The office of the Palestinian Authority's president is holding the U.S. government responsible for a weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children. The victims of the attack on the al-Tabin school were blown to 'pieces,' according to video evidence and on-the-ground reporting, when U.S.-provided missiles were fired on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
In the wake of the attack that stirred global outrage and condemnation Saturday, the Palestinian presidency's spokesperson Nabih Abu Rudeineh condemned the massacre and said the PA held the Biden administration "responsible for the massacre due to its financial, military, and political support for Israel."
Rudeineh demanded the U.S. pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease indiscriminate attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, wounded, and displaced over recent months. In addition, he said, the U.S. must conform to international law by ending its "blind support" to Israel "that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly."
As Common Dreams previously reported, the bombing of the al-Tabin school complex came just hours after the U.S. State Department announced the release of $3.5 billion in military aid for Israel and made new weapons transfers available to help refresh the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stockpiles.
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, in an online post Sunday. "The ones used yesterday in the Al-Tabin School massacre sliced bodies to the point of making them unrecognizable. They are now identified by weight: 70kg bag = 1 adult. Revolting."
The head of Gaza's Government Media Office told Al Jazeera that the three bombs dropped on the school weighed 2,000 pounds each, matching the size of the MK-84 munitions provided by the thousands to the IDF by the United States over the last year.
"Another day of horror in Gaza, another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinian killed among them women, children and older people,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Saturday in response to the attack. "It's time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end. We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity."
The UN human rights office said the latest attack was "at least the 21st strike on a school, each serving as a shelter, that the UN [the agency] has recorded since 4 July. These strikes have resulted in at least 274 fatalities, including women and children."
Responding to claims by the IDF that the bombing was aimed at militants it claimed were using the facility, OHCHR said in a statement that "co-location by armed groups of military objectives with civilians" does not release Israel from its "obligation to comply strictly with [international humanitarian law], including the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution when carrying out military operations. Israel, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide the population it has forcibly displaced with basic humanitarian needs, including safe shelter."
Asked about the situation in Gaza on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, said during a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona that she and President Joe Biden have been working "around the clock" to secure a ceasefire deal that would see the fighting end and Israeli hostages held by Hamas returned safely.
Specifically about Saturday's bombing of the school complex, Harris said, "Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed."
Despite global outrage over Saturday's attack, the Israeli military overnight Sunday issued new evacuation orders for southern Gaza.
