Today marks 100 days since Israel initiated its assault on Gaza. In that period, the death toll among Palestinians living in Gaza has risen to nearly 24,000 as Israel unleashed more than 65,000 tonnes of bombs on the besieged enclave and its population of 2.3 million people trapped in less than 400 sq kilometers, Al Jazeera reported.
On October 7, when Hamas forces retaliated to decades long occupational crimes committed by Israel, Israel began a vicious bombing campaign and tightened what was already a crushing siege that Gaza has been under since 2007.
“We are fighting human animals,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9, announcing that food, water, fuel, medicines, everything, would not be permitted into Gaza.
Since then, defying condemnations and pleas from international organizations and rights groups, Israel has continued an indiscriminate campaign that has sown terror among the people in Gaza, killed entire multi-generation families, and destroyed huge swaths of urban and rural lands.
Israel now stands accused by South Africa of carrying out genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in the Netherlands. Speaking on Saturday, after presentations by both sides were done at the ICJ, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anyone else.” His “axis” comment referred to Iran and its allied groups.
Alternating between claims that this level of killing and destruction is somehow justified in the name of self-defense and statements that it is doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties, Israel has often strayed far from its statements about the different aspects of this war on Gaza.
Israel’s messaging on civilians has confused observers. While claiming on the one hand to not be targeting civilians, it has also pushed a narrative that paints every civilian in Gaza as an armed member of Hamas.
Israel has dropped bombs on refugee camps, hospitals, schools – and entire neighborhoods, all of which have been destroyed.
Israel claims that its system of “warning” people it is about to bomb is adequate and absolves it from blame. The system in question is air-dropping leaflets on neighbourhoods that tell residents their homes are about to be bombed, giving them anything from hours to a day or two to completely abandon their homes and lives and leave – on foot, as fleeing civilians have been banned from using vehicles from the early days of the war on Gaza.
