Avalon Member
Re: Israel vs Palestine/Lebanon/Iran/Yemen/Syria: a New Middle East War
Photos of the dead Palestinian prisoner with zip tie on his arm after he was run over.
The Euro-Med Monitor teams have documented Israeli bulldozers running over one of the Palestinian prisoners who was arrested in the Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza today.
https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1763303181008703614
https://x.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1763632939407921325
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/w...=ap_3vuaujhaxu
Images suggest Israel ran over Palestinian detainee with armoured vehicle
Israeli forces in Gaza destroyed the body of a Palestinian man by running him over either using a tank or a bulldozer, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said on Friday.
The man is believed to have been in Israeli custody at the time or as of recently. It is not clear if he was alive or dead at the time he was run over.
Images of the body following the incident, which happened on Thursday in the Zeitoun area on the Salah al-Din road near the Star factory south of Gaza City, were shared online by the human rights group and have been reviewed by Middle East Eye.
They show the victim's body completely crushed, with no means of identifying him.
A zip tie can be seen on the remaining hand, equipment commonly used by Israeli forces in Gaza to detain Palestinians.
Euro-Med spokesperson Muhammad Shehada said on X that witnesses told the group that the man was detained and interrogated by Israeli forces "before he was driven over by an armored vehicle".
The Israeli military told Middle East Eye it was "checking" the incident.
Ramy Abdu, chairman of the rights group, told MEE they believe thousands of Palestinians have been run over by Israeli tanks.
Most, he said, were in northern Gaza, in places such as Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Zeitoun, as well as along the coastal al-Rashid road that Palestinians have used to flee.
"The brutality of Israel in this war has no limits," Abdu told MEE.
"The Israeli leaders themselves have adopted a strategy of demonising and dehumanising Palestinians, which means that even burning them alive is allowed and you see even the Israeli soldiers are competing with each other to publish stories on social media about the level of brutality they are willing to inflict on Palestinians."
Far-right Israeli Telegram channels have lauded the images of the crushed man in Gaza.
"It shows that they are celebrating even the wrongdoing and the crimes carried out by their soldiers," Abdu said.
On Thursday, more than 100 people were killed when Israeli troops fired at a crowd of Palestinians seeking aid from a convoy of trucks in Gaza City.
Israel has placed Gaza in a chokehold, allowing little to no aid or goods into the enclave, with UN experts and NGOs warning of famine.
The Israeli military accused the hungry Palestinians of causing a mass crush. However, according to witnesses, video footage and medics, there was heavy Israeli fire at the time directed at the crowd.
During a congressional hearing on Thursday in Washington, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said that over 25,000 Palestinians killed by Israel in the war on Gaza were women and children.
The Palestinian health ministry puts the total death toll at over 30,000, with at least 7,000 people missing.
Although a detailed breakdown has not been provided, the health ministry has indicated that approximately 70 percent of the fatalities are women and children.
Around 1,200 Israelis were killed during Hamas' attack on Israeli communities near Gaza on 7 October.
¤=[Post Update]=¤
https://x.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1763632687389004132
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/w...=ap_qoovbbpls1
War on Gaza: Israel targets police and aid agencies to 'create chaos'
The Israeli military has approached some Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip and asked them to coordinate future aid entry to sidestep the Hamas-run government and UN agencies.
Middle East Eye has learned that representatives of at least two families in Gaza City and northern towns have been contacted by Israeli authorities who asked them to “cooperate with them”.
They are requested to adhere to the instructions provided by the Israeli authorities to facilitate the entry of goods and receive and distribute international aid.
It was not immediately clear whether the two families had taken up the offer and there are no signs that such coordination has taken effect as of yet.
The move comes after repeated Israeli targeting of local police and other civil servants who attempted to maintain law and order and coordinate aid distribution in northern Gaza.
It also follows months of Israeli efforts to undermine the role of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (Unrwa), the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza.
At the same time, the military has tightened its aid blockade on more than half a million people in the northern Gaza Strip in recent weeks.
The siege has led to “pockets of famine” emerging there with several reports of people dying from malnutrition, as basic food items run out.
