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khan younis
Families Flee Khan Younis 'Wasteland' as Israel Hammers Gaza With US-Supplied Bombs
"The most effective action the U.S. could take to halt Israel's genocidal war would be cutting off weapons."
Aug 09, 2024
A wave of fresh bombings and military ground operations by Israel were underway in the city of Khan Younis on Friday as images of Palestinian families once again forced to flee plastered global news sites and world leaders, including the United States, refused to intervene to stop the relentless assault being inflicted on the people of Gaza.
Al-Jazeerareports the southern city—which its reporter on the ground, Hani Mahmoud, described as "uninhabitable" and turning into a "wasteland"— was bombed approximately 30 times in "just a few hours" overnight. With evacuation orders by the Israeli military sweeping up and down the Gaza Strip week after week, the internally displaced population is forced to move time and again.
"What we see on the ground is recurrent displacement for many families who just made their way back to their homes," Mahmoud reported early Friday.
With tanks on the ground, adding shelling to the bombs being dropped from the air, Reutersreports how families "fled eastern Khan Younis in vehicles and on foot, belongings heaped on donkey carts and motorcycle rickshaws as they made their slow escape along congested roads."
Ghazi Abu Daka, one evacuee fleeing Khan Younis, told the Associated Press Thursday that this was was the fourth time he and his family had been forced to flee the city.
"Every day there is war. Every day there are rockets. There is no safe place in the eastern area. Now, we are displaced in the streets and don't know where to go," he said, carrying his son in his arms in the scorching heat.
The intensified overnight bombing came just hours after a joint statement Thursday evening from the United States, Qatar, and Egypt signaled a fresh round of mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the onslaught in exchange for the release of Israeli prisoners still being held since last year's cross-border attack on October 7 of last year.
"There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay," the joint statement read in part, indicating that a framework for an agreement would be the basis for the new round of talks that were derailed completely last month after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated, almost certainly by Israel, in Tehran last month.
While French President Emanuel Macron welcomed news of news talks, posting on X that the "war in Gaza must stop," the United States, under President Joe Biden, has continued to give Israel the green light to carry out its campaign—and provided many of the weapons to sustain it—despite months of presented evidence that the nature of Israel's assault has resulted in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
At a rally in Detroit, Michigan on Wednesday evening, protesters calling for an end to the genocidal assault on Gaza demanded that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presidential Democratic nominee, commit to supporting an arms embargo against Israel as a way to bring the war to an end.
While Harris suggested a willingness to engage with those interrupting the rally and address their concerns, members of her team later clarified Harris "does not support" such an embargo.
Despite miniscule hopes that fresh talks next week could broker some progress, Drop Site journalist Jeremy Scahill Thursday agreed with those who argue that the "most effective action the U.S. could take to halt Israel's genocidal war would be cutting off weapons."
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Israeli Snipers Firing at 'Anyone Who Is Moving' in Khan Younis
The southern Gaza city is the latest region where Israeli forces have issued an evacuation order, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Jul 25, 2024
At least 129 people have been killed in the last five days of Israeli shelling and artillery fire in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where the Israel Defense Forces earlier this week gave people "a couple of minutes only" to evacuate earlier this week, according to Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary, before the bombardment began.
Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that "the vast majority of dead and injured are women and children," as Israeli snipers have also been deployed in the city and are firing at Palestinians indiscriminately.
The snipers "are shooting anyone who is moving," wrote Tareq Abu Azzoum in a dispatch, reporting that the eastern part of Khan Younis is the main target of Israel's current assault.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) noted that the latest evacuation order reduced the area that Israel has claimed is a "humanitarian zone," as the order covered about 15% of al-Mawasi, where people from cities including Rafah and Gaza City have fled in recent months as the IDF has launched assaults in those cities.
The group told Al Jazeera that "there is no more space, even for a single tent, in the so-called 'humanitarian area' of al-Mawasi because of the overwhelming number of people displaced there."
Israel's reported indiscriminate assault on the city has included medical workers, said PRCS, which posted a video on social media Thursday of an ambulance that had been hit by live bullets fired by the IDF while medics were transporting an injured person.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor noted on Monday that the true death toll in Khan Younis—as with the rest of Gaza—may not be known for months, "with many victims remaining trapped under the rubble and in the streets, where rescue workers have not been able to retrieve their bodies."
