Jabalia Archives - CrossFireArarbia

Gaza: Back to The Killing Fields

CrossFireArabia
March 27, 2025

Since resuming its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on 18 March, Israel has been killing at least 103 Palestinians and injuring 223 more every day. Additionally, it never stopped employing other genocide tactics prior to 18 March, and has imposed lethal living conditions since 7 October 2023 designed to eradicate the Palestinian population in the Strip, including starvation and the tightening of its illegalblockade.

Since dawn on Tuesday 18 March, the Israeli occupation forces have killed 830 Palestinians and injured an additional 1,787 in hundreds of airstrikes, artillery shellings, and fire from military vehicles and drones throughout the Gaza Strip, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.

The Israeli occupation army also continues to bomb homes with occupants still inside, killing large numbers of people. The most recent incident occurred at dawn today (26 March) in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, when the Israeli army bombed the al-Najjar family’s home and killed eight Palestinians, including five children.

Without any military justification, the Israeli occupation army has committed the crime of targeting homes—or what is left of them—every day, including targeting tents where civilians have sought safety following almost 18 months of genocide. This is a clear component of a systematic Israeli policy that aims to kill Palestinians, ruin their lives, and impose a horrific reality that makes it impossible to survive.

Two Palestinian journalists were killed by Israel in two different, deliberate attacks on 24 March. Palestine Today TV journalist Mohammed Mansour was killed and his wife was gravely injured when Israeli planes bombed his home in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Journalist Hossam Shabat, who worked as a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher, was killed when his car was targeted.

The Israeli army has also recently killed civilian government officials in administrative positions, including supervisors working in the education sector. The victims include Jihad al-Agha, the head of the Supervision Department at the East Khan Yunis Education Directorate, who was killed in an airstrike targeting his home on 23 March along with his wife, child, and three daughters, and Manar Abu Khater, the Director of Education in East Khan Yunis, who was killed along with two of his sons in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Yunis on 24 March.

An individual does not lose their civilian status or become a legitimate target for attack simply because they hold an administrative or civilian position within a governmental or organisational structure, unless they are actively and consistently engaged in hostilities, which was not the case in the situation of al-Agha or Abu Khater.

The Israeli occupation forces have also been invading the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood in the west of Rafah since 23 March, committing heinous crimes, including unjustified field killings.

According to testimonies given to Euro-MedMonitor, the occupation forces shot civilians while they were trying to escape, leaving their bodies lying in the streets. Around 50,000 civilians are still confined to a small geographic area in Rafah while Israeli military activities, such as shelling, bombing, and raids, are taking place around them.

For the fourth day in a row, the Israeli occupation army has kept the whereabouts of 15 ambulance and civil defence workers in Rafah a secret, raising concerns that they might be killed, subjected to torture, or otherwise mistreated. Since these people are humanitarian personnel protected by the Geneva Conventions, their continued detention without formal notification of their whereabouts or health status is a serious violation of international law and a full-fledged crime of enforced disappearance.

For the roughly 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip who now face Israeli policies of daily killings and starvation due to the continued closure of the border crossings and the denial of aid and medicine, Israel’s return to widespread killing and the systematic destruction of buildings and property imposes a catastrophic reality on their lives. These acts of genocide are similar to those experienced by residents of the Strip for 15 months before the January 2025 ceasefire. Israel’s recent intensification of its genocide, demonstrated by the increasingly lethal living conditions imposed on Palestinians, will result in slow and gradual death without international intervention.

The public declarations made by Israeli officials regarding their acceptance of United States President Donald Trump’s plan to drive Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and the proposal of its execution are alarming. Following the destruction of the vast majority of homes, shelters, and buildings in the Strip by the Israeli occupation army, hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee yet again, without any shelter, under the pretense of evacuation orders for residents’ “own safety” and ongoing intense aerial bombardment.

These statements represent a reality that is being played out on the ground through mass killings and the imposition of intolerable living conditions, rather than just threats. The US gives political and military cover for the continuation of Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip by providing financial and military aid, blocking international efforts to hold Israel accountable, and interfering to stop the issuance or implementation of UN resolutions that could stop these violations. Israel’s actions are carried out with the direct support and acquiescence of the US, making the US a major actor in the ongoing crime of genocide.

In just one week, over 200,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been forced to leave their homes, and thousands more are preparing to leave by looking for temporary housing. Meanwhile, basic services and security remain unavailable across the Strip.

