Destroying cultures and eradicating the legacies of a people are considered crimes under international law.
As Israel demolishes one of the last parts of Gaza that has infrastructure, impotent concern is registered among most of the West’s leaders. Indignation is not met with action.
By the end of October last year, Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek noted that the Gaza Strip had been subjected to “one of the most intense bombing campaigns of the twenty-first century, driving widespread urban damage”. With a focus on northern Gaza, the authors noted that 191,263 or three fifths of all buildings were either damaged or destroyed.
Bailey Ulbricht and Allen S. Weiner argue in Lawfare that Israel’s operations in Gaza eclipse those in Mariupol in Ukraine, where 32% of the buildings were destroyed or damaged, or the Syrian town of Aleppo, an ancient city victim to a war in which 40% of its buildings were damaged during three years of remorseless conflict. They argue that the United States and other Western countries must press Israel to end its war in Gaza, “which has gone well beyond what Israel’s right of self-defense permits”.
In language so corrupted it conveys the opposite of what is intended, Israel has again used the term “humanitarian zone” in areas it repeatedly bombs, whose residents are being consistently killed.
Leaflets dropped over Gaza City on September 7 made the bold and mendacious claim: “From this moment it is announced that the al-Mawasi area is a humanitarian zone and steps will be taken to provide better humanitarian services there”.
The Gaza Ministry of Interior issued a statement, asking people to “beware of the occupation’s deceitful claims about the existence of a humanitarian zone in the south of the Strip”.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported that the Israeli Defense Force is “using remotely controlled explosive robots, and detonating them in residential streets, destroying neighbourhoods”. He goes on to say that homes, public facilities, schools and a mosque were also hit in Sheikh Radwan.
Amjad Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGOs network, also observed that Israeli forces were “aiming to force Palestinians to the southern areas using these explosions, but everyone knows that there is no safe place in the south or any humanitarian zone”.
Demolitions are now taking place at will, with the high-rise buildings in Gaza City falling to attacks.
BBC Verify noted that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is replicating its pattern of demolishing structures in southern Gaza. “Thousands of buildings in areas including Rafah and Khan Younis have been demolished by controlled explosions and demolition contractors in the area.”
Along the way, tents have disappeared in such areas as Zeitoun. Palestinians, treated like much incidental livestock in war, have again been forced to move on under callous direction. Israel’s military spokesperson Avichay Adraee growled his bit of advice that residents leave the city to move to a designated coastal area of Khan Younis, risibly called a “humanitarian zone”.
On social media, Adraee assured his own conscience and those of his colleagues: Residents are told to leave such specific buildings as the Al-Ruya complex because of alleged Hamas “terrorist infrastructure” in it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added a vicious flourish, treating the systematic destruction of Gaza City’s infrastructure as entailing the necessary removal of “terror towers” and “nests of terror” (50, to date, have been destroyed). “Now all of this is just an introduction, just a prelude, to the main intense operation — a ground manoeuvre of our forces, who are organising and gathering in Gaza City.”
Paying lip service to humanitarian considerations, Netanyahu wished it to be on the record that those in Gaza “take advantage of this opportunity and listen” with care to his words: “You have been warned. Get out of there.”
The time given for leaving is a question of debate.
Aida Abu Kas, resident of the now demolished Sousi Tower, claimed the IDF gave them 20 minutes to take what belongings they could and leave before its razing.
A better perspective of Israeli intentions is offered by defence minister Israel Katz. In posting a video on social media featuring the destruction of Sousi Tower, he ecstatically claimed: “The gates of hell are being unlocked in Gaza City.”
In another blood lust post on X, Katz said: “A last warning to the murderers and rapists of Hamas in Gaza, and in luxury hotels abroad: Release the hostages, and put down your weapons – or Gaza will be destroyed and you will be obliterated.”
There is no distinguishing between civilians and combatants. Targets and culpability are conflated, as they have been from the outset. The next hellish stage is being set.
[Binoy Kampmark currently lectures at RMIT University.]