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nuseirat refugee camp
A Palestinian's Year in Review: Genocide in Gaza
While Israel's desperate attempt to control the global narrative on the Gaza genocide largely failed, the ethnic cleansing continues.
Dec 30, 2024
The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the northern part of the Strip.
When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli bombardment which killed thousands.
Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024.
Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend.
Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that was supposedly 'conquered' earlier, still leading the fight.
Beit Lahia is a microcosm of Israel's failed war in the Strip, a bloody grind that has led nowhere, despite the massive destruction, the repeated ethnic cleansing of the population, the starvation and the genocide. Every day of Israel's terrible war on the Palestinians serves as a reminder that there are no military solutions and that the Palestinian will cannot be broken, no matter the cost or the sacrifice.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, remains unconvinced. He entered the new year with more promises of 'total victory', and ended it as a wanted criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli leader was a reiteration of a similar position taken by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the start of 2024.
The ICJ's position, however, was hardly as strong as many had hoped or wanted to believe. The world's highest court had, on January 26, ordered Israel “to take action to prevent acts of genocide”, but stopped short of ordering Israel to halt its war.
The Israeli objectives of the war remained unclear, although Israeli politicians provided clues as to what the war on Gaza was really all about. Last January, several Israeli ministers, including 12 from Netanyahu’s Likud party, took part in a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. “Without settlements, there is no security,” extremist Israeli minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, said.
For that to happen, the Palestinian people themselves, not merely those fighting on the ground, had to be tamed, broken and defeated. Thus, the 'flour massacres', a new Israeli war tactic that was centered around killing as many Palestinians as possible while waiting for the few aid trucks that were allowed to reach northern Gaza.
On February 29, more than 100 Gazans were killed while queueing for aid. They were mowed down by Israeli soldiers, as they desperately tried to lay their hands on a loaf of bread, baby milk or a bottle of water. This scene was repeated, again and again in the north, but also in other parts of the Gaza Strip throughout the year.
The aim was to starve the Palestinians in the north so that they would be forced to flee to other parts of the Strip. Famine actualized as early as January, and many of those who tried to flee south were killed, anyway.
From the early days of the war, Israel understood that to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, they must target all aspects of life in the Strip. This includes hospitals, bakeries, markets, electric grids, water stations, and the like.
The Gaza hospitals, of course, received a large share of Israeli attacks. In March, once more, Israel attacked the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City with greater ferocity than before. When it finally withdrew, on April 1, the Israeli army destroyed the entire compound, leaving behind mass graves with hundreds of bodies, mostly medical staff, women and children. They even executed several patients.
Aside from a few statements of concern by western leaders, little was done to bring the genocide to an end. Only when seven international aid workers with the charity, the World Central Kitchen, were killed by Israel, a global outcry followed, leading to the first and only Israeli apology in the entire war.
Desperate to distract from its failure in Gaza, but also Lebanon, and keen on presenting the Israeli public with any kind of victory, the Israeli military began escalating its war beyond Gaza. This included the strike on the Iranian Embassy in Syria on April 1. Despite repeated attempts, which included the assassination in Iran of the head of Hamas's Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31, an all-out regional war has not yet come to pass.
Another escalation was taking place, this time not by Netanyahu but by millions of people around the world, demanding an end to the Israeli war. A focal point of the protests were student movements that spread across US campuses and, ultimately, worldwide. Instead of allowing free speech to flourish, however, America's largest academic institutions resorted to the police, who violently shut down many of the protests, arresting hundreds of students, many of whom were not allowed to return to their colleges.
Meanwhile, the US continued to block international efforts aimed at producing a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council. Ultimately, on May 31, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech conveying what he termed an “Israeli proposal” to end the war. After some delay, Hamas accepted the proposal, but Israel rejected it. In his rejection, Netanyahu referred to Biden's speech as “incorrect” and “incomplete”. Strangely, but also unsurprisingly, the White House blamed the Palestinians for the failed initiative.
Losing faith in the American leadership, some European countries began changing their foreign policy doctrines on Palestine, with Ireland, Norway and Spain recognizing the State of Palestine on May 28. The decisions were largely symbolic but indicated that western unity around Israel was faltering.
Israel remained unfazed and, despite international warnings, invaded the Rafah area in southern Gaza on May 7, seizing control of the Philadelphi Corridor - a buffer zone between Gaza and the Egyptian border that extends for 14 kilometers.
