2024-10-12 22:27:00
Credit, Reuters
Photo caption, Palestinians and aid groups suspect Israel is gradually adopting a new tactic in northern Gaza
- Author, Jeremy Bowen
- Role, And BBC news
7 hours ago
On Saturday morning (10/12), an Israeli army spokesperson posted a message on social media. He warned people in an area known as “D5”, north of Gaza, to flee south.
The message, the most recent released, states: “The IDF is operating with great force against terrorist organizations and will continue to do so for a long time. The designated area, including the shelters located there, is considered a dangerous combat zone. the area must be evacuated immediately via Salah al-Din road to the humanitarian (helped) area.”
Attached is a map with a large yellow arrow pointing from block D5 to southern Gaza. Salah al-Din Street is the main north-south route.
The message promises no quick return to where the people lived, an area that has been pulverized by a year of repeated Israeli attacks. The crux of the message is that the IDF will use “large force for a long time.” In other words, don’t expect to return anytime soon.
The humanitarian aid point indicated by Israel in the message is al-Mawasi, a former agricultural area on the coast near Rafah. It is overcrowded and no safer than many other parts of Gaza. The BBC recorded at least 18 airstrikes in the area.
Hamas has sent its messages to the remaining 400,000 people in northern Gaza, an area that was once the Strip’s urban heart with a population of 1.4 million.
Hamas asks the population not to abandon the region. The South, the group underlines, is “equally dangerous”. Additionally, Hamas has warned residents that they will be allowed to return.
Many people want to stay despite Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments. As I descended into an area overlooking northern Gaza, I could hear explosions and see columns of smoke rising. The intensity reminded me of the first months of the war.
Credit, Reuters
Photo caption, Smoke rises from Israeli shelling in northern Gaza, seen from Israel
Some of the people who remained in northern Gaza, when so many others had already fled to the south, did so to stay with vulnerable family members. Others come from families linked to Hamas. Under the laws of war, this does not automatically make them belligerents.
One tactic used last year by civilians who want to safely avoid IDF operations in Gaza’s overcrowded and dangerous south is to flee elsewhere in the north. From Beit Hanoun to Gaza City, for example, while the Israeli army operates near their homes or shelters. When the army advances, it returns.
The IDF is trying to prevent this from happening, according to BBC colleagues who are in daily contact with Palestinians in Gaza. The army is funneling families moving in one direction, along Salah al-Din, the main road to the south.
Israel does not allow journalists to enter Gaza to report on the war, except for short, infrequent trips, closely supervised by the IDF.
Palestinian journalists continue to do courageous work. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 Palestinian media workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began.
In northern Gaza, since Israel returned to the offensive, journalists have filmed families fleeing in panic, often with young children helping and carrying huge backpacks.
One of them sent a short interview to a woman named Manar al-Bayar, who was running down the street carrying a child.
As he walked and ran outside the Jabalia refugee camp, he stated that “they told us we had five minutes to leave the school in Fallujah. Where are we going? In southern Gaza there are killings. In western Gaza they are bombing people Where are we going, God?”
The journey is difficult. Sometimes, Palestinians in Gaza say, people on the move are targeted by the IDF. They insist that Israeli soldiers follow strict rules of engagement that respect international humanitarian law.
Photo caption, Some Palestinians began moving south following the IDF order to leave the D5 area on the Gaza map
But Liz Allcock, head of protection for Palestinian Medical Assistance, says the evidence presented by injured civilians suggests otherwise.
“When we receive patients in hospitals, a large number of women, children and adolescents receive direct hits to the head, spine, limbs. This indicates a targeted attack.”
Once again, the United Nations and aid agencies operating in Gaza say Israeli military pressure is worsening what is already a humanitarian catastrophe.
Messages from desperate people are sent from the few hospitals still standing in northern Gaza.
They report that aid stations are running out of fuel to power the generators that keep seriously injured patients alive. Some hospitals report that their buildings have been attacked by Israelis.
The suspicion among Palestinians, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies is that the IDF is gradually adopting, in part or in whole, a new tactic to “clean up” northern Gaza, known as the “Generals’ Plan.”
This tactic was proposed by a group of retired senior officers led by Major General (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former national security advisor.
Like most Israelis, the generals are frustrated and angry that, a year after the war began, Israel has still not achieved its goal of “destroying Hamas and releasing the hostages” captured on October 7, 2023.
Photo caption, Last month, following an Israeli attack on a school-turned-shelter in Jabalia
The “Generals’ Plan” is a new idea that its promoters believe could, from Israel’s point of view, break the impasse.
At its core is the idea that Israel could force the surrender of Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, increasing pressure on the entire population of the north.
The first step is to order civilians to flee south of Wadi Gaza, an east-west stream that has become the demarcation line in Gaza since Israel’s invasion in October last year.
Retired general Giora Eiland believes Israel should have reached an immediate agreement to recover the hostages, even if it meant a complete withdrawal from Gaza. A year later, “other methods are needed,” he says.
In his office in central Israel, he laid out the essence of the plan.
“Given that we have already surrounded the northern part of Gaza for the last nine or ten months, what we should do is tell all 300,000 residents (the UN estimates 400,000) who still live in the northern part of Gaza that they must leave this area by 10 days to exit through the safe corridors that Israel will provide,” Eiland says.
“And after that time, this whole area will become a military zone. And all the members of Hamas, however, will continue to know whether some of them are fighters, whether they are civilians… They will have two options: surrender or starve.”
Eiland wants Israel to close the areas once the evacuation corridors are blocked.
Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant, Eiland said.
Credit, Oren Rosenfeld/BBC
Photo caption, Retired Major General Giora Eiland leads the group proposing a tactic to liberate northern Gaza
The area is reportedly under siege, with the army blocking entry to all supplies of food, water and other basic necessities. According to him, the pressure would become unbearable and “the remnants of Hamas would quickly collapse”, freeing the surviving hostages and giving Israel the victory it seeks.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) highlights that the current Israeli offensive in Gaza has had a “disastrous impact on the food security of thousands of Palestinian families”.
Major crossings into northern Gaza, it says, have been closed and no food aid has entered the region since October 1.
Mobile kitchens and bakeries were forced to suspend operations due to the air strikes. The only operational bakery in the north, supported by the PMA, caught fire after being hit by explosive ammunition. The situation in the south is almost as dire.
It is unclear whether the IDF adopted the Generals’ Plan in part or in full, but circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests that the plan has, at the very least, a strong influence on the tactics used against the population. The BBC submitted a list of questions to the IDF but received no response.
Ultranationalist extremists in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office want to replace Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers.
Among many statements made on the subject, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas and we will occupy the Gaza Strip… to be honest, where there is no agreement, there is no security.”
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