Palestine

Mattan here. I'm writing to you with urgency–and with hope. The Israeli war machine is escalating. What began as a genocidal campaign in Gaza spiraled into a full-blown regional assault. As Israel expanded its assault into Iran, it became clear to us all: this government has no intention of stopping its endless wars, not just on the Palestinian people but throughout the Middle East. It's not about hostages. It's not about defense. It's about annihilation–and political survival.

But there is another force at work. A growing refusal movement from within Israeli society is threatening the very foundation of this war effort. And with your support, we've been helping lead it. Following the ceasefire with Iran, the mainstream Israeli media is covering the "return to normalcy". But there is nothing normal, not just about the regional assault on Iran, but about the continuation of the genocide in Gaza as well.

And as Israel continues to try to normalize a life of endless warfare and instability, we continue to escalate our tactics and efforts. We need to be ready to support new movements, spontaneous refusers, and civil resistance across the country's streets that are already emerging as the public grows evermore tired from endless warfare.

That is why we are building a new ecosystem of refusal, but we cannot do it without your help. We've raised 60% of our $30,000 goal so far, and we urgently need our supporters across the world to help us close the gap so that we can effectively resist the Israeli war machine.

Over the past month, we've brought you inside the growing infrastructure of resistance we've built, together, in the heart of a militarized state.

We told you how our new initiative, Hitnagdut, is transforming spontaneous dissent into organized refusal, equipping activists with the training, support, and resources they need to grow into a sustained anti-war force.

We told you how Soldiers for Hostages, the movement of reservists publicly refusing to serve, was incubated through RSN support, and how it's now grown into the most visible and politically disruptive refuser initiative in Israel today. Over 325 soldiers have already signed on. And that number is only rising.

And we told you about the emotional toll of refusal, how RSN is building the support structures that keep activists from burning out, breaking down, or giving up.

This isn't just about ending this war. It's about stopping the next one, ending the occupation and bringing freedom, equality and justice to everyone from the river to the sea. Right now, RSN is one of the only international organizations in the world positioned to stop the war machine from within. And we are being stretched to our limits. We've raised 60% of our $30,000 goal.

But we are facing exponential growth in need. More reservists. More youth. More calls for help. And more groups asking us to support their refusal. We have the experience. We have the infrastructure. We just need the resources.

The Israeli government is afraid. They are arresting, fining, and jailing public refusers at a level we haven't seen in decades. But the cracks are already there, and they're widening. Refusal is not just spreading. It's becoming contagious.

Let's keep pushing. Let's reach our $30,000 goal. Let's turn this moment into a movement that can't be stopped.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Executive Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)

Critical aid and support to the people of Gaza—only translatable as this is yet another way we will annihilate you. Johnnie Moore is an Evangelical leader who began his career as Senior Vice President for Communications for Liberty University—the private Evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. [https://electronicintifada.net/content/father-christian-zionism-leaves-building/6923] and went on to found the Kairo Company, a public relations firm based in Glendale, California. The group insists: We get the job done… Whatever it takes. If we’re harping on words, a pause for Kairos’ stated approach:

The IDF said overnight into Monday that dozens of […] settlers rioted in front of a military base in the central West Bank in protest of the shooting of a 14-year-old, whose shooting is under investigation by the military to determine whether he was shot by an Israeli soldier.

According to a military source, several rioters attempted to break into the base.

"Dozens of Israeli civilians gathered at the entrance of the Binyamin Regional Brigade Headquarters. The gathering became violent and some of the civilians at the scene attacked the security forces, sprayed pepper spray at them, and vandalized military vehicles," the IDF said in its statement.

It added that it is aware of a report of one Israeli "who was injured" at the riot.

Israeli border police attempted to disperse the crowd with stun grenades, who had gathered in front of the IDF's Binyamin Brigade headquarters. The source added that dozens of settlers threw stones, spat and used pepper spray on Israeli forces.

Earlier Saturday, the IDF said it is investigating whether a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the West Bank over the weekend was injured by soldiers.

The army said that while the soldiers came under attack in the West Bank by settlers, a platoon commander was caught up in another disturbance by Jews near the settlement Kochav HaShachar, in which rocks were thrown at his vehicle. The officer said he believed the attackers were Palestinians and fired three shots into the air.

The IDF is investigating whether one of the bullets hit the 14-year-old, adding that in any case, he acted according to military procedures and open-fire instructions.

The army also said that the officer involved in the incident said dozens of Jewish rioters in about 10 vehicles passed him, hitting his vehicle while he was driving on the West Bank's Allon Road. Minutes later, when he reached the Kochav Hashahar area, masked settlers threw rocks at him.

The army said that one of the masked men told the officer, "I'll put a bullet in your head."

It added that local rescue services treated the injured 14-year-old at the scene, where it was determined that a rubber bullet had hit him. Only when he arrived at the hospital for treatment did it become clear that it was a [lethal] bullet. The army said [that] it would now examine the bullet to determine whether it was fired from the officer's weapon.

Meanwhile, an Israeli court ordered the release of three of the six detainees involved in the attack on a battalion commander and his soldiers. Still, the police requested a stay of execution on the decision. The remand of a minor was extended by 24 hours. The other two detainees will be brought to court on Monday for a hearing on extending their remands.