Netanyahu's government insisted that only war can bring their captives back. There was very little success in that strategy, however. On June 8, Israel, with logistical support from the US and other western countries managed to rescue four of its captives held in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. To do so, Israel killed at least 276 Palestinians and wounded 800 more.
In August, another heart-wrenching massacre took place, this time in the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where 93 people, mostly women and children, were murdered in a single Israeli strike. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, women and children were the main victims of the Israeli genocide, accounting for 70 percent by November 8.
An earlier report by the Lancet Medical Journal said that if the war stopped in July, “186,000 or even more” Palestinians would have been killed. The war, however, went on. The rate of genocide in Gaza seemed to maintain the same killing ratio, despite the major regional developments including the mutual Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat strikes and the major Israeli ground operation in Lebanon.
In October, Israel returned to the policies of targeting or besieging hospitals, killing doctors and other medical staff, and targeting aid and civil defense workers. Still, Israel would not achieve any of its strategic goals of the war. Even the killing of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, in battle on October 16 would not, in any way, alter the course of the war.
Israel's frustration grew by leaps and bounds throughout the year. Its desperate attempt to control the global narrative on the Gaza genocide largely failed. On July 19, and after listening to the testimonies of over 50 countries, the ICJ issued a landmark ruling that “Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.”
That ruling, which expressed international consensus on the matter, was translated on September 17 to a UN General Assembly resolution “demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine within the next twelve months”.
All of this effectively meant that Israel's attempt at normalizing its occupation of Palestine, and its quest to illegally annex the West Bank was considered null and void by the international community. Israel, however, doubled down, taking its rage against West Bank Palestinians, who, too, were experiencing one of the worst Israeli pogroms in many years.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, by November 21, at least 777 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023, while thousands more were wounded and over 11,700 arrested.
To make matters worse, Smotrich called, on November 11, for the full annexation of the West Bank. The call was made soon after the election of Donald Trump as the next US President, an event that initially inspired optimism amongst Israeli leaders, but later concerns that Trump may not serve the role of the savior for Israel after all.
On November 21, the ICC issued its historic ruling to arrest Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The decision represented a measure of hope, however faint, that the world is finally ready to hold Israel accountable for its many crimes.
2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the failure of the international community to stop the genocide and reign in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will remain strong until freedom is finally attained.
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'We Have Run Out of Body Bags to Bury the Dead' in Gaza
A relentless series of assaults in central and northern Gaza by Israeli forces, according to reports on the ground, have killed numerous civilians—including children, rescue workers, and journalist—in recent days with no end in sight.
Dec 15, 2024
Rescue workers, children, and journalists are among the civilians killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Sunday, as the death toll continues to mount in a military campaign Amnesty International earlier this month said has all the markings of an active and ongoing genocide.
"Due to the rising Israeli bombings and killings in northern Gaza, we have run out of body bags to bury the dead," said Palestinian journalist Hossam Sabath, reporting from northern Gaza on Sunday. "Now we resort to using any piece of clothing or a blanket for their burial."
On the ground in the town of Beit Hanoun, where Israeli troops reportedly killed at least 20 people—including civilians—in a series of raids in the area on Sunday, Sabath said the the "scenes of charred bodies are too distressing for us to broadcast. However, they are part of the documented evidence of genocide involving the burning of people alive. We are ready to hand them over to any human rights organization."
According to the Gulf Times:
Israeli troops killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on Sunday in airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said.
They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.
Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.
In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.
Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, quoted witnesses who reported "severe injuries" among those who survived the attacks further north.
"They have nowhere to go because the Israeli military forces are encircling the area with tanks and armored vehicles, and hammering the school with heavy artillery," Mahmoud reported.
A family of four were among those killed, including two children, after the classroom where they were sheltering took a “direct hit” from Israeli artillery fire that arrived without prior warning, the outlet reported.
“Many of the injured are in the courtyard of the school and inside the other classrooms," according to Mahmoud. "They can't get any treatment because none of the hospitals in Beit Hanoon are operational."
Separately, Al-Jazeera reports Sunday that an Israeli bombing killed three members of the Palestinian civil defense search-and-rescue team in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp. The new agency also reported that one of its own staff, cameraman Ahmed al-Louh, was killed in the same attack.
Ahram Online reports:
In its first response to the incident, Gaza's government media office condemned the killing of al-Louh and called on the international community to act against the systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists. "The number of martyred journalists has now risen to 195 with the martyrdom of colleague Ahmed al-Louh," the office stated.
