Jailed without charge: How Israel holds thousands of Palestinian prisoners

Israel has called Palestinians released under a truce with Hamas violent ‘terrorists.’ But most haven’t been charged.

By Maziar Motamedi

Published On 29 Nov 202329 Nov 2023

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/29/jailed-without-charge-how-israel-holds-thousands-of-palestinian-prisoners

As Palestinian prisoners were being released last week, Israel imposed a ban on celebrations by their family members. “Expressions of joy”, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said, “are equivalent to backing terrorism”.

Israel has presented imprisoned Palestinians as “terrorists” and has subjected many of the detainees to abuse.

But of the 300 Palestinian women and children whom Israel has identified for potential release as part of the humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas, nearly 80 percent were not even formally charged.

An overwhelming majority of Palestinian prisoners were arrested under a quasi-judicial process known as administrative detention, under which Palestinians are initially jailed for six months. Their detentions can then be repeatedly extended for an indefinite period without charge or trial.

Most Palestinians, including children, are tried in military courts and handed lengthy sentences in what critics call sham military trials because in many cases Palestinians are deprived of defence lawyers and due process. In comparison, Israeli citizens are tried in civil courts, highlighting the two-tier justice system that discriminates against Palestinians.

Here’s a look at the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, how Israel has weaponised administrative detention and why many Palestinians are forced to go through Israeli military courts.

Who is on the list?

The vast majority of the Palestinians – 233 prisoners out of the 300 – on Israel’s release list have not been formally charged and were held as administrative detainees. An overwhelming majority of them are children. The youngest is 14.

Almost three-quarters of them are from the occupied West Bank, which has seen a surge of arrests since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7. The West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem had already seen a spike in Israeli raids this year even before the war.

The longest serving prisoner among the 300 has been held for 102 months, or eight-and-a-half years. The most recent prisoner was arrested two months ago.

Nearly half of the prisoners have no affiliation with any Palestinian political or armed group. Others are believed to be affiliated with Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

What are the effects of administrative detention?

Prisoners may be held under administrative detention indefinitely. During that time, which could span years, the prisoners, their families and their lawyers may remain in the dark as to what the prisoner has been charged with and what evidence there is against them.

Israel has arrested an estimated one million Palestinians since occupying East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967, according to a United Nations report released last year. A considerable number of them are believed to be administrative detainees.

Israel has ramped up arrests since the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, doubling the number of Palestinians in custody to more than 10,000 b efore releasing some of them. Hamas fighters killed at least 1,200 people during their attack. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, most of them women and children.

How does the Israeli military judicial system work in the occupied territories?

The Oslo Accords of the 1990s led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), but a semi-government run by Palestinians has not ended the Israeli military judicial system. Israel still directly controls a majority of the West Bank and has allowed construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands.

The PA has faced criticism for its security coordination with Israel, under which it is obliged to share information regarding armed Palestinian groups. It has a penal code and a judiciary, but the three million Palestinians in the occupied territories could easily fall under the jurisdiction of Israel’s military courts if they are accused of endangering Israeli security. That could include any activity tied to the hundreds of Palestinian organisations that Israel has deemed illegal over the decades.

When charges are filed, they regularly include “terrorist” activities, which could include acts against Israeli soldiers or settlers, and “incitement”, which includes influencing public opinion. Traffic violations or being in Israel illegally for work also bring Palestinians into the military judicial system, which has a conviction rate of 99 percent.

In contrast to Palestinians, Israeli settlers arrested in the West Bank are tried in civilian courts inside Israel. This practice has in effect created two legal systems, which human rights groups have called discriminatory and a form of “apartheid”.

How are Palestinians treated in prison?

Some of the Palestinian prisoners who have been released as part of the truce have said they were beaten and humiliated by Israeli soldiers before being freed.

Beatings grew more intense and frequent after the start of the war, but testimonies of prisoners over the decades have pointed to a longstanding pattern of beatings, torture and abuse of prisoners.

Since the start of the war, rights groups have reported that the Israeli Prison Service has also considerably restricted water, food, medical care and communal items for prisoners and has restricted or altogether halted family and lawyer visits.

This means that Palestinian prisoners have effectively lost some of the limited privileges that they had earned through years of campaigning and hunger strikes in prisons that are now severely overcrowded as well.

How does Israel treat its child inmates?

