To witness Israel’s methodical destruction of the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, even from afar, is to stare into the maw of calculated oblivion: streets of blood, lifeless children, and mass starvation. In an interview with Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif, a mother described the killing of her two-week old daughter, Amal Alyan, who was found without a head after Israel’s attack on an UNRWA clinic in Jabalia, northern Gaza.
“The fire was all over the children. My children died. They were killed. It had only been two weeks since I gave birth [to Amal]. My little girl, she had no head. She was so little, innocent of any sin.” The headless body of two-week old Amal was held up by a man outside the Indonesian Hospital, arguably in an attempt to force the outside world to bear witness to the crimes being carried out against the children of Gaza.
In the span of a single day, Israel destroyed the Ghabayen desalination plant and al-Zakat Mosque, and attacked three schools in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza which had become shelters for the displaced—Dar al-Arqam, Fahad School, and Shaaban al-Rayess School—killing at least 112 people. A local reporter, Hani Mahmoud of Al Jazeera, described footage of the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes on Dar al-Arqam School as being so horrific it was too graphic to show.
Majida, a woman originally from Khan Younis, told Splinter that the sight of lifeless children has become chillingly common. “The Israeli airstrikes are now even more aggressive, if you can believe it,” she said. “It’s not enough for Israel to starve us and expel us from our cities, they’re targeting our children each and every day. They’re killing our children. What crimes did they commit in the eyes of the world other than they were born Palestinian?”
As Israel’s latest military operation in Gaza expands, defense minister Israel Katz announced plans to seize large areas of Gaza and further displace the indigenous population. “Troops will move to clear areas of terrorists and infrastructure, and seize extensive territory that will be added to the state of Israel’s security areas,” Katz said.
In an essay by academic Joseph Massad, who serves as professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, he described Israel’s expulsion plans as echoing the Nazi Madagascar Plan—the proposal by Nazi Germany to resettle Europe’s Jewish population to what was then the French colony of Madagascar, just one year before Operation Barbarossa—and the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
“An important lesson that the Madagascar Plan or the Indian Removal Act imparts is the ease with which genocidal and racist regimes plan the expulsion of populations, and the theft of their land and property, all with utter indifference to human suffering,” Massad wrote. “This includes indifference to the resistance of those they intend to expel, or of the natives in the countries to which they plan to expel them.”
In the occupied West Bank, which is home to over 3 million Palestinians, Israel is conducting violent raids on Palestinian refugee camps and killing hundreds. In Bethlehem, leaflets threatening forced displacement were dropped on houses after a raid targeting Dheisha camp, which serves an estimated 20,000 refugees. In Tulkarem, Israeli occupation forces used bulldozers to target infrastructure and roads; in the al-Fawwar refugee camp in al-Khalil, Israeli forces carried out mass arrests of Palestinians, including children; and in Nablus, a Palestinian man, 33-year-old Muhammad Saeed Khammash, was killed by Israeli forces during a raid of his home.
A total of 949 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, all while the state is engineering further land theft of West Bank territory, much like in Gaza and other areas of historic Palestine. In the occupied West Bank, the intention is to make the area uninhabitable—what’s been described as a ‘slow death’—where raids on Palestinian homes and businesses, mass arrests, detainment without charge, and other forms of abject humiliation become an inescapable occurrence for the indigenous Palestinian population.
In a report for Al Jazeera, analyst and reporter Nour Odeh said that a refugee camp in Tulkarem, which used to house 20,000 Palestinians, “is now a desolate shell” and Israel has declared that its residents will not be allowed back. Odeh reported that Israel plans to continue to target the occupied West Bank through 2025 and target other refugee camps. “Palestinians say they’re on their own.”
Other than the occasional tepid coverage of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, the larger and deliberate humanitarian catastrophe unfolding has received little in-depth attention from mainstream US media outlets outside the bounds of dehumanized death tolls and outright pro-Israel stenography. “This isn’t something that is just happening to us,” a displaced Palestinian father from Beit Hanoun told Splinter. “This war is being waged on us in front of the entire world. It is all by design. No body, young or old, falls in Gaza without a US earmark, without approval first from Biden and now from Trump. Our deaths are by design. For all of us that are left, it feels like we are shouting into the darkness.”
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