Al Jazeera reiterated its condemnation of the attack, describing al-Louh's death as part of a broader assault on press freedom in Gaza. "Ahmed al-Louh was dedicated to documenting the realities of the ongoing conflict under the most dangerous conditions," the network said.
"The unprecedented killing of journalists by the Israeli military continues with impunity," said fellow reporter Sharif Kouddous.
On Dec. 5, Amnesty International released a 296-page report—featuring interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel's large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza's agricultural land and civilian infrastructure—that conclude what Israel has been doing in Gaza amounts to genocide.
"Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty's secretary-general, upon release of the document. "Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now."
As the weekend's latest catalog of death and injuries suggests, it has not stopped.
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Many Children Among Hundreds Killed, Wounded in Latest Israeli Bombings of Gaza
"Our ambulances can't transfer wounded people," said one overwhelmed hospital director. "Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don't just die in the streets."
Oct 24, 2024
A devastating wave of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, according to local and international media reports.
Citing Gaza Civil Defense officials, Palestine's Quds News Network reported Thursday that at least 150 Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombardment of around a dozen apartment towers on Al-Houja Street in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
Local and international media outlets earlier reported at least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded by an IDF strike on the al-Shuhada school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Medical staff at the al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat—where many people killed and wounded in the strike were taken—told Al Jazeera that 13 children under age 18 and three women were among the dead.
The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas command-and-control center. However, survivors and eyewitnesses said that all of the dead were women and children.
Gaza Notifications published the names of 16 people killed in the attack, including at least five children—the youngest of whom was a baby, just 11 months old.
The outlet said a total of 203 Palestinian civilians have been killed so far on Thursday, and that "all medical and rescue operations have been completely halted by the military administration."
"The Israeli army has warned that ambulances and rescue teams will be directly targeted if they attempt to continue their operations, effectively blocking any humanitarian efforts," the site added.
Gaza's Government Media Office reported 34 Palestinians including 11 children were burned alive in an IDF strike on a youth club-turned shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
Israeli forces have also reportedly attacked hospitals and healthcare workers throughout Gaza. The Palestine Chronicle reported that IDF troops opened fire on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, "with sick children inside."
Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital's director, told Al Jazeera that IDF tanks surrounded the facility and "directly targeted" it, severely damaging the intensive care unit. On Wednesday, Abu Safia said there were more than 150 wounded people in the hospital, including 14 children in the ICU or neonatal ward.
"There is a very large number of wounded people, and we lose at least one person every hour because of the lack of medical supplies and medical staff," he said. "Our ambulances can't transfer wounded people. Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don't just die in the streets."
The Palestinian Ministry of Health also said several of its employees were wounded by Israeli artillery strikes on Thursday.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report detailing how "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
Israel's ongoing offensive in northern and central Gaza has killed or wounded more than 2,000 Palestinians this month alone, according to Gaza officials. Since last October, Israel's war on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—has left more than 153,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and most of the coastal enclave in ruins.
Thursday's strikes came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East, where he is set to take part in cease-fire negotiations with officials from Israel, Egypt, and Qatar in the Qatari capital Doha.
"Going back to the negotiations on ceasefire and the hostages, one of the things we're doing is looking at whether there are different options that we can pursue to get us to a conclusion, to get us to a result," Blinken said Thursday.
The United States is Israel's primary international backer, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.
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Nuseirat, Like Gaza, Is a Representation of a Culture That Cannot Be Broken
I write this because I fear that readers and viewers would only associate Nuseirat with massacres, with lifeless bodies lined up on the floor, covered by the very blankets they used to cover themselves at night.
Jun 25, 2024
I clearly remember my first day at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, school in a refugee camp in Gaza. I was five years of age. It felt like my life was over.
The distance from Block Five of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp to the New Camp—located within the municipal boundaries of Nuseirat—was long, exhausting, and terrifying.
I had to walk for several miles, on a very dusty journey that compromised my new, specially tailored red suit and orange sandals.
The words “massacre” and “Nuseirat” became so intertwined in recent months that new headlines often omit further details.
On the arduous journey, passing through citrus orchards and heaps of sand, I was accompanied by hundreds of children, some more experienced and confident, and others, like me, crying all the way to the UNRWA Elementary School for Boys.
On the way, I learned about the “crazy man of the orchard,” the disheveled guard who chases after unruly children whenever they try to pluck orange fruits from the Hirthani trees. I also learned about the unleashed dogs that belonged to some Bedouin tribe, whose bites may result in many rabies injections and terrible pain.
