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Rights Group Finds Israel Uses Gaza 'Safe Zones' to 'Hide a Genocide'
The analysis was published a day before Israeli forces bombed yet another "safe zone," killing at least 12 Palestinians, including children.
Jan 02, 2025
A report published on Wednesday details how Israel forcibly expels Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in order to facilitate—and hide—genocidal attacks in evacuated areas, while forcing refugees into alleged humanitarian "safe zones" that are "intentionally designed to ensure the destruction of all life sheltering there."
The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq published the report, titled How to Hide a Genocide, which examines "the role of evacuation orders and safe zones in Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza."
According to the report:
Since the very first week of its genocide, Israel has methodically cleared vast stretches of the Gaza Strip of its inhabitants through its unlawful issuance of evacuation orders. Israel presents these evacuation orders to the public as proof of its efforts to minimize civilian casualties and to support its alleged compliance with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. However, they achieve the direct opposite. Over 90% of Gaza's population... has been forcibly displaced from their homes and temporary shelters, the majority of them multiple times, to alleged safe zones.
Contrary to their label, these zones are anything but safe. With insufficient space, shelter, sanitation facilities, food, or water sources, and medical care, these safe zones are intentionally designed to ensure the destruction of all life sheltering there. What's more, the safe zones—despite their unilateral establishment by Israel—are routinely targeted by Israeli occupying forces (IOF) by air, land, and sea. Crowded together with nowhere to flee, Palestinians in Gaza are either killed by Israeli strikes, severely physically and mentally injured by the IOF's physical and psychological warfare, or subject to a slow death as a result of starvation, dehydration, a complete lack of crucial medical care, or the rampant spread of infectious diseases in the densely populated, unsanitary zones.
Al-Haq said: "As shown throughout the report, by applying humanitarian terms to its practice of forcibly transferring Palestinians, without any legal basis and in a manner that breaches international law, and labeling areas as safe zones despite being constantly attacked and lacking in all essentials for survival, Israel argues that it is acting in accordance with its legal obligations when in fact it is providing further evidence of its genocidal intent as it uses these measures to commit and contribute to the genocidal acts of killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza."
The Al-Haq report was published shortly after Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, a 3-week-old baby girl,
died from hypothermia in the al-Mawasi safe zone in southern Gaza. She is one of at least eight people—seven of them infants or children—who have reportedly frozen to death in Gaza in recent weeks.
The report was also published a day before Israeli forces bombed a tent encampment in al-Mawasi, killing at least 12 Palestinians including three children and wounding at least 15 others.
It was one of numerous Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi safe zone, which have killed or wounded at least hundreds of Palestinians. In the deadliest of these, at least 90 Palestinians including many women and children were killed—some of them burned alive in their tents—and hundreds of others were injured when eight 2,000-pound bombs, at least one of which was supplied by the United States, were dropped on the humanitarian zone on July 13, 2024 in order to assassinate Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. Israeli forces then attacked and killed rescue workers arriving at the site of the strike.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the death toll from the strike "unacceptably high." However, just weeks later, the Biden administration approved approximately $20 billion worth of new U.S. weapons for Israel.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands is currently weighing whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
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Latest Israeli Attack on Gaza 'Safe Zone' Kills Several Children
"Israel continues to bomb Gaza and restrict essential supplies from entering the strip," said the emergency coordinator of Doctors Without Borders.
Jan 02, 2025
Israeli forces early Thursday carried out another attack on a so-called humanitarian "safe zone" in southern Gaza, killing at least 11 people—including three children—as the assault on the Palestinian enclave raged with no end in sight.
Reutersreported that at least 15 people were also wounded in the attack on Al-Mawasi, an overcrowded tent city on Gaza's southern coast that Israel has repeatedly bombed. In one case late last year, the Israeli military used 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the United States to attack the camp filled with displaced families.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a social media post that it carried out the strike on the designated humanitarian zone, claiming it targeted Hassam Shahwan, whom the IDF described as the head of Hamas Internal Security Forces in southern Gaza.
Video footage shows people attempting to put out fires at the scene with buckets of water:
Un ataque del ejército israelí mata al menos a 11 personas y provoca 15 heridos en #Gaza.
El ataque se produjo de madrugada en la en la zona humanitaria de Al Mawasi. Entre los fallecidos hay 4 menores y dos mujeres.#DWNoticias / ajr pic.twitter.com/LCKci8IZsg
— DW Español (@dw_espanol) January 2, 2025
Thursday's attack underscored humanitarian aid groups' warning that nowhere is truly safe for Gazans as Israeli forces carry out deadly airstrikes across the besieged enclave. Al Jazeera reported early Thursday that in addition to the IDF's attack on Al-Mawasi, "there has been a significant escalation of strikes in central Gaza."
