Besieged and bombarded by invading Israeli military, Palestinians in Gaza’s Jabalia city are posting videos and images on social media, pleading the world they are living their “final moments”.
GAZA — As Israel tightens its siege and rains down US-supplied bombs on Jabalia, starving Palestinians who have not received humanitarian aid for the last 12 days have begun sharing heart-wrenching updates from the northern Gaza city, where nearly half a million Palestinians face imminent annihilation.
“Enemy tanks are less than 700 metres away from us. The artillery is shelling us and the quad-copters are controlling the movement of people and firing at us,” wrote journalist Hossam Shabat on X, early on Sunday.
“We are literally living our final moments, O Allah, grant us a good end.”
Palestine’s envoy to France, Hala Abou-Hassira, took to X to remind the world of the “genocide” underway in Jabalia.
“Israel has just isolated Jabalia… Entire families are erased from the civil registry. The bodies of martyrs are everywhere in the streets. Civil defence is forbidden to provide assistance. The three main hospitals are ordered to evacuate,” she said in her post accompanied by three videos, showing testimonies of besieged Palestinians and Israeli tanks rolling through the completely annihilated neighbourhoods.
“Warplanes and drones are shooting at everyone to force the population to evacuate. Water, food, fuel and medicine are forbidden. Journalists on the ground are assassinated. Total blackout. In one word: genocide. In two words: documented genocide. In three words: documented genocide approved,” she wrote.
Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi citing his colleagues from Jablia refugee camp said the situation “is unlike anything they have ever experienced.”
“Dozens of bodies scattered across the streets. It smells death all over. Residents refuse to be displaced. Food are nearly depleted and no medical services are available,” Tirawi posted on X.
In his “urgent” message to the world, Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti warned: “The Israeli army is committing terrible massacres in Jabalia refugee camp and many areas in North Gaza, burning houses, and using tanks and artillery bombardment and forcing many innocent civilians to walk as human shields in front of the army’s vehicles.”
“The Israeli army isolated the Northern part of Gaza completely from Gaza city. The area is already subjected to starvation, deprivation of clean water and medical care. According to witnesses in the area bodies of killed people are scattered in the streets. The army is also trying to force the medical personnel to evict the three hospitals in the area.”
Palestinian journalist and policy analyst Mariam Barghouti said Israeli annihilation campaign in Jabalia is “straight out of a horror movie with it being completely surrounded, with quad-copters shooting at people, war jets hovering above, bombs still ongoing, tank shelling.”
In her post on X, she said the small Palestinian town and refugee camp of 1.4 kmsq “is being obliterated” by the Israeli military.
“The infrastructure is destroyed completely and people are being wiped out. Israel has been heavily targeting Jabalia in the last two weeks with the intention of wiping it out.”
Israel’s starve-or-die plan
Invading Israeli military has launched its “general’s plan” in the Palestinian area, which seeks to forcibly expel and never allow back more than 400,000 Palestinians in the refugee city. If the Israeli plan succeeds, more than one million Palestinians from the entire northern Gaza will be banished from their ancestral lands.
The Israeli strategy, dubbed “extermination plan” by Palestinians, was introduced in September by former army general and ex-head of Israeli national security Giora Eiland in an Israeli television campaign that calls for starving Palestinians if they do not flee northern Gaza.
On Friday, UN’s World Food Program told CNN that no food has been allowed by Israel to enter northern Gaza since October 1, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry.
WFP said, approximately 700 hundred aid trucks entered northern Gaza in August, 400 in September, and none in October, adding “hunger remains rampant and the threat of famine persists.”
The Palestinian officials in Gaza said on Saturday that the Israeli military is intensifying genocide in the area, including the Jabalia refugee camp, with “massacres and deliberate killings.”
They warned about Israeli efforts to turn “northern Gaza into a region of destruction and death, as part of its plan to displace our Palestinian people.”
C. TRT World