The international community’s virtual silence has incited Israel to carry out its crimes, including killing and injuring people without consequence and attacking international organizations and UN headquarters in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s complete disregard for the rules of international law—rules that give UN headquarters and employees special protection—alone is an international crime of the highest calibre that needs to be addressed right away.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfill their legal obligations and act quickly to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian civilians there must be protected in every way possible; the blockade must be lifted completely and immediately; the movement of people and goods must be unhindered; all crossings must be opened without arbitrary conditions; and effective measures must be taken to protect Palestinians from the slow killing and forced displacement plans of Israel and the United States. An urgent international response is needed to appropriately address the population’s immediate needs including the provision of adequate temporary housing.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

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‘We Will Rebuild’

CrossFireArabia
February 16, 2025

In front of my destroyed home in Gaza

This bright morning, filled with hope, I stood before my ruined house and shouted with all my heart: I swear to you, we will rebuild it stronger than ever. I swear to you, our homeland will bloom again. I swear to you, the sun of freedom is on its way.

News

MSF: Gaza Uninhabitable, Turned to Rubble, People No Longer Recognize Their Homes

CrossFireArabia
February 15, 2025

While the ceasefire in Gaza, Palestine, was implemented on 19 January, after 15 months of all-out war on the people trapped there, all components of society have been destroyed making it almost uninhabitable. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are now able to reach the north of the Strip – which was previously besieged by Israeli forces – to assess the medical and humanitarian needs. The situation is appalling; there is nothing left.

Our colleagues no longer recognise their own neighbourhoods, hospitals have been razed, and people are settling in the rubble of their homes with no other shelter to face the winter conditions. Caroline Seguin, MSF’s emergency coordinator, shares insights and photos from the ground.

1. What is the situation in north Gaza?

In the North Governorate, the level of destruction is total, it’s a flat land. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Our Palestinian colleagues are no longer able to recognise their own neighbourhoods, some were in shock, others literally collapsed.

In Gaza City we were already shocked by the level of destruction, but then we went north to Jabalia, we couldn’t say a word. There is nothing there anymore. Only ruins and the smell of death everywhere because of the dead bodies still trapped under the rubble.

2. What is the state of the health system?

There is no health system anymore in the northern part of the Strip. Kamal Adwan hospital has been razed, while Al Shifa, Al Awda and Indonesian hospitals are seriously damaged and only partially functioning. We were utterly shocked to observe that in Indonesian hospital every medical machine seemed to have been deliberately destroyed; they were smashed to pieces, one by one, to make sure no medical care could be provided anymore. You have to ask, what is the motivation of such action? These machines are made to save people’s lives, mothers, fathers, children. It’s devastating to see the state of these hospitals.

The provision of medical care is largely insufficient compared to the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people living in the area. For example, between North Governorate and Gaza city, there are only six paediatric intensive care beds compared to 150 before the war and the number of patient hospital beds has plummeted from 2,000 to 350.

3. Are supplies reaching north Gaza?

The flow of vital supplies has improved since the ceasefire, but the level of needs is so high that people are still lacking basic items. The need for food, water, tents and shelter materials in this area remains critical. Water shortages are a real challenge given the high level of damage to water facilities and because they are in inaccessible locations in the buffer zones.

Our teams have started water trucking activities in Jabalia and Beit Hanoun and they repair damaged boreholes, but this is a temporary solution and is not sufficient for the massive needs. The problem is that because of the war we have located our activities in the south and it now takes time to redeploy them to the north.

After four weeks since the implementation of the ceasefire, we are still not seeing the massive scale up of humanitarian aid needed in northern Gaza. The humanitarian community is failing to provide vital services to a population in dire need of humanitarian and medical support. Both Israel and international actors need to urgently ensure the delivery of vital supplies such as shelter and food and to increase the capacities for its distribution.

4. What is the reality for people in northern Gaza today?

People are living in dire conditions. They try to settle as best they can on the ruins of their houses but it’s extremely difficult. The winter weather means people have to face very cold temperatures, heavy rains and strong winds, and they don’t even have walls around them to protect themselves. They don’t have access to healthcare, decent housing or water.

However, the conditions they had to face during the 15 months of war, being displaced and living in tents were even worse. After this hardship, people need to reunite with their loved ones and want to stay and rebuild their lives. Many of them have no intention of leaving. It is essential to ensure consistent, safe, and secure delivery of humanitarian assistance to people who have suffered unimaginable trauma.

Reliefweb

Analyses

Israel Must Not Be Allowed to End UNRWA

CrossFireArabia
February 1, 2025

As Israel shuts down UNRWA in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the move serves a strategic purpose: Undermining Palestinian national liberation and the right of return.