Residents and experts fear that if successful, the Israeli-engineered family-based local governance system would fuel social unrest and chaos.
“Israel aims to inundate the Gaza Strip with a primitive governance system, resembling tribal rule, where each neighbourhood has its own leader,” Abdallah Sharsharah, a Gaza-based lawyer and human rights advocate, told MEE.
“These leaders do not rely on popular will but on the strength of arms, as competing groups,” he added.
Trials
According to observers on the ground, Israeli authorities have been preparing for this scenario for months.
Sharsharah said that during his fieldwork monitoring human rights violations, he observed cases that suggested Israeli soldiers were looking for suitable candidates to run this scheme as early as December.
“When the [army] detained figures like professors, elders, dignitaries, and influential personalities, especially from the northern parts of the strip, they asked exploratory questions to examine the extent to which these figures and the community in general would accept the idea of them directly managing humanitarian aid,” Sharsharah told MEE.
“At that stage, we did not notice any field arrangements for this approach, but recently, with the occupation announcing its intention to hand over the administration of aid to some entities in the Zaitoun neighbourhood… it became clear that something is being arranged on the ground.”
Last month, Israeli media reported the army plans to bring goods into Gaza through the Mintar (Karni) land crossing southeast of Gaza City, which has been closed since 2011.
The reports said the army would deliver the goods to specific “traders'' in the Zaitoun neighbourhood as part of a trial period. However, it’s unclear if the trial had taken place.
The army had launched a fresh ground assault into Zaitoun in mid-February, leading to fierce clashes with Palestinian armed groups there, before the Israeli soldiers withdrew on Thursday.
It is not clear if the incursion into Zaitoun was related to the reported scheme.
Also on Thursday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on thousands of Palestinians who gathered west of Gaza City to receive food from trucks arriving from southern Gaza.
More than 112 people were killed and 760 wounded in what the Palestinian health ministry called a “massacre”.
'Total chaos'
The killings on Thursday were the latest in a series of attacks on the few aid convoys that have been allowed to enter northern Gaza in recent months, and the civilians waiting for them.
Last month, Israeli naval forces hit a UN convoy carrying aid, preventing it from progressing to Gaza City and northern towns, UN documents showed, according to CNN.
No one was hurt in the attack, the report said, but most of the aid inside the truck, which included much-needed wheat flour, was destroyed.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces repeatedly targeted Palestinian civil police officers responsible for guarding convoys of international aid permitted into the impoverished strip, killing a number of them.
As a result, officers have withdrawn from the Palestinian side of the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing with Israel, causing a vacuum that led to hungry crowds and criminal gangs looting most of the aid.
The Joe Biden administration has reportedly asked Israel to stop targeting civil policemen, warning that the strip may face a “total breakdown of law and order”. Israel reportedly rebuffed the request.
Following Israeli attacks on convoys and the looting of aid trucks by the hungry crowds, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced last month that it was “pausing deliveries of life-saving food aid to northern Gaza until conditions are in place that allow for safe distributions”.
Sharsharah believes by taking all these steps, Israel intends to create an alternative to Unrwa that serves its agenda.
“Historically, the occupation's cooperation with tribal figures in managing the Gaza Strip is not new. However, this time is different because the occupation realises that these entities it cooperates with gain their power from being nothing more than organised gangs,” he explained.
Adel Mhanna, a resident of Gaza City, told MEE that the collapse of civil order is aiding Israel in “formulating a new approach” to governance in Gaza.
“The north of Gaza has been living in a total state of chaos in terms of aid distribution and goods,” the 34-year-old teacher said.
“The [Israeli] occupation has caused this state of chaos among the hungry residents and gangs who loot most of the aid,” he added.
According to Mhanna, the Israeli military has also been sending new “threatening messages" to residents of Gaza, ordering them to flee south.
“They are intentionally preventing the entry of aid into Gaza and hampering the work of UN organisations so they would create a total chaos there that would allow them to impose a new form of governance in the future.”
Posted by Rizotto (here)
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks