The Gaza genocide may not be in the news, but it hasn’t stopped

Ghada Ageel

“All the world is a stage,” Shakespeare wrote. But on this stage today, there seems to be no place for one part of the world – Gaza. Instead, the lights are shining brightly on Donald Trump for his victory in the US presidential election and the Democrats for their defeat.

As the world’s attention focuses on American politics, the world media has stopped reporting that people are being exterminated in Gaza. Looking at media headlines, one would think the genocide has stopped, but it hasn’t.In recent weeks, the genocide has taken yet another wicked turn, with the Israeli army implementing what the Israeli media have called the “General’s Plan” – or the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza.

As a result, entire communities are vanishing in a campaign that transcends military goals, targeting the very existence of the Palestinian people.

The towns of Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya were traditionally sleepy villages once cherished for their agricultural bounty and quiet lifestyle. They were renowned for the sweetness of their strawberries and oranges and their sandy dunes full of grazing sheep and goats.

Nearby stood the behemoth of Jabaliya, home to the largest and most densely populated refugee camp among Gaza’s eight camps, with more than 200,000 residents. It is where the first Intifada began in 1987 after an Israeli driver mowed down and killed four Palestinian labourers.

All areas of northern Gaza have been subject to repeated destruction since the second Intifada. But today, they face a level of violence and devastation that are as unimaginable as they are unprecedented, “a genocide within a genocide” as described by Majed Bamya, a senior Palestinian diplomat at the United Nations. The mass death, mass displacement and mass destruction are carried out with shocking ferocity, rendering the entire north a wasteland.

At the start of this latest campaign, about 400,000 Palestinians remained in the north, down from a population of one million. These people were given an ultimatum by Israel to leave but no guarantees of safe passage or an alternative place to shelter. Many decided to stay. Those who have tried to leave have often been targeted by Israeli forces and killed in the streets. Others who have made it have been tormented along the way.

In one harrowing scene related by a witness to journalist Motasem Dalloul, who posted it on social media, Israeli soldiers separated children from their mothers and pushed them into a pit. Then an Israeli tank circled around the pit, covering the children in sand and terrorising them. Eventually, the soldiers started taking children from the pit and throwing them over to the women.

According to the post: “Whoever caught a child was ordered to carry him and move away quickly, with no guarantee that the child would be their own. Many mothers carried children who were not their own, and were forced to leave with them, leaving their own children in the hands of other mothers. This marked the beginning of a new chapter of suffering, with mothers searching for their children in the arms of other women, trying to calm the children they held until they found their real mothers.”

For those Palestinians who decided to stay or are unable to leave, the horror continues. To force them out or just to eliminate them, Israel has deployed a deliberate policy of forced starvation. Its forces are systemically blocking humanitarian aid from reaching the north, including food, bottled water and medical supplies.

To accelerate mass death, the Israeli army is also preventing medical staff and rescue teams from reaching the wounded and others in need of medical help. Those who manage to get to a hospital often discover upon arrival that it can provide neither medical care nor safety. Many succumb to their injuries due to a critical lack of medical supplies and personnel.