By Sara Troian

This week, Israel’s ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) takes effect, cutting off its services in its two main areas of operation in Palestine; namely, Gaza and, the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem.

Established in 1949 in response to the Nakba, UNRWA was meant to provide humanitarian aid and protect Palestinian rights until a just resolution to the refugee crisis was achieved. Central to this is the Palestinians’ inalienable right of return, which Israel has consistently denied.

Beyond the 5.4 million UNRWA-registered refugees, at least five million more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced by Zionist colonisation. The right of return belongs to them all.

Calculated attack on Palestine

In October, the Israeli parliament passed two bills targeting UNRWA. The first prohibits the agency from operating within the 1948 borders. The second bars Israeli officials from engaging with UNRWA in any capacity.

These laws are designed to remove Palestinian rights to a homeland and further weaken the agency that serves them. They also mark the culmination of decades of attacks by Israel and its allies seeking to dismantle UNRWA as part of the broader Zionist settler-colonial project.

For the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, this will cripple efforts to rebuild the warmth of their homes and the safety of life-sustaining infrastructure vaporised by Israel’s annihilatory violence. This will further obstruct the restoration of life and the healing from nights spent beneath skies ablaze with fire and days suspended between slow and quick death in dwindling food rations.

In the West Bank and east Jerusalem, 49,000 students will be forced out of UNRWA schools, and will be left either without education or, in Jerusalem, to the whims of Israeli curricula that distort, dehumanise and erase their history and culture.

Nearly a million Palestinians will be denied medical care. The loss of thousands of jobs will further drive Palestinians into economic precarity, deepening the cycle of engineered de-development.

Political goals and neoimperial strategies

The dismantling of UNRWA is not just a humanitarian crisis; it is a political manoeuvre. Zionism has slated Palestine for erasure as part of a broader regional strategy. In this imperialist framework, the US and EU finance oppression, Israel enforces it, the local bourgeoisie complies, and the UN provides a thin veil of legitimacy.

The timing of the ban aligns with Israel’s shifting tactics. While the intensity of genocide in Gaza has momentarily slowed, violence in the West Bank—particularly in Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps—has escalated. Zionist forces use airstrikes to destroy life-sustaining infrastructure, obstruct healthcare, and drive mass evacuations, all while continuing the daily expansion of settlements and mass arrests.

Palestinians today face the same oppressive forces as during the 1936-39 revolt: self-serving leadership, Arab regime complicity, and Zionist-imperialist domination.

At the core of these dynamics is Palestinian refugeehood—a fundamental consequence of Zionist colonisation. Since 1948, Israel has displaced over 10 million Palestinians, most, descendants from the Nakba, severing them from their homeland.

The right of return threatens Zionism’s foundation because it challenges Israel’s colonial reality, built on destruction and displacement.

Israel's dismantling of UNRWA isn’t just about aid—it’s a calculated war on Palestinian return

Opinion I Sara Troian
— TRT World (@trtworld) January 30, 2025

The Zionist-Western axis‘ attacks on UNRWA aim to depoliticise its mandate, while crystallising Palestinian refugeehood into a permanent humanitarian crisis to be managed.

While the status of Palestinian refugees and their right of return cannot be solely determined by UNRWA or any international agency–as it is a condition that stems from the implementation of Zionist settler-colonialism– these attacks weaken the agency’s ability to advance Palestinian political claims within the UN.

Moreover, heavy reliance on donor-driven funding has transformed the agency into a semi-corporate entity, dependent on fluctuating foreign funding, further undermining its capacity to support Palestinian political aspirations. This, however, is a symptom of the neoliberal exploitation that, disguised as humanitarianism, treats Palestinians as disposable and expendable subjects to Western imperial expansion.

Palestinians are therefore held hostage by a global structure designed to rob them of their autonomy. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that all senior UNRWA officials are non-Palestinian, making decisions for 5.4 million refugees, yet often against their quest for national liberation.

Integration?

Meanwhile, US imperialism has dealt another blow by freezing all USAID projects–except for those in Israel and Egypt– and halting military aid to all countries except Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

The suspension of USAID serves as a coercive tool to absorb the thousands of Palestinians whom Israel’s brutal campaign aims to expel in the coming months. For example, in Jordan, where USAID plays a critical role in supporting public services like healthcare, justice, and water supply, the freeze pressures the Kingdom to participate in this plan, which has been in the works for years, but only recently the US has openly encouraged Egypt and Jordan to endorse a new wave of forced Palestinian exile.