Hundreds of children, some as young as nine years old, have been detained by Israeli forces in what many have said represents a violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children fare no better than adults in Israeli prisons, and an array of abuses against them has been documented.

The rights group Save the Children said in a report in July that 86 percent of children are beaten in Israeli detention, 69 percent are strip-searched and 42 percent are injured during their arrests. They have suffered gunshot wounds and broken bones among other injuries.

Some children have reported violence of a sexual nature, and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the London-based child rights organisation said.

Palestinian children are “the only children in the world who are systematically prosecuted in military courts” and an estimated 10,000 have been held in the Israeli military detention system over the past 20 years, according to the group.

Looking for Likud Support, Netanyahu Says He’s the Only One Who Can Prevent a Palestinian State

Netanyahu also boasted that he knows how to handle pressure from the US

by Dave DeCamp Posted on November 28, 2023

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/11/28/looking-for-likud-support-netanyahu-says-hes-the-only-one-who-can-prevent-a-palestinian-state/

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career is in peril due to his failure to prevent the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the Israeli leader has been meeting with members of his Likud party to ensure continued support.

According to Israeli media, in these meetings, Netanyahu has sold himself as the only one who can prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and stand up to pressure from the Americans.

“I am the only one who will prevent a Palestinian state in Gaza and [the West Bank] after the war,” Netanyahu told Likud lawmakers, according to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

Netanyahu has come under fire from his political opponents over his previous strategy of helping prop up Hamas to prevent a Palestinian state. In a now-infamous quote from 2019, Netanyahu said anyone “who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.”

Netanyahu continued, “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank… It’s impossible to reach an agreement with them … Everyone knows this, but we control the height of the flames.”

President Biden has said he wants to see effort toward a two-state solution if Israel is successful in rooting out Hamas, but the US has placed no conditions on its military support for the war. Biden and his top aides have also said Israel can’t control Gaza after the war, an idea Netanyahu publicly rejected.

According to The Times of Israel, Netanyahu also told Likud lawmakers that the US didn’t want Israel to launch a ground invasion of Gaza and also didn’t want Israel to raid al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza. He reportedly boasted of defying the US’s wishes.

Two US officials speaking to the Times challenged Netanyahu’s narrative, saying the US didn’t actually oppose the Israeli military actions but just expressed concerns about the protection of civilians. The US has continued to provide full military support for Israel despite the massive civilian casualties.

According to Kan, Netanyahu told Likud backbenchers, referring to Knesset members who don’t hold prominent positions, that he has “known Biden for more than 40 years” and knows “how to speak to the American public.”

 

Iran’s political factions aren't united on Hamas, or the Middle East

But most favor a policy of restraint in reaction to the Gaza war.

MUHAMMAD SAHIMI

NOV 24, 2023

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-politics-israel-gaza-war/

After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, the U.S. far right and supporters of Israel pointed to Iran as the main behind-the-scenes culprit, hoping that their message would spur a military attack on Iran.

It is well known that the Islamic Republic has supported Hamas for decades, but Hamas is not a puppet of Iran. During the civil war in Syria, Hamas supported the armed opposition, angering both Iran’s leadership and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. And in the current war, Hamas appears to be angry that Iran and its allies have not provided it with direct assistance or intervened on its behalf.

Tehran’s leadership, as well as that of the Lebanese Hezbollah, was as surprised as anyone when the attacks took place, with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, asserting in a speech that his group was not given advance notice about Hamas’ plans. So did Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who flatly denied that Iran had participated in planning or executing the attacks, or had advance notice. U.S. and Israeli officials also stated that there is no evidence that Iran participated directly in planning the attacks.

Khamenei has also stated that Iran will not enter the war on behalf of Hamas. In his recent meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, Khamenei reportedly criticized Hamas for attacking Israel, calling it a strategic mistake that resulted in the redeployment of a large U.S. force to the Middle East and threw Washington’s full support behind Israel.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict began 30 years before the Islamic Revolution in Iran and will continue indefinitely even if the Islamic Republic disappears tomorrow, so long as Palestinians are denied their own independent state. At the same time, the fact is that Iran’s internal political dynamics are complex, and various political factions are not unified about Iran’s policy toward the Middle East, in general, and the Palestinians and Israel and the current war, in particular. There are deep fissures within Iran when it comes to debating foreign policy, particularly Middle East policy.

