Israel has deliberately made northern Gaza unlivable, Palestinians say. What's next?
Israel's offensive has created dire conditions across Gaza, but aid groups say the month-long siege of northern cities has made the area unlivable.
And they accuse the Israeli army of creating hunger and destruction to ensure that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will never return to their homes.
At the Yarmouk stadium in Gaza City, which has been turned into a sea of tents for those fleeing the besieged northern areas, every videographer working for CBC News spoke to described the brutal conditions.
“It's not just the war that makes us weak. It's the famine that hurts us the most,” said Hashem Yehia el Laham, a 63-year-old mother of seven children.
“Today, people are dying of hunger, there is no food, no water, no goods and no houses,” he said. “This is genocide.”
On October 5, the Israel Defense Forces surrounded the northern town of Jabalia, alleging that Hamas forces had gathered and were using the town as a base, and that the IDF needed to move in to disperse them.
In the following days, the IDF told residents to move south, as they worked to destroy many roads leading out of the area. Every night, the IDF attacked the communities there from the air.
The extent of civilian casualties during the ongoing operation is unclear. But last week, in just two days, UNICEF said that Israeli bombings in Jabalia killed 50 Palestinian children.
Damaged infrastructure
Dr. Abu Mughaiseb, deputy medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, told CBC News that he receives reports every day from his staff about patients fleeing towns like Jabalia.
“When you see that the infrastructure is being destroyed on purpose…. I mean [attacks on] infrastructure, water pipes, not Hamas, I'm sorry to say this. The sanitation system is not Hamas, the hospitals are not Hamas … Everything is destroyed. It means that you don't want people to be able to live,” said Mughiseb.
In a statement, MSF said that in the first three weeks of October, Israel made only six percent of the movement of collective aid from the south – where most of the limited aid goes – to the north of Gaza.
The group said the shortage of life-support supplies made it impossible to provide humanitarian aid, as the situation worsened.
The latest images posted on X by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) show hundreds of displaced civilians lined up together, carrying their small belongings and leaving the Jabalia refugee camp, under the orders of the IDF. Hear from two people who spoke to a CBC News freelance reporter in Gaza about what it was like to be forcibly displaced.
Israeli human rights organizations were the first to raise the alarm that the IDF appeared to be using the provisions of the “General Plan”.
Submitted to the Israeli Knesset in September by a group of retired IDF generals and officers, the plan proposed a series of extreme measures to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages taken on Oct. 7, 2023. An estimated 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
The plan, human rights groups say, calls for a complete blockade of northern Gaza, including halting aid deliveries, and the forced depopulation and possible starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
The IDF insists it is 'reducing' casualties
In an emailed statement to CBC News, it is “taking a number of steps to reduce civilian casualties, including warning people and removing non-combatants from combat zones.” The statement stressed that preventing Palestinians from returning to their homes “does not reflect the IDF's intentions” and will allow humanitarian aid to the north.
Aid groups trying to work in the area, however, paint a grim picture of Israel's actions.
Earlier this week, 15 United Nations and aid agencies described the situation in northern Gaza as “a massacre.” They accuse the Israeli government of denying or withholding “basic aid” and “life-saving supplies” to Palestinians who will not or cannot leave the area.
All northerners are “at risk of death, disease, hunger and violence,” their statement said.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, recently returned from a long trip to Gaza and told BBC Radio that the situation in the north is like “a siege within a siege.”
“This is not self-defense,” he said. “This is the destruction of Gaza.”
Questions about Gaza resettlement
In the past two weeks, US officials have reportedly pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to confirm that his forces are not besieging the north – assurances Netanyahu has so far refused to give publicly.
The left-leaning Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz described the possible scenario in an article titled, “If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is.”
The UN considers ethnic cleansing to be a possible component of crimes against humanity, which may fall under the scope of the Genocide Convention.
The Israeli NGO Peace Now also said this week that evidence it has seen has convinced its members that “horrific crimes are being committed in Gaza.”
Peace Now says it believes the ultimate goal is to expel the Palestinian people and establish Jewish settlements in that area – something that would be illegal under international law.
For social advocates, Israel's behavior in northern Gaza represents another example of how the Netanyahu government has been allowed to escape accountability.
“All we're seeing is a lot of wringing of hands by the member states of the United Nations,” Diana Buttu, a Canadian Palestinian human rights lawyer based in Haifa, Israel, told CBC News. “But we really don't see any international action to stop Israel.”
'We see that Netanyahu has a plan'
Many members of Jewish settlement groups and political parties have openly called for the confiscation of Palestinian land in Gaza and the occupied West Bank as punishment for Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, which killed an estimated 1,200 people.
Last month, key groups, including dozens of Knesset members from Netanyahu's ruling party and several powerful cabinet members, held a second conference to discuss taking parts of Gaza to build Israeli settlements. They envision Jewish settlements the length and breadth of Gaza, minus the current Palestinian population.
A kitchen that uses donations and external funding from international organizations distributed food on Sunday to hundreds of Palestinians waiting with pots and buckets in hand, in Al-Mawasi neighborhood, west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
“We see that Netanyahu has a plan,” said Buttu. “[The government is] talking about the re-establishment of settlements in the north. They have announced that they have divided Gaza in two, and I expect that they will build settlements again. “
Before 2005, Israeli settlers had created more than 20 settlements in Gaza, but Israel demolished them and relocated the Jews.
Eran Etzion, Israel's former top security official, said that while Netanyahu has publicly rejected Gaza's resettlement, he has done little to stop members of his party from pursuing their goals, particularly Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar. Ben-Gvir.
“After the removal of the [Hamas] terrorists and the evacuation of civilians will be the restoration of settlements, according to Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,” Etzion told CBC News.
A muted reaction in Israel
He says that Netanyahu needs the support of those far-right ministers to stay in power, but he also needs the military support of the US, which has publicly said it opposes Jewish settlements in Gaza.
“What is Netanyahu's real plan for northern Gaza? It's hard to say. [His] “The real strategy is to continue the war to continue his rule,” said Etzion.
Despite human rights groups raising the alarm over the IDF's actions in northern Gaza, Israel's response to allegations of ethnic cleansing has been muted.
“There is no one [media] spread so there is no understanding of what is really happening. That is number one,” said Etzion.
“Number two, there is a very deep sense [that the military action] it's worth it… [The thinking is,] we have to defend ourselves and to defend ourselves, we need to take military action … and there will be innocent civilians who may be harmed in the process.”
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