In recent years, experts and international bodies have proposed integration into host countries or resettlement in third countries as pathways to securing a modicum of rights and emancipation for Palestinians who have been forcefully encamped for over seven decades.

While access to civil and political rights in places of exile is crucial, these proposals must not be weaponised to suppress the central struggle for return. At this moment, such narratives risk legitimising forced expulsions, under the guise of legal solutions, erasing Palestinian claims from the global agenda.

Access to rights must never serve as a strategy to downplay or marginalise the central struggle for return and efforts to secure it. At this moment, it is crucial to recognise how such narratives and solutions can be exploited—either to hinder Palestinian survival amid genocide or to suppress resistance against forced displacement.

Türkiye condemns Israel’s ban on UNRWA in occupied Palestinian territories

Many Palestinians in the West Bank already hold Jordanian citizenship—remnants of the Nakba and Oslo. If Palestinians will be forced to relocate to Jordan or third states under the pretense of naturalisation and resettlement, this strategy, framed as a legal solution, will ultimately legitimise further forced expulsions and erase their right of return from the international agenda.

This will facilitate the elimination of 10 million Palestinians as a political force challenging Western imperial expansion.

The time for return

A just solution cannot emerge from the very institutions and structures that have perpetuated Palestinians’ plight and the plundering of their land for decades. Such alternatives merely rebrand subjugation of the people.

The answer lies in the steadfastness of Palestinians themselves. Over the past 16 months, in defiance of over a century of disenfranchisement and exile, including 480 days of settler-colonial erasure, Palestinians alone have transformed return from a distant dream, into a tangible reality.

As displaced Palestinian in Gaza flood back towards their destroyed homes in Gaza City, Beit Lahiya, Jabaliya, and Beit Hanoun, this marks only the beginning of their Great March of Return. Eighty percent of Gaza’s population descends from those expelled from 247 villages in central-southern Palestine through waves of Zionist massacres.

This must be the guiding principle for any just and lasting solution—one that restores Palestinians to their homes, land, and dignity from which they have been forcibly expelled for far too long.

SOURCE: TRT World

Sara Troian

Sara Troian is a Hume PhD Scholar in the Department of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University. Her PhD research examines the tension between international law and settler-colonialism in Palestine.

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Hamas Hands Over 3 Israeli Prisoners Amidst Flurry of People

CrossFireArabia
January 30, 2025

The Qassam Brigades handed over to the Red Cross, Thursday, the captive soldier Agam Berger, from the rubble of Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, as part of the third batch of prisoner exchange according to the ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, the Al-Quds Brigades handed over the two prisoners it is holding, Arbel Yehud and Gadi Moses, to the Red Cross with their handover from in front of destroyed house of the late Yahya Sinwar’s in Khan Yunis.

The Qassam Brigades released the captive soldier Berger from Al-Razan Square in Jabalia camp, which witnessed major Israeli bombing and destruction as part of the bloody military operation launched by the occupation army, during which a large number of Israeli soldiers were killed and wounded.

The Israeli army announced it received soldier Agam Berger, saying she had arrived at the initial reception point in the so-called Gaza envelope and met with her family members.

The Al-Quds Brigades fighters were deployed in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, where the ceremony for the release of Yehud and Moses took place, while the Israeli occupation army radio said the Jihad movement was trying to “exploit the release of the two prisoners to show its strength in Khan Yunis.”

Hamas confirmed that “the large gathering of the masses of our Palestinian people in the two prisoner handover operations in the city of Khan Yunis and the Jabalia camp, amidst the rubble left by the Zionist fascism in the two areas, is a message of determination, strength and defiance that it raises in the face of this barbaric occupier, meaning that our people will remain on their land, and are determined to achieve their project of liberation, return and self-determination.”

The movement said in a press statement received by Quds Press, Thursday: “The Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian resistance prove once again their high ability to control the scene through organized handover operations that have dazzled the world, and after humiliating the criminal enemy army in the sands of Gaza.”

It pointed out “what happened today confirms the unity of the Qassam Brigades, the Al-Quds Brigades and the resistance forces in the field and in managing the exchange operation that took place in front of the house of the martyr leader Abu Ibrahim.”

It stressed “the diversity of the implementation of the release operations of Israeli prisoners from different areas of the Strip, in the steadfast Jabalia, in Khan Yunis and in front of the house of the martyr leader Yahya Sinwar, is a message to the world that our people will remain on their land, will continue the resistance, and are determined to liberate and return.”