To begin with, all Iranian political factions agree on, (1) forcing the U.S. military to leave the Middle East; (2) raising the costs of the “maximum pressure” policy that began with the Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration; (3) the importance of having a strong deterrent against possible military attacks by the U.S. and/or Israel, and (4) supporting the rights of the Palestinian people.

But there is no agreement on how to put such policies into effect. The hardliners believe that to punish the U.S. for its “maximum pressure” policy and force its military to leave the Middle East, the best approach is to forge alliances with China, Russia and other nations that oppose the U.S. interventions around the world and to create problems for the U.S. in the region. Moderates and pragmatists, on the other hand, advocate close relations with Iran’s neighbors and the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf, as well as with Europe, to reduce tensions.

The hardliners believe that the most effective deterrent is arming the country and its proxies with advanced weapons, whereas moderates, while supporting arming the nation, also believe that regaining the confidence of the Iranian people by opening up political space, holding free elections, and taking deep and irreversible reforms would be the most effective deterrent. As former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif put it recently, “what has preserved Iran is not its weapons, but its people.”

While the hardliners equate supporting the Palestinian people with arming them, moderates and pragmatists believe that Iran should limit its assistance to diplomatic support and humanitarian aid.

What these factions do not agree on are (1) a foreign policy based on ideology, which is supported by the hardliners, rather than one generally preferred by moderates, reformists, and pragmatic conservatives that gives highest priority to Iran’s true national – rather than ideological -- interests; (2) rapprochement with the United States, which is rejected by the hardliners but supported by all other factions; and (3) how to punish Israel for its campaign of assassinations and sabotage in Iran and its support for Iran’s small separatist groups. The hardliners view arming Iran’s proxies as the “best” option because it forces Israel to spend its resources on its own borders, whereas all other factions believe that diplomacy is the best possible approach.

In the current war between Hamas and Israel, all factions have condemned Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza, with the moderates having also condemned the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians. But the similarities end there.

At the beginning of the war, some of the hardliners declared that Iran should join the fighting. But this was hollow posturing whose purpose was to outmaneuver competitors within their own faction. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who has always been close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, even warned that Iran’s proxies have “their fingers on the trigger” and may enter the war.

While there have indeed been skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, they appear to be carefully calibrated, and viewed in Tehran as a way of lessening the pressure on Hamas, and not a prelude to a full-blown war, unless, of course, the carnage in Gaza escalates to much worse levels.Thus, Amir-Abdollahian’s declaration should be viewed as his attempt to elevate himself within the hardline camp since he has been an utterly ineffective foreign minister who even Khamenei does not seem to trust completely.

And while President Ebrahim Raisi has adopted a hard line regarding the war in Gaza, his stance should be best seen as an attempt to distract attention from his administration’s failure to improve the economy and reduce inflation.

Similarly, the IRGC’s Quds Force commander, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, declared, “We will do anything required in this historic battle.” This, however, is only bluster, as Qaani is trying to use the war to elevate himself to the level of his predecessor, Major General Qasem Soleimani [promoted posthumously to lieutenant general], who played a key role in organizing Iran’s proxies in the region and was assassinated by the United States in January 2020. As noted above, Khamenei, Qaani’s boss, has already ruled out Iran entering the war.

Qaani and the IRGC are simply trying to use the war to regain full control of Iran’s Middle East policy and suppress voices of dissent protesting their hardline posturing.

But, even within the IRGC, there are voices of reason that oppose Iran’s entry into a a war with the U.S. and Israel. Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of IRGC’s aerospace force, which oversees its missile program, recently said that after the Trump Administration assassinated General Soleimani, Iran did not attack all the U.S. military bases in the Middle East because “ten, fifteen thousand civilians would have been killed, and the country’s development would have been set back by 20 years.”

At the same time, moderates and pragmatists have called for restraint, fearing a wider war in the Middle East that could engulf Iran. As Zarif put it a few days ago,

“Supporting the Palestinian people does not imply that we should fight for them. The best defense of the Palestinian people is [creating the conditions] to prevent Israel from calling them [Iran’s] proxy. The [Iranian] people are tired of paying the price [for arming the Palestinians].”

Former President Mohammed Khatami has also spoken out in favor of restraint. “The era of occupying other people’s lands has ended,” he said recently, stressing that Tehran should rely more on diplomatic initiatives based on Iran’s national interests and its leaders should avoid taking positions based on factional politics.

