FLASH
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The "Generals' Plan" was presented as a means of using siege warfare and pressuring Hamas to release Israeli hostages.
Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives are at risk, raising questions about whether the Netanyahu government's ultimate war aims include territorial expansion.
The IDF says it is hitting Hamas militants, but Israel is suspected of implementing a plan it has officially distanced itself from, known as the "generals' plan."
The plan was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those who remained as combatants, thereby establishing a total siege.
The government stressed that the plan had not been approved, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups say the plan is being implemented on a daily basis, but with one major difference: Palestinians in northern Gaza are not were being given a real chance to evacuate. They are blocked.
"It is impossible for me to leave my house because I don't want to die there. There are many people who have lost their lives away from their homes, even in the south. Death is everywhere," said Ramadan, a 19-year-old in Beit Lahiya whose family has been displaced seven times during the 13-month war.
"There is a lot of shooting and all kinds of bombings. Rallies are bombed, shelters are bombed and schools are bombed. The area is crowded, so even a small bomb kills and injures many people. Even if there are people who want to go south, they can't because there is no safe road," continued Ramadan.
Israeli ground troops have surrounded three areas - Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the Jabalia refugee camp - in the northern Gaza province, which is estimated to be home to around 75,000 people. But the reality is that almost everyone trapped in the northern half of Gaza has no escape.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN aid agency Unrwa, called urgently for an immediate ceasefire, even for a few hours, to allow safe humanitarian passage for families wishing to leave the area and go to safer countries. safe".
But there was no response from the Israeli authorities, whose official position is not to deal with Unrwa (Gaza's largest aid agency).
Aid to northern Gaza has been severely limited since the war began on October 7 last year. The amount of aid coming in across the country has dropped to an all time low and almost nothing is reaching the north.
The UN Agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, reported that, as of Thursday, no bakeries or public kitchens in northern Gaza are functional, and only two of 20 health service points and two hospitals remain functional, albeit partially .
"With no electricity or fuel allowed since October 1, only two of eight water wells in the Jabalia refugee camp remain functional, both partially ," OCHA said.
In a statement issued yesterday, the heads of OCHA and 14 other UN agencies raised the alarm that the area was on the brink of an abyss.
"The situation in northern Gaza is apocalyptic. The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is in imminent danger of dying from disease, starvation and violence ," the appeal states.
The remaining health facilities inside the besieged area, Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals, have been targeted. The third wave of a polio vaccination campaign began on Saturday, but not for children trapped in the area.
Last week, Kamal Adwan was raided by the IDF, its doctors were arrested and then, after the soldiers withdrew, the hospital was bombed, destroying supplies recently delivered by the World Health Organization (WHO).
"Kamal Adwan Hospital has been reduced from a hospital serving hundreds of patients, with dozens of health workers," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general.
The situation is not the best at al-Awda hospital. Mohammad Salha, the director of the hospital, said there is a shortage of fuel, medicine, medical supplies and food.
"There are no ambulances. The people are bringing the wounded from the fields on donkeys and on their shoulders. Some are dying on the road because no one can take care of them or they are being led on the wrong path," Salha also said.
Beds in hospitals, maternity wards and other wards are full of patients injured by the bombings and only one surgeon remains. Al-Awda has no O-positive, O-negative, B-positive or B-negative blood units left, Salha added, "so if any case needs these blood types, they will die."
The "Generals' Plan" was presented as a means of using siege warfare and pressuring Hamas to release Israeli hostages. Retired General Giora Eiland argued that the siege was not a war crime if civilians were evacuated first and that the occupation would be temporary, as a way to put real pressure on Hamas.
"If Hamas understood that not returning the hostages would mean losing 35% of the strip's territory, it would have compromised long ago," Eiland wrote.
To those in the chaos of northern Gaza, this does not seem like a counter-insurgency measure.
"They kill all people without distinction, civilian or a fighter," said Ahlam al-Tlouli, a 33-year-old from Jabalia camp. He stated that his father, stepmother and sister were killed by snipers and his brother was missing. "We had the opportunity to go south, but we refused because we know that the bombings are everywhere and there is no safe place," concluded the 33-year-old.
The ferocity of what is happening in northern Gaza has added to suspicions that there are wider objectives at play. Idan Landau, professor of linguistics and political commentator of Tel Aviv University, wrote in his blog: Don't die a fool, that the ultimate goal of the plan is not military, but political - the restoration of Gaza.
'There is no alternative': Israel's ban on UNrwa's vital services will be a disaster for Gaza. / Adapted "Pamphlet", from "The Guardian".
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