Gaza extermination: Netanyahu is ‘finishing the job’ while the world watches
Displaced Palestinians inspect their tents after an Israeli airstrike hit the Al Aqsa Hospital courtyard in Deir al-Balah, 14 October 2024
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 23 October 2024:
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Almost three decades after the Srebrenica genocide, the same – if not worse – is happening on a daily basis in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The killing is as organised.
Men are being separated from women and are being led off to an unknown fate, some never to be seen again. Bodies litter the streets of Jabalia. The streets of the camp are strewn with evidence of summary execution; bodies of men, women and children with their heads torn off are lying in the entrances to buildings.
Unlike the killing fields of Srebrenica, it’s all documented on video. Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier is filmed handing sweets out to children awaiting transportation.
What is happening in northern Gaza today is qualitatively different to any horror visited on Gaza in the last year.
Worse than Nakba
What is taking place before our eyes is worse than the Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948 when 700,000 Palestinians were made refugees, because what happened at Deir Yassin or Tantura is happening every night in northern Gaza.
The technology of killing has changed. The intent to leave no survivors behind has not.
Today, a total siege is being laid.
There is no food, water, or medical care coming in. What remains of the healthcare system after a year of bombing is being systematically dismantled. Schools are being bombed. Northern Gaza is being rendered uninhabitable.
As in Srebrenica, the civilian victims are being shunted to “safe areas” and then killed. It’s organised on an industrial scale.
“The smell of death is everywhere,” writes Philippe Lazzarini, head of Unrwa “as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied.”
More than 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in Srebrenica. There are up to 400,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza, dozens of whom are dying every night in artillery fire, drone strikes, or close up in summary executions.