they hoped the South Vietnamese people would rise up and overthrow the Thiệu regime (they did not) and that large swaths of South Vietnam’s army would defect (they did not).
The IDF, no less than Hamas knows well the adage that no battle plan survives the first shot and Hamas may never recover from the air and ground assaults being planned right now. In fact no one, not Biden, Bibi or Blinken has the slightest idea what lies around the corner. They only know what they themselves will do, or try to do, and can only speculate on what Hamas, the Palestinian people, the European countries, the Arab World, et. al. will do in response.
Consider how the Tet Offensive actually played out and how military “defeat” ultimately advanced North Vietnam’s liberation movement:
“However,the Tet offensive had far-reaching consequences due to its effect on the views of the Vietnam War by the American public and the world broadly. General Westmoreland reported that defeating the PAVN/VC would require 200,000 more American soldiers and activation of the reserves, prompting even loyal supporters of the war to see that the current war strategy required re-evaluation. The offensive had a strong effect on the U.S. government and shocked the U.S. public, which had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the North Vietnamese were being defeated and incapable of launching such an ambitious military operation; American public support for the war declined as a result of the Tet casualties …” Source: Wikipedia
The American public can be a fickle thing. The effect of watching the evening news with ever-rising GI casualties, Viet Cong body counts, dueling Pentagon and Congressional claims, images of thousands of women and children streaming out of hamlets and villages trying to escape bombs, napalm and innumerable firefights soon wore thin. Hamas would be wise to not execute its Israeli hostages and Israel would be wise to not launch a ground invasion or a sustained bombing campaign. But wisdom is often in short supply when all swords are unsheathed.
(CONT.)
Heartbreaking. And now there are credible reports that Israel has bombed the Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist hospital in Gaza City, with hundreds of casualties.
“Many think that upon his arrival, he will once again give Israel the green light to wipe Gaza off the map.
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I suspect Biden will try to restrain Netanyahu. If he opens a political window, I hope it will be recognized and exploited.