Israeli bombs, which in recent days have not given truce to the hungry and exhausted inhabitants of Gaza, have continued to fall this Friday to the razed Palestinian territory. New Israeli attacks have killed at least 100 people in the north of the Strip, according to civil defense services of the territory, a few hours before the president of the United States, Donald Trump, concluded a visit to the Middle East that has left Israel out. “We are looking at Gaza, we will take care of that. Many people are starving,” Trump said before leaving United Arab Emirates, according to Reuters. Then he concluded: “Many bad things are happening (in the strip). However, the president has not alluded to the bombings or mentioned to Israel.
“The bombings of tonight have been terrible, violent,” explains a Palestine from the Gazatí capital that is identified with its first name, Fidaa. “The bombs fell everywhere throughout the night,” he says. The woman confirms that the attacks have focused, as the Civil Defense services, in the town of Beit Lahia, in the one already reduced to Yabalia refugee camp and northeast of the territory.
The air attack on Beit Lahia, near the northern border of the strip with Israel, has been accompanied by an incursion of Israeli terrestrial forces, according to the official Palestinian Wafa agency, which ensures that several civilians were kidnapped by the military in a reception center for displaced. According to the Catarí television network to Araby, the Israeli tanks have advanced early this Friday in what the media defines as “limited incursions” in three points of the north of the Gaza Strip, East Yabalia, the north of Beit Lahiya and a third area in northwest Gaza.
Only in Beit Lahia, rescue teams and local volunteers have recovered 30 bodies, according to Wafa’s local correspondent. MORE DOORS FOLLOW Under the rubble, since ambulances cannot reach the bombardment areas due to the destruction of roads. Palestinian civilians try to evacuate the victims on foot or in cars thrown by animals, always according to that source. The Palestine agency ensures that other Gazati have died in bombing of other locations, such as the Southern Jan Yunis.
The resurgence of these attacks that, according to Palestinian media, include artillery fire, aerial bombing and from military vessels could be the prelude to a new land offensive in Gaza that allows Israel to “conquer” and retain new areas of its territory by military force, as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu announced by military force.
That announcement has come when the situation of the Gazati is so catastrophic that even the most strong ally of Israel, United States, has begun to show a relative concern, two and a half months after the Benjamin Netanyahu government totally banned the entry of food and other basic supplies in the strip.
Before Trump’s statements, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had already said the eve that his country is “worried” about what happens in Gaza. Of course, without departing an apex of the official Israeli speech that Washington usually reproduces and that attributes all the responsibility of that situation to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group whose militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 251 on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli response to that attack was to trigger Gaza’s offensive and military invasion that already lasts 19 months and that this week has crossed the sinister threshold of 53,000 dead, most women and children. The International Court of Justice is investigating as possible genocide what humanitarian organizations define as an unjustifiable “collective punishment.”
While the bombings continue this Friday, the dead number in the attacks on the eve has increased until reaching 136, according to the Ministry of Health of the Strip. Since last Tuesday, Israeli attacks have killed more than 300 people in Gaza, most women and children, a figure that is probably lower than the real one, since testimonies such as those mentioned by the Palestinian agency indicate that many victims are still under the rubble.
Exhausted and hungry
The signals that point to Netanyahu could launch in the next few days or hours that new land offensive over Gaza have multiplied in recent days. Three days before that announcement on day 5, the Israeli army began to call rows to thousands of reservists, a necessary reinforcement to expand that nth attack that, if produced, will entail a new massive displacement of Palestinians, on this occasion to an area reduced to the south of the second city of Gaza, Jan Yunis, one of the most punished localities this week. Only more than 50 people died on Thursday, much again women and children.
Most Gazatis are now north of that town. During the ephemeral high fire with Hamas, which Israel broke on March 18 so as not to have to negotiate the end of their aggression to Gaza, many Gazati had returned to their homes, especially to the capital, city of Gaza, where almost 600,000 of the more than 2.2 million Palestinians of the territory resided before October 2023.
In that first month of the Israeli offensive, the army ordered the eviction of the northern half of the enclave, before launching its land campaign and while bombing without respite, as happens these days, to the population. Then they have followed innumerable displacements. There are Gazatis who have fled more than a dozen times in these 19 months.
Testimonies collected this Friday by Palestinian media indicate that this nth mass displacement of civilians – which presages the entry of more terrestrial troops – has already begun. Tonight, according to those media, thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes again in the middle of total darkness – it is cut by the electric fluid – without food or water. Others, as a journalist from Associated Press has contained, have fled from the Yabalia refugee camp and Beit Lahia, the scene of several of the morning bombings.
The difference between the first mass displacement of the population of Gaza in October 2023, which followed it and the one that could have begun is, however, abysmal. After 19 months of bombing, land invasion, successive flights, more than 53,000 dead and 120,000 injured, the Palestinians of the strip are exhausted.
And hungry. Families such as Fidaa only have “flour and rice” to eat, says this mother of six children. And even that is running out. Others do not even have those sources of carbohydrates – proteins are an inaccessible luxury. Since Israel imposed its total blockade of humanitarian aid, on March 2, 57 children have died from malnutrition, according to the Ministry of Health of the Strip.
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