Israeli troops are going school to school in Jabalia and nearby areas to forcibly remove unarmed, starved and besieged Palestinian civilians from their homes as the military campagin to ethnically cleanse north Gaza nears its third week, eyewitnesses have told Middle East Eye.
Under the cover of heavy air strikes and artillery shelling, large Israeli ground forces directly and systematically attack homes and buildings used as shelters by displaced families, forcing everyone out at gunpoint.
The buildings, including UN schools and houses, are subsequently either razed or burned by Israeli soldiers to prevent people from returning.
Troops then separate men from women, before taking them to humiliating field interrogations and later abducting many of them to unknown locations.
Women and children are forced to head south of Jabalia refugee camp. Some were bombed and killed as they fled, according to media reports.
The offensive began after a controversial proposal named the “Generals’ Plan” was presented to the Israeli government, which would see areas north of the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts Gaza in two, emptied of its residents so Israel could establish a “closed military zone”.
According to the plan, anyone who chooses to stay would be considered a Hamas operative and could be killed.
Palestinians are denied access to food and water, whilst Israeli forces are indiscriminately killing anyone venturing out from their homes, residents and eyewitnesses say.
He said that Israeli forces had intensified their siege tactics in the area and begun planting bombs in water barrels which were strategically placed in front of people’s homes or residential areas.
Not unlike the massacres by the IDF during the Nakba, infact these massacres are at an even greater scale at this point
Spoiler
This is how a Jewish officer described the executions at Tantura:
Prisoners were led in groups to a distance of 200 metres aside and there they were shot. Soldiers would come to the commander-in-chief and say, ‘My cousin was killed in the war.’ His commander heard that and instructed the troops to take a group of five to seven people aside and execute them. Then a soldier came and said his brother had died in one of the battles. For one brother the retribution was higher. The commander ordered the troops to take a larger group and they were shot, and so on.
In other words, what took place in Tantura was the systematic execution of able-bodied young men by Jewish soldiers and intelligence officers. One eyewitness, Abu Mashaykh, was staying in Tantura with a friend, as he originally came from Qisarya, the village Jewish troops had already destroyed and expelled in February 1948. He saw with his own eyes the execution of eighty-five young men of Tantura, who were taken in groups of ten and then executed in the cemetery and the nearby mosque. He thought even more were executed, and estimated that the total number could have been 110. He saw Shimshon Mashvitz supervising the whole operation: ‘He had a “Sten” [sub-machine gun] and killed them.’ Later he adds: ‘They stood next to the wall, all facing the wall. He came from the back and shot them in the head, all of them.’ He further testified how Jewish soldiers were watching the executions with apparent relish.
Fawzi Muhammad Tanj, Abu Khalid, also witnessed the executions. In the account he gives the village men were separated from the women, and then groups of seven to ten were taken and executed. He witnessed the killing of ninety people.