By the time I reached class, my tears turned into sobbing. Learning how to read and write seemed like a worthless exercise, considering the risks of becoming a pupil at an UNRWA school in Gaza.
Alas, there is no immediate happy ending, as I was, indeed, chased by the “crazy man,” bitten by the dogs, ruined my sandals, and ruined my red suit with the large, silver-colored buttons.
But, ultimately, it was all worth the effort. My peers, starting on that very first day of the school year, are now the very great intellectuals of Gaza, the journalists, the teachers, the doctors, the parents, the people that made Gaza the tenacious place that is inspiring the whole world. Many of them have been killed or wounded in this war. Many are still fighting to keep Gaza itself alive.
Though I no longer live in Nuseirat, my relationship with the place grew even stronger with time.
In Arabic we say, “Those far away from the eyes are also far away from the heart.” Gaza, however, is an exception, because the people we leave behind are unforgettable, and because their suffering, especially during times of siege and war, is too extreme to ignore.
As I checked my mobile phone on Thursday, June 6, for news on Gaza, nine months after the start of the war, once more the breaking news: “Massacre in Nuseirat” topped the headlines. The massacre seemed terrible even before the gory details were released.
A few days later, on June 8, a much bigger tragedy occurred; hundreds were killed and wounded.
The words “massacre” and “Nuseirat” became so intertwined in recent months that new headlines often omit further details.
As I viewed the images of those killed and wounded in the Al-Sardi School and later at the central market, I feared that I would recognize some of the faces. This nightmarish scenario has happened before, and repeatedly so, where I would discover that family members, friends, or neighbors were killed or wounded through the news.
Consequently, whenever fresh images from the Gaza onslaught appear, I am always on guard.
In the case of the school massacre, I did not recognize anyone, possibly because the victims are mostly displaced Palestinians from many other areas in the Gaza Strip, whether north or south.
I thought about the school itself. The cluster of UNRWA schools hit in the latest attack hosted more than 50,000 people—mostly children and women.
Only months earlier, that very school was a source of joy, knowledge, friendship, but also trepidation for little children who were being torn away from their families.
Then, like all schools in Gaza, they became shelters to host the bulk of the Gaza population which has been chased by bombs, repeatedly, from the north to the center, from the center to the south and, again, to the center, and so on.
This journey of displacement, along with the accompanying famine, is yet to end. But massacres at United Nations schools-turned-shelters are a whole different level of cruelty.
To alleviate some of the suffering, many volunteers in the camp have been holding all kinds of communal activities at some of these shelters.
Volunteer clowns perform regularly, volunteer barbers cut hair, teachers hold classes, women bake together, local football clubs organize tournaments. All of this is done to reassure the children that, despite the ongoing suffering and the sound of bombs all around them, they will always remain safe inside.
But there is no such safety, neither at schools nor mosques, churches nor even hospitals.
I write this because I fear that readers and viewers would only associate Nuseirat with massacres, with lifeless bodies lined up on the floor, covered by the very blankets they used to cover themselves at night.
Nuseirat, like Gaza, is a representation of a culture that cannot be broken, no matter the firepower, or the extent of the massacres.
For me, Nuseirat is a life that was fully lived, memories that cannot be forgotten, and a future of freedom and dignity that is waiting to take shape.
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'Another Day, Another Israeli War Crime': IDF Kills 17 in Attacks on Nuseirat Refugee Camp
"We want a cease-fire now," said one resident of central Gaza. "Enough of our blood, I say it to Israel, America, and our leaders too. The war must stop."
Jun 18, 2024
Israeli forces killed at least 17 people early Tuesday in attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the site of a recent operation in which Israel's military massacred more than 270 Palestinians to rescue four hostages.
Reporting from central Gaza, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said it has "been another bloody night" in the area, noting that Israeli forces attacked two homes in Nuseirat that were "accommodating displaced families who had recently evacuated from Rafah."
"The first strike killed 10 people, including women and children. Five of them were from the same family. We're looking at double the number of injuries. More people are still trapped under the rubble," Mahmoud added. "An hour later, the second attack targeted another family's home. The victims include not only the parents and their children, but also the grandparents."
"Another day, another Israeli war crime," Progressive International co-founder Yanis Varoufakiswrote in response to the strikes.
