Hamas assassinated by Israel during the 1948 Gaza Strip War: An Israeli-Military Observer’s Perspective
A total of 230 trucks carrying humanitarian aid, medicine and fuel were scheduled to go in on Friday through the Egyptian border, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing.
During the 1948 war between Israel and Palestine, it was possible for Gazans to not return home during the fighting because Israel had intentions of evicting them permanently.
Communication in Gaza has been difficult since the early days of the war after Israel bombed a telecommunications tower; it has occasionally been plunged into near-total phone and internet blackouts, either because of Israeli disruptions or a lack of fuel.
People are trying to see what is left of their homes. They don’t know what happened to their relatives when they lost contact with them.
Even those who know their homes have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes want to return to see what they can find or salvage from the rubble, she said.
Nayrouz Qarmout, a Palestinian author from Gaza City in the north, said she fled with her family to southern Gaza weeks ago. She said that they had been trying to find out if they could return.
Video posted by local journalists in Gaza showed hundreds of Palestinians carrying bags and bedding items and walking along roads in the southern city of Khan Younis heading to homes in other parts of southern Gaza, at least temporarily.
The Israeli military would not discuss whether it shot and killed Palestinians trying to return to their homes. But it said its forces were “stationed along the designated operational lines of the pause” in accordance with the agreement.
The skies above the besieged territory were free of Israeli warplanes for the first day in seven weeks, a brief respite from the intense bombardments of the 21st century. Some of those trying to return to northern Gaza from parts further down on foot were opened fire on by Israeli forces, according to witnesses, an Egyptian official and some of those injured.
When the cease-fire took effect early Friday, Palestinians across the Gaza Strip were going to return to homes they fled so they could check on their relatives and finally bury their dead.
An Egyptian official, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the situation, said an Israeli tank fired at a group of Palestinians south of Gaza City on Friday morning, killing two of them.
According to the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, parts of Gaza’s civilian population can be moved only for security or military reasons. “The civilian population needs to be able to return as soon as possible — permanent displacement is a war crime.”
Thousands of Palestinians tried to return from central Gaza to the northern Gaza Strip on Friday. But as they tried to make their way along a road on foot, he said, Israeli forces nearby opened fire on them. Mr. al-Nasir said he isn’t walking anymore because he was shot in the leg.
The death toll in Gaza can’t be trusted according to the Israeli military, who acknowledged that children, women and older people have been killed. The military said that civilians were not the target of its campaign.
More than twice as many women and children have already been reported killed in Gaza than in Ukraine after almost two years of Russian attacks, according to United Nations estimates.
Israel mounted more than 15,000 strikes before reaching a brief cease-fire in recent days. It is the nature of the weaponry.
The use of US-made bombs that can flatten apartment towers is surprising, some experts say.
A former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and a military adviser for the Dutch organization, said that it is beyond anything he has seen in his career. He said we may have to go back to Vietnam or the Second World War in order to find a similar comparison for the number of large bombs in this small area.
In battles against the Islamic State in urban areas like Iraq and Raqqa, Syria, the most common American aerial bomb was too large for most targets, as was the case during this century.
Given these underground networks — which the military says enabled Hamas to wage its deadly attacks on Oct. 7 — Israeli forces say they use the “smallest available ordnance” to achieve their strategic objectives in order to cause the “minimal adverse effect on civilians.”
The calculation of civilian casualties is very difficult, and officials in the Gaza Strip do not separate deaths of civilians and fighters.