It thus appears that the most important political factions in Iran reject war with the U.S. or Israel and favor a policy of restraint in the current war, however much this may disappoint Iran hawks in the United States.

But so long as Palestinians are denied their aspirations for an independent state, Iran’s hardliners and other non-state actors, including radical Islamists like Hamas, will seek to take political advantage of their plight. The most effective way to neutralize Iran’s hawks — and thus reduce a chronic contributor to regional instability and tension — is for the U.S., the West, the Arab world and Israel itself to finally grasp the nettle and work seriously to help Palestinians realize their goal as expeditiously as possible.

Muhammad Sahimi

Muhammad Sahimi is a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. For the past two decades he has published extensively on Iran's political developments and its nuclear program. He was a founding lead political analyst for the website PBS/Frontline: Tehran Bureau and has also published extensively in major websites and print media.

 LOS FACTORES REALES DE PODER SE ALINEAN CON SHEINBAUM

La candidata del oficialismo a la presidencia de la República, Claudia Sheinbaum, no es una persona con carisma; ha sido durante su carrera política una funcionaria más bien mediocre, que primero estuvo a la sombra de su primer esposo Carlos Imaz, en las filas del Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), y después de su patética caída al ser videograbado recibiendo fajos de billetes del empresario argentino Carlos Ahumada; Sheinbaum se fue a refugiar con López Obrador, quien desde hace 20 años ha sido su mentor y protector.

López Obrador decidió desde el inicio de su periodo gubernamental, que Sheinbaum fuera su sucesora, y para ello la dirigió y cuando fue necesario, la protegió (derrumbe de la Línea 12 del Metro, derrota de Morena en la Ciudad de México en las elecciones del 2021), y contra viento y marea la sostuvo como gris jefa de gobierno de la capital de la República; hasta que le armó una farsa de “encuesta” mediante la cual resultó la candidata de la coalición Morena-PVEM-PT a la presidencia.

Ahora ya hay candidatos de la oposición como Xóchitl Gálvez, de la coalición formada por los otrora partidos dominantes PAN y PRI, y lo que queda del PRD; y el partido Movimiento Ciudadano que ha postulado al gobernador de Nuevo León, Samuel García.

El presidente ha comprometido abiertamente, sin importarle lo que diga la Constitución y la ley, todos los recursos[1] y el peso del gobierno federal, los 23 gobiernos estatales de su coalición gobernante, la mayoría que mantiene en el Congreso de la Unión y los recursos que por ley le corresponde a los tres partidos del oficialismo, a obtener la victoria de Sheinbaum y de sus candidatos a los 9 gobiernos estatales, las Cámaras de Diputados y Senadores; los congresos estatales y presidencias municipales que estarán en juego en 2024, con objeto de borrar del mapa político nacional a lo que queda de la oposición.

Para ello, López Obrador necesita también alinear a los factores reales de poder en favor de su candidata presidencial y del resto de candidatos de su coalición.

En principio, uno de esos factores, que son las fuerzas armadas, por ley dependen directamente de él; pero además, durante su gobierno les ha confiado tal cantidad de responsabilidades, funciones y recursos financieros y materiales (más de 240 funciones adicionales a las que por ley están obligadas; 437,161 millones de pesos en presupuesto para 2024; un aumento del 180% en términos reales respecto a 2019[2]), que ahora pueden considerarse como uno de los principales decisores políticos del país, con peso propio.

Este factor real de poder sabe que para mantenerse en esa posición de privilegio y quizás aumentar su influencia, es menester que el actual grupo gobernante se mantenga, y por ello se ha alineado con la directriz presidencial de apoyar a la candidata oficial.

Otro factor real de poder que López Obrador ha ganado para la causa de Sheinbaum es el de la mayoría de los grandes empresarios del país, a los que él denominó en su momento la “mafia del poder”, pero que a lo largo del gobierno de López Obrador se han acomodado bastante bien, al grado que uno de sus principales componentes, los banqueros, han obtenido utilidades históricas (el año pasado del orden de 250 mil millones de pesos), sin que el gobierno haya intervenido de ninguna manera para obstaculizarlo o frenarlo.

Así también, el hombre más rico de México y América Latina, Carlos Slim ha sido un apoyo fundamental de los proyectos de infraestructura de López Obrador, por lo que se alineó tras Sheinbaum[3], para sí asegurar su lugar de privilegio en el siguiente gobierno.

