In Gaza, Israel seems intent on violating every single provision of the Geneva Conventions governing the rules of war. It is bombing homes, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and water and electricity infrastructures. It has gone even further and now seems to be pursuing a policy of deliberately starving the population by blocking aid in the form of food and water from entering the region.
Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous write in the invaluable site Drop Site News that Israel has turned Gaza into a killing cage, a war of extermination.
With the full support of the Biden administration, Israel is waging a merciless war of extermination against the 400,000 Palestinians remaining in the northern Gaza Strip as the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering a plan to annex the territory. No food, water, or medicine have entered the north since October 1 as Israeli forces have conducted a campaign of intense airstrikes and ground forces have invaded and encircled much of the area.
As it orders residents to flee the north, Israel has intensified its attacks on Deir Al-Balah, a city in central Gaza that has not suffered the vast scale of destruction unleashed by Israel in other parts of the Strip. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to the city in recent months. In the early morning hours of Monday, Israel bombed a crowded tent encampment for displaced people on the grounds of Al Aqsa hospital, engulfing civilians in a massive ring of fire. Video from the scene showed patients—some of whom appeared to be in beds attached to IV cords—being burned alive as others in the encampment tried desperately to extinguish the fires with small buckets of water.
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