Carpet-bombing entire residential blocks, wiping out entire neighborhoods, slaughtering at least 100. It’s another weekend of Israel’s impunity in killing Gazans, this time in Beit Lahiya in the north.
A Palestinian child receives treatment at the Kamal Adwan Hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 19, 2024. (Islam Ahmed / AFP via Getty Images)
One year into genocide, Israel continues to massacre Palestinians with impunity in Gaza. On Saturday, Israel carried out a horrific massacre in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, killing at least one hundred Palestinians, mostly women and children. The death toll is expected to rise dramatically, as hundreds are fatally wounded, missing, or trapped under rubble. As they have throughout this war, Palestinians are struggling to count the dead.
Bodies are scattered in the streets. Dr Ahmed Abdul Hadi, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, confirmed that over fifty people are still trapped under rubble. Horrific footage shared by Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Anas al-Sharif shows Palestinians pulling children’s bodies from the rubble. Al-Sharif himself, one of Gaza’s few surviving journalists, reported the execution of his family live on TV.
Armed with massive US-made bombs and warplanes, Israeli forces carpet-bombed entire residential blocks in the area, wiping out neighborhoods and massacring whole families. Buildings collapsed while people were inside. Horrifying footage shows babies and children slaughtered, lying in a bloodbath in their sleeping beds, as well as a Palestinian woman lamenting the loss of her entire family. “They are all gone, Father. They have left me.” Another shows rescuers trying desperately to stop an entire building from collapsing on the head of a young girl stranded under rubble. Families continue to search for their missing relatives under the collapsed buildings.
The prospects for survival are bleak. According to Izzeddin Shaheen, a doctor working in a hospital in northern Gaza: “There are no hospitals, no media coverage, no chances to survive. People fled from the bombing in Jabalia to Beit Lahiya, and now they are being killed in their homes.”
Other Israeli massacres have been reported in Al-Shati and Jabalia refugee camps over the weekend, where over four hundred bodies have been recovered so far. “We are being exterminated,” horrified eyewitnesses told Al Jazeera. As Gaza journalist Hossam Shabat put it: “We are being massacred, exterminated, and burned alive in northern Gaza.” To facilitate its mass slaughter of Palestinians, Israeli forces have declared Jabalia refugee camp a military zone, targeting and killing anyone moving, including those attempting to flee, or secure food and aid for their families.
Footage of mass executions is circulating on social media. In what resembles a death march, Israel forces dug a deep hole in the ground near the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, gathered tens of Palestinian males in, including children, all hand-tied and blindfolded, paraded them in threes and fours, and field executed them. British journalist Owen Jones has likened the Israeli mass arrests and executions to the Srebrenica massacre. Having forcibly displaced thousands, Israeli forces proceeded to burn the shelters surrounding the Indonesian hospital, while Israel Defense Forces soldiers filmed themselves torching a school sheltering displaced Palestinians near the hospital. Media reports show the Israeli army using civilians in Gaza as human shields. Israeli soldiers are filming themselves setting fire to civilian buildings in Jabalia.
Trapped in an endless nightmare of forced displacement, thousands have fled the area since, with nowhere to go. The prospect of staying is equally horrifying. Owing to Israel’s weeklong blockade, Palestinians in northern Gaza have been starving to death. Israel has cut communications there. It continues to block aid and besiege hospitals, including Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Palestinians describe Israel’s deadly blockade over northern Gaza as “a genocide within a genocide.”
“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying. Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern strip amidst relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis. Nowhere is safe in Gaza,” Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement.
Following the bloodshed in Beit Lahiya, Palestinian and antiwar activists have flooded social media with urgent appeals for mass demonstrations and diplomatic boycotts on Israel. Doctors in Gaza are sending last appeals to save what remained of the besieged enclave. Dr Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan Hospital, appealed for help from the “entire world — from journalists, the media, human rights organizations, and healthcare institutions around the world — to speak before it’s too late, before our nation is exterminated.”
The Beit Lahiya massacre comes barely a week after Israel massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Jabalia, while burning others alive in a tent camp at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, including a mother and her son. Palestinians have yet to recover from the haunting images of Shaban al-Dalu, the nineteen-year-old teen who was burned alive by Israel while sheltering at the hospital with his family. In one horrific scene on Friday, an Israeli drone targeted a Palestinian child with live ammunition in northern Gaza; when residents rushed to rescue him, they were hit with chilling precision and bombed into scattered remains. This inhumanity meted out by Israel to innocent Palestinians has become a common spectacle in Gaza, with no end in sight. In the words of former UN official Francesca Albanese: “In Gaza, the collective shame of the century continues unabated and unstopped, in defiance of every norm of international law and morale.”
Twelve months into its genocidal war in Gaza, Israel remains determined to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and resettle northern Gaza. Emboldened by unflinching bipartition support from the US, Israel has rendered Gaza a killing field and a graveyard for children.