The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said in a press release on Tuesday that Israel was carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza and called on the world to stop it.
“The magnitude of the crimes Israel is currently committing in the northern Gaza Strip in its campaign to empty it of however many residents are left is impossible to describe, not just because hundreds of thousands of people enduring starvation, disease without access to medical care and incessant bombardments and gunfire defies comprehension, but because Israel has cut them off from the world,” the group said.
Israel began its renewed assault on northern Gaza at the beginning of the month and ordered the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Palestinian civilians living in the area to head south. “Ever since Israel’s current operation in the northern Gaza Strip began on 5 October, the area has been under a near complete siege, relentlessly pummeled by the military,” B’Tselem said.
Gaza’s government media office said Wednesday that at least 770 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza in 19 days, dozens more are missing, and over 200 have been “kidnapped” by Israeli forces. According to B’Tselem’s press release, over 50,000 Palestinians have been forced out of their homes.
The Israeli military is attempting to carry out an ethnic cleansing campaign known as the “general’s plan,” which calls for a mass evacuation of civilians and the killing of anyone who stays behind, whether by military action or a starvation blockade.
B’Tselem said, “Other than in the most exceptional cases, Israel does not allow humanitarian aid or emergency crews in, taking advantage of the fact that global attention has been diverted to irreversibly change reality on the ground.”
The rights group said Israel was “committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war” and called on the world to take action. “Without immediate, decisive action from the international community, without using every tool available – political, legal, economic – the mass killings in the northern Gaza Strip will continue, and the suffering of its besieged civilians will grow,” B’Tselem said.
The only country with the power to stop Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza is the US since it supplies Israel with most of its weapons. A senior Israeli Air Force officer recently acknowledged that without US support, Israel couldn’t sustain its military operations in Gaza for more than a few months.
On October 14, the Biden administration sent a letter to Israeli officials that gave them 30 days to allow more aid into Gaza, a deadline that falls after the November 5 presidential election. The letter implies that if the US demands aren’t met, the US might consider enforcing foreign assistance laws, but it doesn’t explicitly say the US would cut off weapons shipments. The State Department also declined to say if there would be any consequences for Israel.
