What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry

Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
1 / 5
Following the Christmas Eve airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp, which killed scores of Palestinians, Israel’s military called the bombing a ‘regrettable mistake’ caused by “an incorrect munition.” (AFP)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
2 / 5
Palestinians carry the dead body of a woman casualty in an Israeli strike on a house at Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on January 3, 2024. (REUTERS)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
3 / 5
Following the Christmas Eve airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp, which killed scores of Palestinians, Israel’s military called the bombing a ‘regrettable mistake’ caused by “an incorrect munition.” (AFP)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
4 / 5
​Palestinians injured in an Israeli airstrike on the al-Maghazi refugee camp, Gaza Strip, on Dec. 6, 2023, receive care at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Balah. (AFP)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
5 / 5
Displaced Palestinian children watch from inside a tent as a man mourns relatives killed in an overnight Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp on December 25, 2023. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 07 January 2024
Follow

What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry

What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
  • The Christmas Eve airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza killed scores of Palestinian civilians
  • Israeli authorities called the bombing a “regrettable mistake” due to the use of “an incorrect munition”

LONDON: Just hours before midnight on Christmas Eve, an Israeli airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp, east of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killed more than 70 people, including 12 women and seven children, according to figures from the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital.

The UN estimates the strike killed at least 86, making it one of the single most deadly strikes of the entire war, devastating an overcrowded residential area and burying whole families under tons of rubble.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said that the work of rescue teams was further hindered by damage to roads between the camps of Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat. Shortages of fuel to power machinery also meant that rescuers had to search for survivors with their bare hands.




Palestinians mourn their relatives, killed in an overnight Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, during a mass funeral at the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on December 25, 2023. (AFP)

Medecins Sans Frontieres tweeted on Dec. 25 that Deir Al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital had admitted 209 injured and 131 dead following Christmas Eve strikes on both Maghazi and Bureij.

Hamas, the Palestinian group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, described the attack as “a horrific massacre” and “a new war crime.” For its part, the Israeli government has called the bombing a “regrettable mistake” due to the use of “an incorrect munition.”

In a statement on Dec. 28, the Israel Defense Forces said that a preliminary investigation by a special committee revealed that the bombing had destroyed buildings that were not military targets, killing and injuring dozens of civilians.




Men recover the body of a victim killed in the aftermath of an overnight Israeli strike at al-Maghazi refugee camp on December 25, 2023. (AFP)

The Israeli military added that the “extensive collateral damage that could have been avoided” in Maghazi was due to the use of improper ordnance. “The type of munition did not match the nature of the attack,” an Israeli military official told the state-owned broadcaster Kan.

The IDF vowed “to draw lessons from the incident.” However, in an interview with Sky News on Dec. 29, Eylon Levy, an official Israeli spokesperson, said that his government refused to apologize for “waging this campaign to bring the Hamas terror regime to justice.”

He stressed that the “war against Hamas” would continue until the militant group surrendered and released the remaining hostages it took on Oct. 7, when it carried out brutal massacres and a series of kidnappings across southern Israel.

Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 240 hostages, including many foreign nationals, 110 of whom were subsequently released in a series of hostage and prisoner swaps.

INNUMBERS

86 Number of people killed in the attack on Maghazi, with some estimates as high as 106.

33K People living in Maghazi refugee camp prior to the conflict, according to the UN.

0.6% Area of the densely populated Maghazi refugee camp

22K+ Death toll in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Levy described the killing of civilians in Maghazi as a “regrettable mistake,” adding that “mistakes” are “inevitable” in war.

Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at International Crisis Group, believes official statements like these are part of Israel’s preferred public relations strategy.

“It is the usual Israeli defense of ‘we made mistakes but didn’t mean to’ in order to mitigate the negative publicity Israel is increasingly receiving that is becoming harder to justify and cover up,” she told Arab News.

“They did what they did when they thought they could get away with it, and when they couldn’t, they made futile statements like this to mitigate any PR fallout.”




A picture taken from a position in southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing over the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment on January 5, 2024. (AFP)

She added: “If previous experience is anything to go by, any internal investigation will be immediately dropped once public interest wanes.”