Y en el mismo sentido, un grupo de empresarios cercanos a López Obrador (Jose María Riobóo, Daniel Chávez Morán de Grupo Vidanta, Miguel Rincón Arredondo de Bio Pappel, etc.) se han constituido en el “ala empresarial” de su coalición gobernante, a quienes ha favorecido con contratos y concesiones a lo largo de su administración.

A últimas fechas López Obrador ha entrado en conflicto con dos de los más grandes empresarios del país, Ricardo Salinas y Germán Larrea, por cuestiones de no pago de impuestos, en el caso del primero; o concesiones en el ámbito de los ferrocarriles y contaminación de sus empresas en el del segundo. Pero López Obrador ha utilizado estos conflictos para presionar a los grandes empresarios a que lo apoyen en sus proyectos, y en este caso, a su candidata presidencial; por lo que es factible que la presión gubernamental los obligue a recular en sus disputas con el gobierno, y acaben alineándose en favor de la candidata oficialista.

Tal fue el caso del principal empresario de la comunicación en México, Emilio Azcárraga, que comenzó distanciado del gobierno actual, pero que en el último año ha demostrado un enorme acercamiento al gobierno de AMLO, que se ha reflejado en una mejor imagen del mismo en los noticieros y programas de debate de Televisa, la empresa de multimedios de Azcárraga; y recientemente en la alianza del gobierno con los Centros de Rehabilitación e Inclusión Infantil Teletón de Televisa, para los cuales el gobierno federal ha comprometido becas para los 26 mil niños que son atendidos por dichos centros.

De la misma forma, López Obrador ha estado dispuesto a subordinar todavía más a México a los designios de Washington, primero en la estrategia anti-inmigratoria, desplegando a más de 32 mil miembros de la Guardia Nacional para ese efecto (lo que implica que no están dedicados a su función primordial, que es el combate al crimen organizado); y segundo, comprometiendo gran cantidad de recursos del gobierno federal para combatir el contrabando de fentanilo a Estados Unidos.

Así también, López Obrador, contra su intención original de llegar a acuerdos con las principales organizaciones de narcotraficantes, especialmente el Cártel de Sinaloa, para evitar entrar en una guerra abierta con dichos grupos criminales; ha debido sucumbir a las presiones de Washington, y ha comenzado a atacar al cártel de Sinaloa, todo con objeto de disminuir las presiones de Estados Unidos hacia su administración; pero también, para evitar que el gobierno de Joe Biden pudiera objetar o vetar la candidatura de Sheinbaum (y con ello, la continuidad de las políticas de López Obrador) a la presidencia de la República.

Asimismo, López Obrador, aunque se precia de ser de “izquierda” y de solidarizarse con las causas de los gobiernos progresistas de América Latina, no lo ha hecho así en el caso del genocidio que Israel está cometiendo contra los palestinos en Gaza, pues a diferencia de Bolivia que rompió relaciones con Israel; y de Colombia, Chile y Honduras que han llamado a consultas a sus embajadores en dicho país, el gobierno mexicano no ha hecho ninguna de esas acciones y se ha limitado a solicitar tibiamente un cese al fuego.

Esto lo hace López Obrador para quedar bien con Estados Unidos e Israel, y principalmente con la comunidad judía mexicana que apoya al gobierno israelí. Siendo Sheinbaum judía, es lógico que López Obrador espere también el apoyo de esta próspera e influyente comunidad hacia su candidata, por lo que no ha querido indisponerla con algún tipo de posición diplomática que no se alinee con la postura de Washington y Tel Aviv.

Este alineamiento de los factores reales de poder en favor del gobierno y de su candidata presidencial, que se ha reflejado en un maremoto de propaganda en su favor en los medios de comunicación, está dando buenos resultados, pues las encuestas dan una ventaja abrumadora en la preferencia de los posibles votantes hacia Sheinbaum con 60%, sobre Gálvez con 30% y García 10%.[4]

Y los factores reales de poder se alinean con una opción política determinada, si la misma les garantiza su posición de privilegio en la sociedad. Y eso es algo que Sheinbaum hará, sin duda.

---

[1] Presupuesto para 2024 será de más de 9 millones de millones de pesos.

