An Israeli fighter jet attacks a multi-story building in the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp. The army explains that the target was a mastermind of the Hamas massacre in Israel. The consequences are devastating.
The images of death and destruction in the Palestinian refugee camp Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip are shocking. A deep crater gapes in the earth where buildings once stood. Desperate people search for survivors in the rubble. Children are rescued.
According to the Israeli army, the airstrike was aimed at a mastermind of the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7th. 50 terrorists were killed in the operation in Jabalia. Israel’s army cannot yet say how many civilians were killed.
Horrifying images of mutilated corpses immediately began circulating on social media. Rows of white body bags can be seen outside the nearby Indonesian Hospital. The clinic is flooded with injured people.
Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip, is deliberately hiding behind civilian infrastructure there, military spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists. “They want this image of destruction.”
Hagari spoke of a dilemma for the army. On the one hand, she knows that there are still civilians in the area – even though the area is designated as a “red zone” due to the presence of Hamas. At the same time, Hamas’s activity in the refugee camp is a threat to the Israeli army that it must respond to.
Shocking scenes after the explosion
Mohammed al-Ashkar from Jabalia said he heard a heavy explosion. Then a black cloud darkened the area. Al-Aschkar, who lives in the building with 56 relatives, called for his family. Some of them were injured, but no one was killed. However, there are deaths among his neighbors. “When I came out of my apartment building, which was badly damaged, I saw a huge hole in the ground. It had swallowed houses and people.” His family did not leave the north of the Gaza Strip despite repeated calls from the Israeli army “because we thought that civilians would not be attacked.”
An ambulance driver said he saw dozens of people lying on the ground after the explosion. He reports of torn corpses. The man, who only wants to give his first name, Mohammed, accuses Israel of a “massacre” of Jabalia residents “who had no chance of escaping death.” He cried when he saw dead and injured children, “because I thought of my children and was afraid that they could be the next victims.”
The Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades, claimed the airstrike also killed seven hostages, including three foreign nationals. However, the information could not be independently verified.
Largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip
According to the UN, Jabalia is the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. People who had to flee wars with Israel since 1948 live there. They are looked after by the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA. Israel has accused UNRWA of helping to perpetuate the conflict. The Israeli army completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and cleared all Israeli settlements there. Jabalia is a very densely populated residential area, but is not separated from the surrounding area by a fence or similar like other refugee camps.
According to Israel, Hamas hides military targets among civilians
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari described the background to the airstrike in Jabalia on Wednesday during a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. “Terrorists fired on our troops from a multi-story building in the Jebalia area,” Hagari said. Like many other buildings, terrorists from the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas used it as a refuge near a school, a medical center and government offices.
The terrorists were eliminated by an air strike. This is the Hamas commander Ibrahim Biari, a suspected mastermind of the massacre of civilians in Israel on October 7th. Biari was responsible “for the area from which many of the terrorists set off for the massacre on October 7th,” said Hagari. On Tuesday he was in a command center in Jabalia with dozens of other terrorists. This also includes underground tunnels under buildings with civilian populations.
Hamas did not initially confirm Biari’s death, but eyewitnesses reported he was killed in the attack. Hamas usually only publishes the names of its killed members after a war.
The attack caused the building and the tunnel system underneath to collapse, Hagari said. Other buildings also collapsed as a result. This shows once again “the cynical abuse of civilians as human shields” by Hamas. “It is the intention of Hamas leader Jihia al-Sinwar to show the image of a destroyed Gaza” and to blame Israel for the suffering. “They will not be able to hide the real culprits, namely themselves, who brought ruin to Gaza .”
Severe destruction and high death tolls in the Gaza Strip
Almost four weeks of war have caused devastating damage in the coastal strip, where life was already very difficult for more than two million residents. The UN emergency aid office OCHA recently cited a damage assessment by the Hamas authorities: According to this, 45 percent of all houses in the Gaza Strip are said to have been destroyed by the Israeli attacks (a good 16,000), uninhabitable (a good 11,000) or damaged (around 150,000). The Israeli military says Hamas is hiding legitimate military targets among the houses.
According to the latest figures from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza, 8,796 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war. The majority of them are women and children. More than 22,000 people were injured. The information could not initially be independently verified.
Israel rejects ceasefire as surrender to Hamas
Given the suffering of the civilian population, calls for a ceasefire are increasing. But Israel rejects this as a surrender to Hamas. Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who in the past was involved in negotiations with Hamas over the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, described the attack in Jabalia as a war crime.
At the same time, he wrote in an X-Post: “One thing must be clear: Hamas has lost its right to exist as an organization that controls territory adjacent to Israel.” With the unprecedented massacre in the Israeli border area, the Islamist organization “crossed lines and thus lost its right to exist.”
Hamas can be defeated by killing its leaders and commanders. However, Hamas’s destructive ideology can only be defeated if Palestinians instead gain the right to self-determination, Baskin wrote. In the area of historic Palestine, “every person must have the same rights,” he demands. Only with mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestinians can “the very long road to peace” begin. But fewer people in the embattled region believe this with every passing day.