Furthermore, Maghazi is not the only refugee camp in Gaza to have suffered Israeli bombardment in recent weeks, with Bureij and Nuseirat also coming under fire. On Dec. 29 alone, Israeli bombing in central Gaza killed at least 100 Palestinians and injured 150 others.

Such attacks indicate that the mistakes acknowledged by the Israeli military and government officials are either commonplace, or that the IDF takes a cavalier approach to the lives of civilians and the potential for collateral damage.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has voiced concerns about the bombardment of central Gaza and its densely populated camps.




Israeli soldiers take up positions near the Gaza Strip border on Dec. 29, 2023, amid ongoing battles with the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AP Photo)

Founded in 1949, Maghazi originally had a population of about 2,500, which later grew to around 30,000, according to statistics from the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA.

Today, owing to the displacement of Gazan families fleeing Israel’s assault, which has killed more than 22,000 people since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, the camp’s population has climbed to about 100,000.

While the Christmas Eve strike was the deadliest in Maghazi’s history, it was by no means the first. Airstrikes on Oct. 17, Nov. 5 and Dec. 6 also pummeled the densely populated camp — once again testing the veracity of Israeli claims that the Dec. 24 strike was a one-off mistake.




In an earlier Israeli airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp on December 6, 2023, most of the 18 Palestinians who died and 20 injured were children. (AFP photos)

The first strike in October hit an UNRWA-operated school, killing six people. The Hamas-run Health Ministry also reported that the November strikes killed at least 45 people. Reports from the Guardian and Al Jazeera said that the camp’s only bakery was also destroyed.

The Israeli military is continuing its ground offensive, despite international pleas for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. Calls from Washington to scale back its onslaught, or at least prioritize the preservation of civilian life, also appear to have been disregarded.

US President Joe Biden warned on Dec. 12 that owing to its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, Israel was losing international support. Two days later, he told reporters that Israeli forces must “be focused on how to save civilian lives — not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful.”

The day after Christmas, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari announced that Israeli forces had “expanded the combat to the area known as the Central Camps.”

Humanitarian organizations, UN agencies and many Western media outlets have confirmed that the Israeli military has been attacking areas that it had previously encouraged displaced Gazans to flee to and had designated as “safe.”

An analysis by CNN found that the IDF had carried out strikes in Rafah, which Israel had previously labeled as a safe zone for refugees.

The Dec. 21 report also showed that Israeli statements identifying “safe zones” or “danger zones” are often contradictory and confusing.

Given the disruption to electricity and telecommunications caused by the conflict, many Palestinians are unable to view maps delineating these zones, which can only be accessed using QR codes printed on leaflets.

Criticism of the IDF’s conduct in Gaza has not been reserved to the intensity of its air and ground raids but also its choice of weapons and ordnance.




Israeli soldiers prepare munitions near a self-propelled artillery howitzer in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip on December 16, 2023. (AFP)

An investigation by The New York Times published on Dec. 21 found that the IDF has used US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, which munitions experts say are unsuitable for use on densely populated areas.

These bombs were dropped in an area of southern Gaza where Israel had ordered civilians to move for their “safety,” the investigation revealed.

Those living in Maghazi can only hope for a pause in the fighting that will allow aid to enter the camp, which has been cut off from the surrounding region due to regular bombardment.

However, Herzi Halevi, the IDF’s chief of staff, has said that the offensive in Gaza will last “many more months.”

 


Yemen’s government shuts down unlicensed exchange firms to stop riyal devaluation

Yemen’s government shuts down unlicensed exchange firms to stop riyal devaluation
Updated 44 min 20 sec ago
Follow

Yemen’s government shuts down unlicensed exchange firms to stop riyal devaluation

Yemen’s government shuts down unlicensed exchange firms to stop riyal devaluation
  • Local money traders and media said that the riyal was trading at 2050 against the dollar
  • Yemeni government closed dozens of exchange firms in Aden, Yemen’s interim capital, Hadramout, Shabwa, and Mahra that lack or have expired licenses

AL-MUKALLA: The Yemeni riyal stabilized on Monday near its all-time low of 2050 against the dollar in government-controlled areas, as the Yemeni government launched a campaign targeting unlicensed exchange firms.