The group also said the IDF had perpetrated "a kind of deception of the residents" of Khan Younis and villages in the area, including Bali Suhaila, where soldiers entered "amid very violent bombardment, even though the Israeli army had said in its orders that the displacement was going to be temporary."
The forced evacuation, false information about the order, and shrinking of the humanitarian zone were "all part of Israel's media disinformation campaign and psychological warfare tactics, since military assaults on forcibly displaced people and their tents have occurred continually in this area for several weeks now, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries," the Euro-Med Monitor.
The reports of indiscriminate shooting by snipers also bolster an account given by Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who volunteered at European Hospital in Khan Younis in April, to CBS News earlier this week.
"I had sniper bullets," said Perlmutter. "I have children that were shot twice... I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest... and directly on the side of the head on the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world's best sniper. And they're dead-center shots."
Perlmutter is among nearly four dozen doctors and nurses who wrote to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday, describing what they saw while volunteering at hospitals across Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, including medications and medical supplies, nearly 10 months ago.
"Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict," wrote the medical workers. "However, every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest."
"We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget," they added. "We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."
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Oxfam Condemns Israel for Pushing Gazans Into a 'Death Trap'
"The areas Israel has defined as 'humanitarian' and 'safe' are, in reality, the polar opposite."
Jul 04, 2024
The global humanitarian group Oxfam condemned the Israeli military on Thursday for attempting to force hundreds of thousands of Gaza civilians out of the eastern part of Khan Younis and into overcrowded parts of the besieged territory with no guarantee of safety or humanitarian assistance.
"Pushing hundreds of thousands more people into what is essentially a death trap, devoid of any facilities, is barbaric and a breach of International Humanitarian Law," said Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam's Middle East director. "Yet again, we are seeing vast numbers of people being forced to flee under Israeli military orders, with no heed for their safety or dignity."
"The areas Israel has defined as 'humanitarian' and 'safe' are, in reality, the polar opposite, leaving families with the horrific choice between staying in an active combat zone or moving somewhere that is already desperately overcrowded, dangerous, and unfit for human existence," Khalil added.
Oxfam said its staff members who are sheltering in the supposed safe zones to which Israel has directed Gazans reported "medieval conditions," with people "camping in the streets" amid "rapidly spreading disease."
"None of the declared safe routes in Gaza are actually safe," the group said. "Israel's military has also systematically attacked civilians and aid workers, including in those clearly marked 'safe zones' and 'evacuation routes.' Israel has repeatedly failed to comply with international law, which compels it to take all possible measures to ensure satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety, and nutrition, and that family members are not separated."
Oxfam's statement came days after the U.S.-armed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued fresh evacuation orders for Khan Younis, a city to which many Gazans fled after Israeli forces began their full-scale assault on Rafah in May.
The IDF instructed people to move to al-Mawasi, a tiny coastal area that Israeli forces have previously attacked. The Financial Timesrecently described al-Mawasi as a "fetid, thirsty, and disease-filled refuge of tens of thousands of Palestinians."
Hours after issuing the orders, the IDF killed at least nine people—including three children and two women—in an airstrike on a home in Khan Younis.
The United Nations estimates that nine out of 10 people in Gaza have been internally displaced at least once since Israel began its latest assault on the enclave following a deadly Hamas-led attack in October. Some Gazans have been displaced as many as 10 times, according to the U.N.
The Washington Postreported Wednesday that while the European Hospital in Khan Younis is now "completely empty" following the IDF's evacuation order, "there are signs that many of the thousands who fled fearing the new Israeli incursion" in the city "are trickling back after being unable to find new shelter in the crowded parts of the Gaza Strip still accessible to them."
"For many in Khan Younis, this week's evacuation order was only the latest in a long string of forced displacements," the Post added. "Though the United Nations said up to a quarter-million Palestinians were affected by the order, some have already returned to Khan Younis, saying there is nowhere left in Gaza for them to go."
Oxfam's Khalil said Thursday that "the human cost of the military offensive in Gaza is unacceptable" and implored "all parties to push for an immediate and lasting cease-fire in order to end the bloodshed and suffering."
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