"Palestinians are mourning those killed in an Israeli strike on civilians in the suburb of central Deir el-Balah city," the outlet reported. "The bodies—shredded into pieces—have been brought to Al-Aqsa Hospital."
"In northern Gaza," Al Jazeera added, "seven civilians were killed in Jabalia following an Israeli attack. In the Shati refugee camp, reports are emerging of three people killed in an attack at the central market."
Israel's incessant bombing is fueling a devastating humanitarian crisis worsened by falling temperatures. At least six Palestinian children—including several who were living in makeshift shelters in Al-Mawasi—have died of hypothermia in recent days.
"Last winter—although people were already displaced and the conditions were harsh—there were still some buildings to take shelter in," Pascale Coissard, emergency coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, said Thursday. "Today, after 14 months of war and destruction of infrastructure, most of the people in Gaza are living in tents that barely isolate the cold wind and rain. Just in the past 12 hours, the rain hasn't stopped."
"Even before their lives have started outside the womb, babies are at risk of disease and death," Coissard added. "Once born, babies face immediate and extreme challenges: displaced in the cold of winter, without adequate access to warmth, shelter, or healthcare, as Israel continues to bomb Gaza and restrict essential supplies from entering the strip, while looting of aid trucks within the enclave is making it difficult for that small amount of aid allowed by Israeli authorities to reach those in need."
CNNnoted earlier this week that "the cold weather has not only claimed the lives of children."
"On Friday, the health ministry said a nurse was found dead in his tent in Al-Mawasi on Friday due to severe cold," the outlet reported.
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'Unbearable and Horrific Massacre': IDF Kills Dozens in Tent City Bombing
"The far-right genocidal Israeli government continues to use its one-ton Biden bombs to massacre Palestinians as if they were sheep for the slaughter," said one advocacy group.
Sep 10, 2024
The Israeli military bombed Gaza's overcrowded tent city of al-Mawasi early Tuesday morning in its latest attack on a supposed "safe zone," killing dozens of people and intensifying anger at the countries enabling the assault—principally the United States.
Video footage from the scene shows rescue workers transporting wounded people to barely functioning nearby hospitals as others desperately searched for bodies buried under sand.
The Israeli military claimed it was targeting Hamas militants and used "precise munitions" in an effort to mitigate civilian harm, but observers said the massive craters left by the attack were consistent with 2,000-pound MK-84 bombs supplied in large numbers by the United States. The Biden administration has transported thousands of the bombs to Israel since the October 7 Hamas-led attack.
Maha Hussaini, strategy director at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, said in the wake of Tuesday's attack that "in an overcrowded camp where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are scattered in makeshift tents, even the smallest bomb can cause immense damage and numerous casualties."
"Now, imagine the devastation when the Israeli occupation army uses three U.S.-made MK-84 bombs on them," Hussaini added.
Horrifying scenes from the israeli massacre of displaced Palestinian families in Mawasi, west Khan Younis: who in God’s name bombs tents pic.twitter.com/1sBEG7vUb9
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) September 10, 2024
A spokesperson for Gaza's civil defense said the Israeli attack destroyed dozens of tents, killed at least 40 people, and wounded over 60 more.
"Entire families disappeared... under the sand, in deep holes," the official said. Reutersnoted that "tents in the surrounding area had been completely incinerated, leaving only their metal frames dusted with ghostly ash in a wasteland littered with debris."
The Israel Defense Forces said its target was a "command center" that Hamas purportedly established in the designated humanitarian zone, which Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked. Hamas denied its fighters were in the area and said the Israeli bombing killed mostly women and children.
The Associated Pressreported that one of its camera operators "saw three large craters at the scene, where first responders and displaced people were sifting through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their bare hands by the light of mobile phones."
"They pulled body parts from the sand, including what appeared to be a human leg," the outlet reported. "Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of three hospitals to receive casualties, said around two dozen bodies were brought in from the strike. An Associated Press cameraman saw 10 bodies in the hospital's morgue, including two children and three women."
U.S.-based advocacy groups said the attack was the latest example of the Biden administration's complicity in Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 41,000 people and sparked mass starvation.
"The U.S. continues sending the Israeli government the bombs and warplanes it uses to slaughter Palestinians," said Jewish Voice for Peace Action. "Now, another unbearable and horrific massacre of forcibly displaced Palestinians who were sheltering in a tent encampment. STOP ARMING ISRAEL."
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement that "the far-right genocidal Israeli government continues to use its one-ton Biden bombs to massacre Palestinians as if they were sheep for the slaughter, not human beings deserving life and freedom."
"The continued military and financial support for Israel's genocide by President Biden will live in the memories of the survivors of these massacres and in the hearts of their loved ones for generations to come," said Awad. "If the Biden administration does not radically change course now by forcing a cease-fire on Netanyahu, it will be clear that it does not seem to have a shred of humanity left and that no crime will stop it from enabling the Gaza genocide."
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