‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 341: Israel bombs two displacement shelters in Gaza, kills 11 Palestinians in West Bank

Casualties 

• 41,118 + killed* and at least 94,825 wounded in the Gaza Strip. The identities of 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
• 708+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes 146 children.**
• Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
• The Israeli army recognizes the death of 706 Israeli soldiers and the injury of 4096 others since October 7.***

* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on September 12, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.

** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of September 11, 2024.

*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.

Key Developments 

• Israel commits two massacres in two days in two separate bombings of a displaced tent camp in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, and a school shelter in Nuseirat near Deir al-Balah, killing at least 58 Palestinians.
• Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson in Gaza says that the Jaouni school in Nuseirat, bombed by Israel on Wednesday for the fifth time during the war, sheltered 5,000 displaced Palestinians.
• Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson in Gaza says rescue crews could have saved more people at Jaouni if Civil Defense teams had appropriate tools.
• Doctors Without Borders says healthcare system in Gaza is in a catastrophic state, affirms that delivery of humanitarian aid has been politicized and Israeli claims are untrue.
• UNRWA announces six of its staff were killed in Israel’s bombing of the Jaouni school in Nuseirat.
• Israel’s Channel 12 says Netanyahu asked the Israeli government’s judicial advisor to open a criminal investigation into the war in Gaza in order to avoid the issuing of international arrest warrants against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Israel’s judicial advisor refuses Netanyahu’s request, because “she won’t open a fake investigation,” according to Channel 12.
• Israel’s public broadcaster releases a new investigation on the October 7 attack, revealing that the Israeli air force didn’t train for scenarios of land attacks from Gaza and did not know about the Nova music festival until 10 hours into the beginning of the attack.
• Israeli families of captives in Gaza seek to pressure for formation of a national unity government that would limit the influence of Netanyahu’s far-right allies.
• Israel’s public broadcaster quotes an Israeli captive family member saying former Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz organized a meeting between the captives’ families and the Prime Minister of Qatar, one of the mediators in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. According to the captive’s family member, Gantz met alone with the Qatari PM after the meeting with the families.
• Hamas says it is ready to implement a deal based on Biden’s July proposal, which includes a complete withdrawal by Israel from the Gaza Strip.
• Hamas says it refuses all new conditions to the already-accepted proposal and all plans for the postwar running of Gaza, insisting that it is an internal Palestinian matter.
• West Bank: Israel kills six Palestinians in Tubas, five in Tulkarem since Tuesday.

Israel bombs two shelters in Gaza in 48 hours

Israeli forces killed at least 58 Palestinians in two separate bombings of two shelters of displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces struck a tent encampment in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, killing at least 40 Palestinians according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health. On Wednesday, another Israeli strike targeted the Jaouni school in Nuseirat, which served as a shelter for displaced Palestinians. The attack killed 18 people, including six UNRWA workers. Each of the sites were bombed for the fifth time since the beginning of the ongoing genocidal war.

Both places are also located within the Israeli-designated “safe zone,” which in recent weeks the Israeli army has reduced to less than 30% of the Gaza Strip’s surface. According to the Palestinian Civil Defense, many Palestinians at al-Mawasi were buried under the sand, where Israeli bombs created three craters of around 20 meters in diameter. The Civil Defense, who dug up the wounded and the dead with shovels, added that they could have saved more people if they had had the proper tools.

At al-Jaouni school, more than 5,000 Palestinians were taking shelter according to the Gaza government media office, which added in a statement that the attack was the 47th massacre to be committed by Israeli forces in Nuseirat. A quarter of a million displaced Palestinians have been crowded in Nuseirat throughout the war.

UNRWA said in a statement that six of its workers were among the victims at al-Jaouni school, marking the highest loss of staff for the UN agency in a single day since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, condemned the massacre, stating that the lack of accountability for the killing of UN staff is “unacceptable.” Guterres added that the Gaza Strip has witnessed “dramatic” violations of international humanitarian law, in addition to the “complete absence of effective protection of civilians.”

Israel has been repeatedly targeting displacement shelters over the past several weeks, including UN schools. The Israeli army has systematically claimed that it targets Hamas command centers in dense civilian areas, even as the majority of the slain are women and children.

Israel continues raids in West Bank, kills 11 in two days

Israeli forces continued their assault on West Bank cities, coming on the heels of a protracted military operation in the northern West Bank dubbed “Operation Summer Camps” by the Israeli army. On Wednesday, Israeli army vehicles carried out raids in Tubas in the northeastern West Bank, destroying streets and other civilian infrastructure. Local sources reported that Israeli troops had been blocking access to the city’s hospital.

Also on Wednesday, an Israeli drone strike killed three Palestinians who were driving a car in Tulkarem. Two of them were identified as members of the Tulkarem Brigade, a local armed resistance group that has been confronting Israeli forces in the city and its adjacent refugee camps since 2022.

ٍSince Tuesday, Israeli forces have killed 11 Palestinians in Tulkarem and Tubas, all but one aged between 19 and 28, including one woman aged 21. The attacks of the past two days raise the death toll for Palestinians in the West Bank to 51 people since August 28. This includes American solidarity activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in Beita last Friday.

Meanwhile, Israel forces raided several towns in Hebron, Nablus, and Qalailya, arresting 40 Palestinians since late Wednesday. In Halhoul, north of Hebron, Israeli forces raided the town’s public hospital on Wednesday evening and arrested an injured Palestinian, according to local sources.

Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed the Palestinian village of Awarta on Wednesday, south east of Nablus. The settler mob was accompanied by an Israeli army escort, performing Jewish prayers at an archeological site in the Palestinian village’s historical old town. The invasion led to confrontations between local young men and Israeli soldiers.

Since the beginning of the current war on Gaza last October, Israeli forces or settlers have escalated raids and violent attacks on Palestinian towns in the West Bank, forcibly depopulating some 20 rural Bedouin communities, displacing 4,571 people, demolishing more than 1,300 Palestinian properties, arresting at least 10,000 Palestinians, killing 703, and wounding or injuring 5,700.