Overnight Israel bombed two homes in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people pic.twitter.com/4MJgEJGMmQ
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) June 18, 2024
The attacks came after an Associated Press investigation detailed how Israel's relentless, U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza is wiping out entire Palestinian families. Examining 10 deadly Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip between October and December, the outlet found that "in no case was there an obvious military target or direct warning to those inside."
"In one case," AP added, "the family said they had raised a white flag on their building in a combat zone."
The analyzed strikes killed more than 500 people from several families, AP found. "Nearly every Palestinian family has suffered grievous, multiple losses," the outlet observed. "But many have been decimated, particularly in the first months of the war."
The Israeli military carried out Tuesday's strikes on Nuseirat less than two weeks after killing at least 274 Palestinians in an operation at the refugee camp that rescued four hostages taken during the Hamas-led October 7 attack on southern Israel.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said last week that the number of Palestinian civilians killed during the Israeli operation "seriously calls into question whether the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution—as set out under the laws of war—were respected by the Israeli forces."
The attacks on Nuseirat came amid Israel's continued assault on Rafah, a city in southern Gaza that
more than a million people have fled in recent weeks in the face of an Israeli ground invasion that has further imperiled efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians.
According to Reuters, residents of the city reported "heavy bombardments from tanks and planes in several areas" on Tuesday. One resident, identified by Reuters as a father of six, told the news agency that "Rafah is being bombed without any intervention from the world, the occupation is acting freely here."
Another resident, who was displaced to central Gaza, said that with every "hour of delay, Israel kills more people."
"We want a cease-fire now," he added. "Enough of our blood, I say it to Israel, America, and our leaders too. The war must stop."
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UN Human Rights Office Says IDF's Deadly Nuseirat Raid May Amount to War Crime
Israeli forces killed at least 274 Palestinians in the refugee camp on Saturday while conducting an operation to save four hostages.
Jun 11, 2024
Citing the "principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution" that international humanitarian law demands military forces obey, the United Nations' top human rights office on Tuesday said the raid conducted at Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend may amount to a war crime.
The IDF conducted the operation at the camp in the central Gaza Strip in order to free four Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, and Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters their release was "clearly very good news."
But the OHCHR, Laurence said, is "profoundly shocked at the impact on civilians of the Israeli forces' operation," which killed at least 274 Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
"The manner in which the raid was conducted in such a densely populated area seriously calls into question whether the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution—as set out under the laws of war—were respected by the Israeli forces," said Laurence in a statement.
Actions by both the IDF and Hamas, he added, "may amount to war crimes."
As it has since beginning its bombardment of Gaza in October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the IDF blamed the civilian casualties on Saturday on the militant group, saying the hundreds of deaths were the result of Hamas operating in the densely populated Nuseirat camp.
But while Laurence said the OHCHR was "deeply distressed" by Hamas' capture of hostages and its operating in densely population areas, Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque concurred with the office that Israel is obligated to protect civilian lives in Gaza regardless of Hamas' conduct.
"The fact that your adversary is breaking international humanitarian law does not change your obligations," Haque told The Washington Post. "The foreseeable harm to civilians was disproportionate to the legitimate aim of rescuing the four hostages."
Eyewitnesses and aid groups have said the attack began in broad daylight and started after IDF soldiers entered the camp in a humanitarian aid truck. The operation was carried out with jets, drones, and tanks and included strikes in the vicinity of a maternity clinic that has been converted to a hospital to help care for people wounded in Israeli attacks since October.
Paramedic Abdel Hamid Ghorab told the Post he witnessed "random and continuous bombing in the vicinity of the hospital with unprecedented intensity."
"All they cared about was carrying out the operation, even if it was at the expense of all these lives," said Ghorab.
Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard told the Post that the 274 casualties "is enough to raise questions about whether the use of fire was indiscriminate," which would be a violation of international humanitarian law.
"Was the air power used on a prospected military objective, or was it a random, indiscriminate use of bombardment in a very densely populated area?" he asked.
As the OHCHR made its statement, Writers Against the War on Gaza condemned The New York Times' publication of "a whitewashed puff piece on the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre," authored by former IDF soldier Ronen Bergman, which they said was aimed at dehumanizing Palestinian civilians while including no context about potential war crimes by the IDF.
"The framing of this article, typical of New York Times coverage of the massacre, foregrounds four (alive) Israelis over hundreds of dead Palestinians, and presents the IDF as swashbuckling heroes," the group wrote on the X account of its project, The New York War Crimes. "This prefigures the reader to accept the justification for IDF butchery."
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