[2] https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Recursos-para-Fuerzas-Armadas-y-SSPC-crecerian-mas-de-170-con-AMLO-20230910-0091.html

 

[3] https://www.contrareplica.mx/nota-Sheinbaum-pasea-en-Bosque-de-Chapultepec-con-el-empresario-Carlos-Slim--2022201059

 

[4] https://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/leo-zuckermann/oraculus-y-el-modelo-poll-polls-de-la-eleccion-presidencial/1621970

 

Was October 7th a Hamas or Israeli massacre?

Israel's controversial military policy of killing its own citizens to preserve national security may be its defining mistake of 7 October. Would there have even been a 'massacre' that day if Israel had not employed the Hannibal Directive?

William Van Wagenen

NOV 24, 2023

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/was-october-7th-a-hamas-or-israeli-massacre

A farewell ceremony was recently held for 12-year-old Liel Hetzroni, an Israeli girl from Kibbutz Be'eri who died during the Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood military operation on 7 October. There was no traditional burial, just a ceremony, because her body has never been found.

Israeli officials initially claimed that the Palestinian resistance killed 1,400 Israelis that day, including 112 in Be’eri. Though Liel died on “Israel’s darkest day,” no government official attended the farewell ceremony to offer condolences to her family. Nor has the Israeli government investigated her death or told her relatives how she died.

This is because Leil was likely not killed by Hamas, but by the Israeli army.

Liel died when Israeli military forces fired two tank shells into a home in Be’eri that held 15 Israeli hostages and the 40 Hamas fighters who had taken them captive. 

Yasmin Porat, 44, is one of two Israelis to have survived the incident. She remained with Liel and other hostages for several hours in the house, guarded, she says, by fighters who treated them “humanely,” and whose “objective was to kidnap us to Gaza. Not to murder us.”

Porat's bombshell revelation was that when Israeli forces arrived, “they eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” the mother of three told Kan. “There was very, very heavy crossfire.”

Israeli forces' role in the music festival attack

An official Israeli police investigation into the Nova music festival attack near the Gaza border adds to the growing claims that the army killed civilians. The initial narrative of a Hamas-led massacre of 260 Israelis is swiftly being debunked as Israeli citizens demand investigations and more information surfaces. 

According to Haaretz, a police source disclosed that an Israeli combat helicopter, upon arrival, not only targeted Hamas fighters but also fired at Israelis attending the festival. The police report has now adjusted the festival death toll to 364 casualties.

A report from Yedioth Ahronoth on 15 October suggested that Hamas intentionally made it difficult for pilots to distinguish between them and Israelis by dressing in civilian clothing. This, it is argued, made the pilots hesitate to attack targets on the ground at first, but they soon began to fire indiscriminately: 

“The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the target.”

The willingness of occupation forces to unleash overwhelming firepower in this way helps explain the large death toll on 7 October. It also sheds a light on the stark discrepancy between two narratives - one, of a trigger-happy, murderous Hamas that killed hundreds “indiscriminately,” versus the other picture, Palestinian fighters who treated captives ”humanely."

Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev admitted in an interview last week on MSNBC that the initial death count of 1,400 Israelis from the resistance operation was a mistake. The revised count lowered the number to 1,200. 

We “overestimated, we made a mistake,” Regev said. “There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.”

If some 200 Hamas fighters and Palestinians were burned so severely by tank and helicopter fire that they could not be identified, logic dictates that many Israelis met a similar fate. It may also explain why there was nothing left of Liel Herzoni’s body to bury at her farewell ceremony.

Holes in Tel Aviv's narrative 

Hadas Dagan, the other eyewitness to the event in which Liel was killed, also confirmed that when the Israeli tank arrived, two shells were fired, and then “there was complete silence.” Not only Liel, but also her brother Yanai and their aunt Ayla, who raised them, perished in the home.

A report by Haaretz on 20 October corroborated the two witness statements that Israeli forces shelled houses in Be’eri and killed the Israeli detainees inside. Journalist Nir Hasson reports that according to a resident of Be’eri named Tuval Escapa, whose partner was killed in the attack, it was:

“Only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions - including shelling houses with their occupants inside to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages - did the IDF [Israeli army] complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible. A least 112 people from Be’eri were killed.”

