Maureen Clare Murphy
The Electronic Intifada / July 27, 2024
An Israeli airstrike that hit a school housing thousands of displaced Palestinians killed at least 30 people, most of them women and children, in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, on Saturday.
Israel claimed to have hit a Hamas command center, which the resistance faction denied.
Videos and eyewitness accounts point to civilians bearing the brunt of the attack.
Journalists with the Associated Press “saw a dead toddler in an ambulance and bodies covered with blankets,” the news agency reported.
“Shattered walls gaped and classrooms were in ruins,” the agency added. “People searched the rubble strewn with pillows and other signs of habitation.”
The latest massacre of civilians displaced from their homes comes three days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted during his speech at US Congress that the offensive in Gaza has “one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare.”
Additionally, nearly two dozen Palestinians were killed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Saturday, according to the health ministry in the territory.
Also on Saturday, the Israeli military ordered a new evacuation in part of Al-Mawasi, the coastal area in southern Gaza that it unilaterally declared a humanitarian zone.
In reality, Israel has attacked Al-Mawasi multiple times and Palestinians, many displaced again and again over the past several months, have been packed into the area with no infrastructure and little resources to support them.
On Friday, before the newest forced displacement order, an estimated 190,000 Palestinians were forced to flee Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah since Monday.
Israel has recently ordered the evacuation of parts of Khan Younis and Al-Mawasi on the pretext that Hamas has fired rockets from or engaged in other activity in the area.
On Thursday, Israel claimed to have recovered the bodies of five Israelis killed on 7 October from a tunnel in the so-called humanitarian zone.
But in the absence of any real battlefield victory, Israel is making life more dangerous for civilians to extract more concessions from Hamas in the negotiations toward securing an exchange of captives and paving the way for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The health ministry said that the official casualty count since 7 October stands at 39,250 fatalities and 90,600 injuries.
The actual death toll in Gaza is much higher, with thousands of people missing under the rubble or their bodies not yet recovered from the streets.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that at least an additional 51,000 Palestinians have meanwhile died as a result of Israel’s siege on Gaza and its deliberate collapse of the medical sector in the territory, as well as the widespread destruction of infrastructure and mass displacement of civilians, leading to the spread of disease.
“The natural death rate increased from an estimated 3.5 per 1,000 people prior to the start of the genocide to 22 per 1,000 people during the genocide,” Euro-Med Monitor stated.
Based on information gathered by its field teams and received from relevant institutions, the Geneva-based group estimates that 10 percent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured or gone missing since 7 October.
Majdal Shams strike
Meanwhile, a projectile killed at least 11 people, most of them children, gathered at a sports field in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the Golan Heights – Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Daniel Hagari, Israel’s chief military spokesperson, said that it was the most serious incident affecting civilians since 7 October, claiming that the victims were Israeli citizens, though Syrians in the Golan Heights have historically refused Israeli citizenship.
Israel pointed to a rocket attack by Hizballah, but the Lebanese resistance group said that it was not connected to the Majdal Shams strike.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned the “bloodbath” in Majdal Shams and called for “an independent international investigation into this unacceptable incident.”
His comments are an indication that even Israel’s closest allies were skeptical of Tel Aviv’s rush to blame Hizballah, and keen to avoid the incident being used as a pretext for further escalation or all-out war.
It is highly unlikely that Hizballah would have targeted Majdal Shams, which is populated by Syrian Druze who have rejected and resisted Israel’s occupation and colonization of their land.
Hizballah did claim four attacks in retaliation after an Israeli strike in Kfarkila, southern Lebanon, killed four fighters.
The resistance group has calibrated its responses to Israel’s attacks, many of which have killed Lebanese civilians, including children, with much constraint.
Hizballah’s retaliation has been aimed at increasing the pressure on Israel while careful not to cross red lines that would provide Israel with an excuse to launch a war on Lebanon that would likely be as devastating as the one it is waging in Gaza.
Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizballah, has repeatedly stated that the Lebanese resistance group would only stop firing toward Israel if an agreement is reached to end the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu remains the chief obstacle to an agreement with Hamas in Gaza and has once again introduced new demands that a senior Israeli negotiator described as “a death blow to the negotiations.”
The unnamed official told the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz this week that the prime minister “is knowingly trying to put the negotiations in crisis because he thinks he can improve positions.”
The senior negotiator added “that’s taking an uncalculated risk with the hostages’ lives,” with two more Israelis captured on 7 October and held in Gaza declared dead in absentia on Monday.
A high-intensity military confrontation between Hizballah and Israel will surely prove devastating to both Lebanon and Israel.
A US intelligence assessment determined that Israel is unlikely to succeed in such a scenario. And while Washington has given Israel free rein in Gaza, the Biden administration has sought to de-escalate tensions along Israel’s so-called northern front, fearing a regional conflagration that could be impossible to contain.
Hizballah’s emphatic denial of responsibility for the Majdal Shams strike suggests that it remains keen to avoid such a scenario.
The resistance group’s leader accepted responsibility and apologized for a rocket that fell on Haifa and killed two Palestinian children during the 2006 war, lending credibility to its denial on Saturday.
The Arabic-language outlet Arab 48, citing local reports, said that “it is not possible to confirm at this stage whether it was a drone, a shell, or an interceptor missile” that fell on Majdal Shams.
Arab 48 quoted Israeli Army Radio reporting that military sources said that a heavy missile fell on Majdal Shams and that the air force is investigating why it wasn’t intercepted.
Israeli leaders bang war drums
Whatever the source of the projectile, Israeli leaders wasted no time in banging the war drums after the mass casualty event in Majdal Shams, which may provide a pretext for a full military confrontation with Hizballah.
Foreign minister Israel Katz told Israel’s Channel 12 news that he had spoken with Netanyahu, who concluded his visit to the US earlier than planned on Saturday after the Majdal Shams strike.
Katz said that “there is no doubt that Hizballah crossed all red lines,” adding “we are facing an all-out war.”
Walid Jumblatt, a former Lebanese lawmaker and high-profile member of the Druze community in that country, condemned the targeting of civilians and emphasized that “the history and present of the Israeli enemy is full of massacres that it committed and is committing against civilians without mercy.”
Jumblatt, who said that he had spoken with Amos Hochstein, the US diplomat tasked with de-escalating tensions between Israel and Hizballah, called for vigilance against Israel’s longstanding efforts “to foment strife, fragment the region and target its components.”
Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada
