In the News – May 16

Palestine

Palestinians participate in March of Return in Upper al-Jalil in the West Bank, May 14, 2024, commemorating the 76th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948.

The Israeli military has launched a new wave of attacks across the Gaza Strip, similar in intensity to the peak of its seven-month war on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The raids coincided with incursions by the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) into the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City and eastern Rafah. News agencies report they have met with fierce resistance by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations.

Jabalia camp is the largest of eight refugee camps in the besieged Gaza Strip, housing over 116,000 people officially registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The camp was established in 1948 following the Nakba when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes by terrorist gangs when the state of Israel was established. The Jabalia camp is also the birthplace of the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987 and has long been a stronghold of Palestinian resistance. According to Al Jazeera, Israeli tanks, bulldozers and armoured vehicles surrounded at least three UNRWA facilities in the camp being used as evacuation centres for displaced Palestinian families in northern Gaza. Those trapped in the centres reportedly sent out SOS calls to civil defence teams.

Palestinians once more displaced from northern Gaza by Israeli bombardment, photo from May 12, 2024

According to UN estimates, Israeli aerial and artillery assaults on Rafah have resulted in 360,000 Palestinians having to flee since last week. The Palestinian civil defence said the bombardment was reminiscent of “the war’s first days” but far more devastating. They said this was due to medical services and emergency efforts being depleted after months of Israeli targeting. “We have lost 80 per cent of our capabilities,” the civil defence said in a statement. “It has become very difficult for our crews to rescue the wounded and recover the martyrs.”

The Palestine Chronicle called the current situation an “all out war,” with the Resistance forces saying they are “confronting Israeli forces on three different war fronts, carrying out numerous operations and ambushes throughout the Gaza Strip, inflicting heavy casualties on the occupier/aggressor Israeli forces. The Israeli army itself said on May 12 that 50 of its officers and soldiers were wounded during the Gaza battles in a single day.

Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas, announced that it had targeted at least eight Israeli tanks, some of which were set ablaze, resulting in the killing and wounding of Israeli soldiers. Moreover, al-Qassam announced the implementation of what it described as a complex operation in an area known as al-Mabhouh, east of Jabalia, where an Israeli Merkava tank was targeted with a Yassin 105 shell. After “the escape of enemy soldiers to .. a booby-trapped house prepared in advance, [the house] was detonated and the force was killed and wounded,” al-Qassam said. In another complex operation, fighters detonated a bomb targeting Israeli special forces and a personnel carrier with a tandem shell east of Jabalia, killing and wounding the forces, al-Qassam said. The fighters also reported that they targeted Israeli special forces holed up in a house near Mazaya Hall, also east of Jabalia with two TBG shells, killing and wounding the force.

Screenshot from al-Qassam video of operations against Israeli forces near Jabalia refugee camp, May 12, 2024.

Resistance forces in al-Zaytoun neighborhood of central Gaza bombarded the Israeli city of Ashkelon in the afternoon and also shelled the settlement Sderot in response to the massacres of civilians, the group said in one of its statements.

Israeli soldiers and vehicles that have penetrated into Rafah were struck with mortar shells, the Resistance reports. Al-Quds Brigades also announced that it fired heavy calibre mortar shells at IOF soldiers and vehicles in al-Shoka neighborhood, east of Rafah, where the Israeli army was blowing up Palestinian homes. Ten Israeli soldiers were injured, three seriously, in a mortar attack at the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday May 13, Israeli Army Radio informed.

In yet another cowardly attack, the Israeli military shot and killed a foreign NGO worker and wounded another on May 13 in Rafah, local authorities reported. Israeli forces have killed over 200 aid workers since the start of the war while enforcing a punishing blockade. UN Secretary-General António Guterres again condemned all attacks on United Nations personnel and called for a full investigation into the killing of a staff member in the Gaza Strip.

The spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades Abu Obeida announced on May 13 that “as a result of the savage Israeli bombardment during the past 10 days, we have lost contact with a group of our fighters who were guarding four Israeli captives, including the prisoner Hersh Goldberg-Polin.” In a recent video message, this Israeli captive detained by al-Qassam urged his government to do everything possible to return him and the other captives to their homes.

Massive destruction by Israeli forces targetting civilian population in al-Zaytoun, May 15, 2024.

An Israeli air attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza has reportedly killed at least 40 people. Children were among those killed and wounded after Israeli fighter jets bombed a three-storey house belonging to the Karaja family in Nuseirat camp, the Wafa news agency reported. Al Jazeera reported that the building – which was completely flattened – was sheltering 100 displaced Palestinians. Among them were people newly displaced from Rafah in southern Gaza, where Israel has launched a ground invasion. Dozens of those killed and wounded in Nuseirat camp were trapped for several hours under the rubble of the destroyed building and a nearby school building.

Nuseirat camp is home to 85,409 Palestinian refugees officially registered by the United Nations, as of 2023. The actual number of people in the camp is likely to be considerably higher given the number of displaced refugees which Israel is forcing to evacuate from one area after another.

In a 24-hour period from May 13 to 14, medical sources said the IOF committed seven massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, killing 82 Palestinians and injuring 234 others.

Worldwide Expressions of Support for Palestinian People

Egyptian Bedouin Tribes Call for Measures to Stop Israel’s Advance in Rafah

The Middle East Eye reports that an Egyptian Bedouin tribe “with close ties to the military” urged the Egyptian presidency to open a new crossing with Gaza after Israel’s invasion of Rafah and control of its border crossing.

“We call for immediately creating an alternative crossing until Israel leaves the Rafah land crossing,” the Arab Tribes Union (ATU) said in a statement, quoted by the Saudi channel al-Hadath on May 13. “We call on the Egyptian presidency to act immediately to secure the Egyptian borders with Gaza.” The ATU called on the presidency to “contribute to obliging Israel to leave the Rafah border crossing and to impose Egyptian sovereignty.”

The ATU is an alliance of five Egyptian Bedouin tribes, which was launched at a celebration on May 1 with the stated goal of uniting tribes to support the Egyptian state against security threats. The ATU has issued several media statements commenting on the Rafah invasion and calling on the international community and the United Nations Security Council to intervene to prevent Israel’s advance.

Libya Joins South Africa’s Case at International Court of Justice

Libya has filed a declaration of intervention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, joining South Africa in its genocide case against the Israeli regime. Libya said it filed the declaration because it believed the Israeli regime has been engaging in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and is failing to prevent and prosecute the direct and public incitement to genocide. In addition to Libya, Colombia and Egypt have also intervened in the case of South Africa and Israel, saying all the state members of the Genocide Convention should do everything in their power to contribute to ensuring the prevention, suppression, and punishment of genocide, and, therefore, assist the Court in establishing any state party’s failure to comply with its orders.

Türkiye

Thousands of people took to the streets of the Turkish city of Istanbul to show their support for Palestinians and denounce the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. According to Iranian news agency IRNA, citing Turkish media, this demonstration was held in the city’s Umraniye municipal area. Protesters also gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul to condemn the genocide in Palestine and U.S. support for the Israeli regime. Turkish state media reported that protesters carried signs reading “Noble resistance in Gaza” and “Israel is a murderer” and chanted anti-Israeli slogans including, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”