The Haaretz report notes further that “11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”

Unanswered questions 

On 15 November, Keren Neubach, a journalist and television presenter for the Israeli Kan broadcaster, spoke with Omri Shafroni, a member of Kibbutz Be’eri and a relative of Liel. Omri is still not sure how Liel was killed:

"I do not rule out the possibility that Liel and others were killed by IDF [Israeli army] fire. It could be that they died from the terrorists' fire, or it could be that they died from the IDF's fire, because there was a very heavy firefight. I don't know and I don't want to just say.”

But he is angry that the Israeli government refuses to investigate what happened in Be’eri that day, despite the testimonies that have emerged.

"We have known what Yasmin told for more than a month, we heard it from Yasmin and Hadas and from our people from the kibbutz whose relatives were killed there. But no official came and told us what happened in this house,” Omri laments: 

“It is very strange to me that until now we have not conducted an operational investigation into an event in which 13 hostages were apparently murdered and no negotiations were carried out. Maybe an order was received that it is impossible to negotiate under these conditions? I don't know, but until now we have not done any operational investigation. And no one is there to talk to us about what happened in the event.”

If an order was indeed received not to negotiate, and to instead fire tank shells into a home filled with Israeli settlers, this would mean Israeli military leaders asked commanders on the ground to implement the controversial “Hannibal Directive.”

Extreme force for extreme ends 

The Times of Israel described how the “directive allows soldiers to use potentially massive amounts of force to prevent a soldier from falling into the hands of the enemy. This includes the possibility of endangering the life of the soldier in question in order to prevent his capture.”

“Some officers, however, understand the order to mean that soldiers ought to deliberately kill their comrade to stop him from being taken prisoner,” the paper added.

A Haaretz investigation of the directive concluded further that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

In the past, Israeli commanders have been faced with situations where just one soldier is being taken captive. But that all changed on 7 October, as their army was faced with an unprecedented and unfamiliar situation in which hundreds of Israelis were being taken as prisoners of war to the densely populated Gaza Strip. 

In an interview with Haaretz on 15 November, reserve Israeli Air Force Colonel Nof Erez suggests that the military took the Hannibal Directive to a new level when their Apache helicopters arrived on the scene: 

“What we saw here was ‘mass Hannibal.’ There were many openings in the fence, thousands of people in many different vehicles, with hostages and without.”

A cover for genocide 

A formal probe into the killing of Liel Hetzroni and the nearly 1,200 other Israelis killed alongside her is unlikely to happen soon, if at all.

In the wake of Al-Aqsa Flood, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been heavily criticized for the intelligence failures that allowed for the Palestinian resistance's success. He has promised an investigation but refuses to undertake it until after the war.

Should a probe take place, it will likely find that Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders feel that a dead 12-year-old Israeli girl is better than an imprisoned 12-year-old Israeli girl.

Yet a sobering realization also emerges: a lifeless Liel Herzoni has potentially been exploited to rationalize the dehumanization of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians, including more than a million children, labeling them as "human animals" and providing a pretext for the ruthless, genocidal Israeli actions the world has witnessed on social media over the past six weeks. 

Since 7 October, Israel has indiscriminately carpet bombed Gaza, directing its attacks towards homes, mosques, churches, hospitals, and schools. This relentless assault has resulted in the tragic loss of over 14,000 Palestinian lives, more than 5,000 of them children. 

In the midst of this unprecedented onslaught, one is compelled to question: if Israel shows little regard for the lives of its own settler-citizens, what hope remains for the oppressed Palestinian population as they endure an offensive fueled by a rage-driven aggression? All of this “justified,” of course, by a “Hamas massacre” that may never have happened.

Gaza has become a moonscape in war. When the battles stop, many fear it will remain uninhabitable

BY ISABEL DEBRE

November 23, 2023

https://apnews.com/article/palestinians-gaza-israel-bombing-destruction-hamas-reconstruction-f299a28410b70ee05dd764df97d8d3a0

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells.

Nearly 1 million Palestinians have fled the north, including its urban center, Gaza City, as ground combat intensified. When the war ends, any relief will quickly be overshadowed by dread as displaced families come to terms with the scale of the calamity and what it means for their future.

Where would they live? Who would eventually run Gaza and pick up the pieces?

“I want to go home even if I have to sleep on the rubble of my house,” said Yousef Hammash, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council who fled the ruins of the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya for southern Gaza. “But I don’t see a future for my children here.”

