By Dr Marwan Asmar
Jabalia is a pile of ruins and destruction, thanks to the Israeli army. Pictures, images and videos show the Jabalia Camp in the north of Gaza has been reduced to a series of gorges and tumbled down buildings, concrete and wreckage.
This is after its mass bombing and missiles that pulverized blocks of flats and residential buildings.
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One video clip shows people running amidst their destroyed buildings and houses being shot at and bombed by Israeli quadcopters and tanks that thud and boom.
The voices of individuals can be heard shouting telling others to run and take care.
Nowhere to run to
But, here, there is nowhere to run to. It’s naked Israeli aggression. Sounds of Israeli machine gunfire and snipers as people scurry from one place to another are rife.
This is war in its ugliest form waged against ordinary civilians that don’t even have kitchen utensils.
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Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif is in a state of shock. “I swear to God that I can’t even begin to describe what is happening in the Jabalia camp.
Eyewitnesses told the Turkish news agency Anadolu bodies of Palestinians were recovered from the streets of the Jabalia camp and the Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip after the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Israeli soldiers started withdrawing, Thursday, to the east of Jabalia after 20 days of total bombardment and destruction as covered by websites on the social media. Homes and infrastructure were blown up into smithereen, the burning of residential buildings torched to the delight of Israelis.
It was supposed to be a pull back from Jabalia camp, the arounding areas, Biet Lahia and Biet Hanoon.
But there was an element of double-dealing. Israeli snipers were heard frequently shooting at civilians who were returning to their destroyed homes as they heard of the atrocious pull out. Men, women, children were moving in between debris trying to identify the houses they once lived in.
In their destroyed state neigborhoods and residential areas looked so different.
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The scale of destruction in Jabalia is unbelievable in its magnification and ruinous state as documented by another journalist who was in the camp during the three-week onslaught.
Mohammad Shaheen walks through the massive destruction of the camp built after 1948 when thousands of displaced Palestinians were forced to come here after the Israeli state was created.
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One woman resident said the scale of destruction is mind-boggling. “The Israelis have destroyed us. They are testing their missiles on us,” she told the reporter.
Another resident says the vast destruction is the result of weapons being “tested on us with Jabalia and the rest of the Gaza Strip used as a testing ground for different armoury provided by the Americans.
The Israeli war machine unleashed on Jabalia included people, old, children and women. Of the infrastructure, the Israeli targetted the UNRWA headquarters that housed thousands of displaced persons. In a recent bombing of the al Nazla school outside Jablia 10 people were killed and 17 injured.
But it had been a tough fight for the Israeli army who faced missiles by the Palestinian resistance movement who shot, killed, maimed and injured Israeli soldiers and their tanks and other armoury destroyed.
In this battle, Israeli soldiers were killed and injured almost daily as reported by the the Izz Al Din Al Qassam fighters as well with 120 anti-tank missiles fired at Israel forces in the first few day of the start of the military slaughter of Jabalia.
In the first six days when Israeli soldiers started to enter Jabalia and the areas of northern Gaza that included Biet Lahia, Biet Hanoon and Al Zaitoun in Gaza City, the Israeli army reported it lost 95 soldiers between those killed and injured and with tanks, armed carriers and few bulldozers put out of action. The cost of one bulldozer is earmarked at $1 million.
Not Beaten
Despite the extent of destruction many say Jabalia will not be beaten for this is the home of the Palestinian resistance. It is here, in Jabalia, were the first Intifada in 1987 against Israeli occupation was first struck. The Intifada, a people’s uprising continued for five years until the belaguered 1991 peace conference in Madrid.
After more than eight months of war against Gaza, the number of Palestinians civilians killed stands at over 36,000 with over 81,000 injured.
Vast swathes of Gaza lies in ruin amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine with Israeli border guards refusing the entry of aid trucks into the enclave. The north of Gaza has long passed into the famine stage as a result and mass starvation is also creeping into south Gaza because of the Israeli control of the different crossing points in Rafah and elsewhere.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where over a 1.4 million Palestinians sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
Major-General Fayez Al Dwairi comments the Israeli army has no morals or ethics because it destroyed everything in its path during its occopation of the camp. He added, it left tens of people dead in the streets of the camp and/or under the wreckage of buildings, destroying what was left of the camp and all the basics of life.
AL Dwairi pointed out the Israelis destroyed all of the UNRWA Schools, bulldozed the roads in the camp and dug up its cemetaries. He said they deserve to be called a bunch of gangs but nevertheless suffered great material and manpower losses and were not able to hold on to the land or stay there, and wherever they go they will suffer the same fate and will be defeated by the Palestinian resistance.
Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer on Middle East affairs and currently blogs at https://crossfirearabia.com.
1 June 2024
Source: countercurrents.org