Local money traders and media said that the riyal was trading at 2050 against the dollar, maintaining the same record low, days after breaking the historic low of 2000 against the dollar. In early 2015, the Yemeni riyal was worth 215 per dollar.

This comes as the Yemeni government closed dozens of exchange firms in Aden, Yemen’s interim capital, Hadramout, Shabwa, and Mahra that lack or have expired licenses.

Local officials, escorted by armed policemen, were seen in the streets of Aden, Al-Mukalla in Hadramout, Attaq in Shabwa, and Al-Ghaydah in Mahra province, inspecting exchange firms and shops’ licenses and closing the doors of unlicensed firms to slow the devaluation of the Yemeni riyal.

The Yemeni government has long accused local money traders of engaging in currency speculation, which resulted in the Yemeni riyal’s rapid devaluation.

Another reason for the devaluation, according to the Yemeni government, is the Houthis’ attacks on oil terminals in Hadramout and Shabwa in late 2022, which resulted in a complete halt to oil exports.

Saleh Fadaeq, the head of the central bank branch in Shabwa, said on Monday that the campaign against unauthorized exchange firms would continue to stop the Yemeni riyal’s devaluation, end currency speculation, and combat money laundering, according to the official news agency SABA.

The Presidential Leadership Council and the Yemeni government have recently requested financial assistance from international donors to help stabilize the Yemeni riyal, pay employees, and fund critical projects.

Yemenis across the political and social spectrum have warned of a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, as the rapid devaluation of the riyal has driven up the prices of food, fuel, and other essential commodities, pushing people deeper into poverty.

Ismael Al-Sharabi wrote on Facebook that the riyal’s depreciation is causing “a humanitarian crisis,” with the prices for basic food items reaching unprecedented highs. He urged the Yemeni government to quickly bring under control the riyal’s fall.

“A tomato now costs 1,000 riyals. This is a humanitarian disaster and a historical curse that has befallen these people, who are now fighting death to survive, swallowing all burdens, high prices, and extreme poverty,” Al-Sharabi said.

High prices caused by the riyal’s devaluation have sparked violent protests in Aden and Al-Mukalla, as well as other Yemeni cities under government control, over the last several years.

Mustafa Nasr, director of the Studies and Economic Media Center, said the government’s campaign against unlicensed exchange firms did not lead to the riyal’s recovery as it only targeted small firms and not the large exchange firms that control the market, calling for stricter government measures to prevent the riyal’s fall.

“The exchange sector has become disorganized, bloated, and has sufficient liquidity to influence the exchange market,” Nasr told Arab News.

In its most recent report on the Yemeni economy, released late last month, the World Bank depicted a bleak economy in 2025, saying that Yemen’s gross domestic product is expected to fall by 1 percent in 2024, compared to a 2 percent drop last year.

Sixty percent of Yemenis have insufficient access to food due to an unprecedented level of insecurity brought about by the war, and the Houthis’ attacks on oil terminals slashed 42 percent of the government’s revenues, making it difficult for it to provide public services and devaluing the Yemeni riyal, according to the World Bank.


Syrian state media reports Israeli strike south of Damascus

Syrian state media reports Israeli strike south of Damascus
Updated 23 min 58 sec ago
Follow

Syrian state media reports Israeli strike south of Damascus

Syrian state media reports Israeli strike south of Damascus
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported at least three strikes in the area

DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported Israeli strikes on Monday near the Sayyeda Zeinab area south of Damascus, home to an important Shiite sanctuary and guarded by pro-Iranian groups, including Hezbollah.
"At approximately 5:18 pm (14:15 GMT), the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights, targeting a number of civilian sites south of Damascus, which led to some material losses," the official SANA news agency said, citing a military source.
Mehdi Mahfouz, a 34-year-old resident of the area, said he "heard three successive explosions, one of which was very strong."
"Then I saw a large black cloud of smoke rising," Mahfouz added.
The blasts were heard in the neighbouring Jaramana suburb of Damascus, according to an AFP photographer, as ambulances headed to the area.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported at least three strikes in the area.
The targets include a house "used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," the monitor added, saying it is located in a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab area.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.


Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids

Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids
Updated 04 November 2024
Follow

Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids

Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids
  • The war has unleashed hunger across the country, erased most signs of a functioning state in RSF-held areas, and prompted fears of fragmentation

NEW HALFA: Salwa Abdallah was recuperating from a caesarean section and tending to her one-month old baby when soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces barged into her home in Sudan’s eastern El Gezira state late last month.
They accused her of loyalty to the army and its allies, their rivals in an 18-month war. “They said ‘You killed us, so today we’ll kill you and rape your girls,’” she told Reuters, sheltering under a makeshift sheet in the town of New Halfa, where she arrived after walking for days on foot with her elderly mother and children.
She said the soldiers chased them out of their village with whips and later shot at them on motorcycles, which two other victims of the attack also mentioned.
Reuters spoke to 13 victims of a series of intense, violent raids in eastern Gezira over the past two weeks, which affected at least 65 villages and towns according to activists.
The UN says some 135,000 people have been displaced, largely to Kassala, Gedaref, and River Nile states, which are already packed with many of the more than 11 million internally displaced by the devastating war that broke out in April 2023.
“I am shocked and deeply appalled that human rights violations of the kind witnessed in Darfur last year ... are being repeated in El Gezira State. These are atrocious crimes,” said the UN’s top official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, referring to attacks last year that prompted accusations of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity from the United States and others.
The war has unleashed hunger across the country, erased most signs of a functioning state in RSF-held areas, and prompted fears of fragmentation.
Both sides are accused of hindering much needed international assistance.
Spokespersons from the RSF and Sudanese army did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

REVENGE ATTACKS
Though El Gezira state has been subject to a violent looting campaign since the RSF took control in December, the defection of its chief in the state unleashed a series of revenge attacks.
The Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, named 169 people killed since the violence began on Oct. 20, though in a statement it said there were hundreds more.
The UN’s human rights office said last week that there were at least 25 cases of sexual violence, including an 11 year-old girl who died as a result. The office also said that the RSF had confiscated Internet devices in at least 30 villages, and cited reports they had burnt fields of crops.
The worst incident was in Al-Sireha, where the committee said 124 people were killed on Oct. 25.
Video verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers lining up men, many of them elderly, and some in blood-splattered clothes, taunting them and forcing them to bleat.
Another video verified by Reuters showed dozens of bodies wrapped up in sheets for burial.
The RSF has denied ordering both attacks, and said the attacks in Gezira were the result of the army arming local communities.
The army has responded by emphasising popular resistance campaigns, though there has been little evidence of widescale arming of civilians in Gezira.
The Sudanese Human Rights Monitor warned the army against “leaving civilians ... exposed to direct and disproportionate confrontations with the RSF,” which it criticized for not fulfilling promises to protect civilians.
Hashim Bashir, a man disabled after his leg was amputated prior to the war, said RSF soldiers threw him out of his home in Al-Nayb village.
“They are very vicious... If you survive their gunshots, they hit you in your head. If you survive that, they beat you with a whip,” he said, showing scars on his functioning leg.
His niece, Faiza Mohammed, said the RSF soldiers allowed them to take nothing with them, even identifying documents.
“I hid under the bed, but they got me, beat me, and pulled my earring straight off my ear,” she said.


‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season

‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season
Updated 04 November 2024
Follow

‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season

‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season
  • Agricultural regions in Lebanon have been caught in the crossfire since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up in October last year, a full-scale war breaking out on September 23