The Israeli army’s use of powerful explosives in tightly packed residential areas — which Israel describes as the unavoidable outcome of Hamas using civilian sites as cover for its operations — has killed over 13,000 Palestinians and led to staggering destruction. Hamas denies the claim and accuses Israel of recklessly bombing civilians.

“When I left, I couldn’t tell which street or intersection I was passing,” said Mahmoud Jamal, a 31-year-old taxi driver who fled his northern hometown of Beit Hanoun this month. He described apartment buildings resembling open-air parking garages.

Israel’s bombardment has become one of the most intense air campaigns since World War II, said Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor. In the seven weeks since Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 attack, Israel unleashed more munitions than the United States did in any given year of its bombing campaign against the Islamic State group — a barrage the U.N describes as the deadliest urban campaign since World War II.

In Israel’s grainy thermal footage of airstrikes targeting Hamas tunnels, fireballs obliterate everything in sight. Videos by Hamas’ military wing feature fighters with rocked-propelled grenades trekking through smoke-filled streets. Fortified bulldozers have cleared land for Israeli tanks.

“The north of Gaza has been turned into one big ghost town,” said Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City who fled to Egypt last week. “People have nothing to return to.”

About half of all buildings across northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. With the U.N. estimating 1.7 million people are newly homeless, many wonder if Gaza will ever recover.

“You’ll end up having displaced people living in tents for a long time,” said Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a research group.

The war has knocked 27 of 35 hospitals across Gaza out of operation, according to the World Health Organization. The destruction of other critical infrastructure has consequences for years to come.

“Bakeries and grain mills have been destroyed, agriculture, water and sanitation facilities,” said Scott Paul, a senior humanitarian policy adviser for Oxfam America. “You need more than four walls and a ceiling for a place to be habitable, and in many cases people don’t even have that.”

Across the entire enclave, over 41,000 homes — 45% of Gaza’s total housing stock — are too destroyed to be lived in, according to the U.N.

“All I left at home was dead bodies and rubble,” said Mohammed al-Hadad, a 28-year-old party planner who fled Shati refugee camp along Gaza City’s shoreline. Shati sustained nearly 14,000 incidents of war damage — varying from an airstrike crater to a collapsed building — over just 0.5 square kilometers (0.2 square miles), the satellite data analysis shows.

Southern Gaza — where scarce food, water and fuel has spawned a humanitarian crisis — has been spared the heaviest firepower, according to the analysis.

But that’s changing. In the past two weeks, satellite data shows a spike in damage across the southern town of Khan Younis. Residents say the military has showered eastern parts of town with evacuation warnings.

Israel has urged those in southern Gaza to move again, toward a slice of territory called Muwasi along the coast. As of Thursday, Israel and Hamas were still working out the details of a four-day truce that would allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza and facilitate an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages.

Displaced Palestinians said four days won’t be enough.

“This is our nakba,” said 32-year-old journalist Tareq Hajjaj, referring to the mass displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — an exodus Palestinians call the “nakba,” or “catastrophe.”

Although publicly Palestinians reject the idea of being transferred outside Gaza, some privately admit they cannot stay, even after the war ends.

“We will never return home,” said Hajjaj, who fled his home in Shijaiyah in eastern Gaza City. “Those who stay here will face the most horrific situation they could imagine.”

The 2014 Israel-Hamas war leveled Shijaiyah, turning the neighborhood into fields of inert gray rubble. The $5 billion reconstruction effort there and across Gaza remains unfinished to this day.

“This time the scale of destruction is exponentially higher,” said Giulia Marini, international advocacy officer at Palestinian rights group Al Mezan. “It will take decades for Gaza to go back to where it was before.”

It remains unclear who will take responsibility for that task. At the recent security summit in Bahrain, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi vowed Arab states would not “come and clean the mess after Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the army to restore security, and American officials have pushed the seemingly unlikely scenario of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority taking over the strip.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, regarded by many Palestinians as weak, has dismissed that idea in the absence of Israeli efforts toward a two-state solution.

Despite the war’s horrors, Yasser Elsheshtawy, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, hopes reconstruction could offer an opportunity to turn Gaza’s ramshackle refugee camps and long deteriorating infrastructure into “something more habitable and equitable and humane,” including public parks and a revitalized seafront.

But Palestinians say it’s not only shattered infrastructure that requires rebuilding but a traumatized society.

“Gaza has become a very scary place,” Abusada said. “It will always be full of memories of death and destruction.”