BEIRUT: Lebanese farmer Abu Taleb briefly returned to his orchard last month to salvage an avocado harvest but ran away empty handed as soon as Israeli air raids began.
“The war broke out just before the first harvest season,” said Abu Taleb, displaced from the village of Tayr Debba near the southern city Tyre.
“When I went back in mid-October, it was deserted... it was scary,” said the father of two, who is now sheltering in Tripoli more than 160 kilometers to the north and asked to be identified by a pseudonym because of security concerns.
Abu Taleb said his harvesting attempt was interrupted by an Israeli raid on the neighboring town of Markaba.
He was forced back to Tripoli without the avocados he usually exports every year.
Agricultural regions in Lebanon have been caught in the crossfire since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up in October last year, a full-scale war breaking out on September 23.
The UN’s agriculture agency, FAO, said more than 1,909 hectares of farmland in south Lebanon had been damaged or left unharvested between October last year and September 28.
The conflict has also displaced more than half a million people, including farmers who abandoned their crops just when they were ready to harvest.
Hani Saad had to abandon 120 hectares of farmland in the southern region of Nabatiyeh, which is rich in citrus and avocado plantations.
“If the ceasefire takes place within a month, I can save the harvest, otherwise, the whole season is ruined,” said Saad who has been displaced to the coastal city of Jounieh, north of Beirut.
When an Israeli strike sparked a fire in one of Saad’s orchards, he had to pay out of his own pocket for the fuel of the fire engine that extinguished the blaze.
His employees, meanwhile, have fled. Of 32 workers, 28 have left, mainly to neighboring Syria.


Israeli strikes have put at least two land crossings with Syria out of service, blocking a key export route for produce and crops.
Airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon as insurance costs soar.
This has dealt a deadly blow to agricultural exports, most of which are destined for Gulf Arab states.
Fruit exporter Chadi Kaadan said exports to the Gulf have dropped by more than 50 percent.
The supply surplus in the local market has caused prices to plummet at home, he added.
“In the end, it is the farmer who loses,” said Saad who used to earn $5000 a day before the war started.
Today, he barely manages $300.
While avocados can stay on the tree for months, they are starting to run out of water following Israeli strikes on irrigation channels, Saad said.
Citrus fruits and cherimoyas have already started to fall.
“The war has ruined me. I spend my time in front of the TV waiting for a ceasefire so I can return to my livelihood,” Saad told AFP.
Gaby Hage, a resident of the Christian town of Rmeish, on the border with Israel, is one of the few farmers who decided to stay in south Lebanon.
He has only been able to harvest 100 of his 350 olive trees, which were left untended for a year because of cross-border strikes.
“I took advantage of a slight lull in the fighting to pick what I could,” he told AFP.
Hage said agriculture was a lifeline for the inhabitants of his town, which has been cut off by the war.
Ibrahim Tarchichi, president of the farmers’ union in the Bekaa Valley, which was hit hard by the strikes, believes that agriculture in Lebanon is going through the “worst phase” of its recent history.
“I have experienced four wars, it has never been this serious,” he said.


Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack

Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack
Updated 25 min 17 sec ago
Follow

Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack

Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack
  • Governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh Laila Ghannam: ‘Attacks are increasing because of impunity’ for attackers
  • Some 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank

AL-BIREH: Israeli settlers torched nearly 20 cars early Monday in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence and an Israeli security source.
An AFP journalist saw several cars completely charred, and the blackened facade of the five-story building outside which they were parked.
An alert rang “at 3:30am (0130 GMT) signalling that settlers entered the area and committed acts of vandalism,” said Rami Omar, head of the local civil defense office.
An Israeli security official told AFP notification of the incident came at 4:00 am and soldiers were sent who arrived on site after the settlers had gone.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said 19 vehicles had been burned by settlers.
Israeli police, soldiers and Shin Bet security agency officers collected evidence in Al-Bireh for the investigation, the official added.
Israeli authorities did not yet know where the settlers came from and what their motives were.
Ihab Al-Zabin, a resident of the damaged building, told AFP he saw the arsonists run away toward the nearby Israeli settlement of Beit El.
Zabin said he saw around 10 people he identified as settlers “pouring liquids on vehicles in front of the building and then setting them on fire.”
“I yelled from my apartment, and at that moment they ran away,” he said. “When I went down with my neighbors to put out the fire, settlers shot toward us.”
Abdullah Abu Rahmah from the Palestinian Commission against Settlements told AFP that the attackers belong to a group of arsonists who have attacked other nearby villages in the past.
Laila Ghannam, governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, told journalists at the scene “there could have been a massacre in this building,” which residents say housed more than 60 people.
“Attacks are increasing because of impunity” for attackers, she said.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
The UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said in August: “Between 1 and 28 October, OCHA documented nearly 270 settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians and their property.”
Some 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
The territory is home to three million Palestinians.