The incident was one of several outbreaks of rioting last Friday night by settlers across the West Bank. They followed several days of unrest in the area, beginning with riots by settlers in Kafr Malik last Wednesday, in which three Palestinians were killed by IDF gunfire. On Thursday, an outpost in the Tall Asur region (Hebrew: Baʻal Hatzor), located north of Ramallah, from which, according to the army, some of whose members later joined the rioting.

On Friday, the IDF dispatched a battalion commander and two soldiers after identifying an attempt by settlers to return to the outpost. The army said that about 70 settlers then arrived at the scene and began throwing stones at the soldiers, who tried to disperse them with riot-control equipment.

The rioters threw stones at the soldiers, assaulted and choked them, and punctured their vehicles' tires. The army said that some of the attackers also tried to run over the soldiers, in an incident that lasted about five hours. The IDF emphasized that at no point in this incident was live fire employed by troops.

The commander of Battalion 7114, which was attacked at the outpost, Lt. Col. (res.) G., said the attackers were "the same people who are documented in the arson attacks on Kafr Malik with weapons drawn." At this stage, there have been no arrests on suspicion of involvement in those disturbances.

In addition to the incidents near Kochav Hashachar and at the Baʻal Hatzor outpost, the words “revenge” were sprayed on a police station in Beit El, and other graffiti was found on an IDF vehicle. Friday afternoon, a military vehicle belonging to an air force officer was set on fire near Kochav Hashachar.

The IDF noted that there had been a 40 percent decrease in nationalist incidents in 2024 from the previous year, but the number of serious incidents increased from 54 to 83 cases in 2024.

The mayor of the southern […] city of Arad announced on Friday his intention to ban the sale of Haaretz in the city, following an exposé featuring Israeli soldiers who testified that they received orders to shoot unarmed civilians in Gaza to keep them away from food distribution hubs, despite posing no threat.

The report, authored by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, sparked global outrage. The IDF responded by saying "lessons have been learned," while denying the allegations.

The mayor of Arad, Yair Maayan, shared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz’s response to the investigation, calling the report a “blood libel.”

Maayan wrote: “Again, Haaretz libeled the country in the service of the terrorists […] They invent a false blood libel against IDF soldiers, providing antisemitic material to the entire world with false libel. Israel’s enemies are distributing the slanderous Haaretz libel worldwide. I wish them to end up like the spies who slandered the land of Israel. Heaven will make them pay for it in kind. We will forbid bringing the newspaper that abets terrorists into the city of Arad.”

Haaretz editor Aluf Benn responded to Maayan’s announcement, saying, “We will continue to loyally serve our readers in Arad, just like everywhere else.”

Maayan has been Arad's mayor on behalf of the Likud party since March 2024. Previously, he served as director general of the Authority for Regulating Bedouin Communities in the Negev, as well as director general of the Jerusalem municipality and of the National Infrastructures Ministry.

During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term (1996–1999), Maayan was an adviser for settlement affairs at the Prime Minister's Office. He established the Kedem Premilitary Academy at the West Bank Nokdim settlement, where he lived from 1994 to 2016.

Maayan provided no evidence or detailed response to refute the IDF soldiers' testimonies in the Haaretz report about the shooting near Gaza aid.

In Friday’s post, he also falsely claimed that Haaretz described Hamas’ élite Nukhba militants — “who murdered babies, raped and shot young women, murdered women and the elderly” — as “freedom fighters.”

Earlier in June, a panel of three High Court justices issued a conditional injunction, instructing the Israeli government to explain why it should not annul its November decision to sever commercial ties with Haaretz.

The petitions — now consolidated into a single hearing — were filed by Haaretz Group and the Journalists Association on behalf of the Haaretz–TheMarker journalists' union. They seek to annul the government's decision and prior instructions from the ministries' directors-general.

In April 2025, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ruled that the directors general of the ministries acted unlawfully in halting commercial relations with Haaretz. Deputy attorney generals ordered ministers and directors general to reconsider their instructions on the matter.

When my neighbor told me an Iranian missile landed on our street in Bat Yam I was in disbelief. Only after checking the news and seeing our community in rubble did I start to comprehend the reality. When she was able to check on our apartments her words shook me even further: "I don't want you to see these photos, but let's just say we can't live there anymore."

My home was something I took immense pride in. A soft place to land in a world constantly in motion. I carefully chose my furniture, my rugs, even the way light came through the windows. That home, like so many others in Israel, is now gone. I'm exceptionally lucky that my brave neighbor risked her life to go back inside and save some of my documents — baby photos, IDs, the little things that tether you to your own existence. Many others weren't as fortunate. The army and government refused to help us rescue these last remnants of life from before the Iran-Israel war.

How is it that we, civilians, are constantly forced to put our own lives on the line to help one another and protect our communities? And yet simultaneously, our voices are ignored in political corridors. We, the "home front" are the backbone of society, and yet left invisible, treated as expendable, our suffering minimized perpetually.

Many friends are posting photos of what's left: shattered windows, crumbled storefronts, smoke-stained staircases. I see dreams flattened into dust — on both sides of the border. From people in Israel to those in Gaza and now Iran, the pain is everywhere, spiraling inward and outward. Homes are destroyed by bombs, by fear, by failure of leadership. And we're left to mourn, to scream into the void while the people in power treat war like a campaign strategy. They say the "home front" is part of the war. Well if that's true, then I ask: why has it been abandoned?

The truth is that our leaders are more interested in political theatrics than in genuine, compassionate leadership. I refuse to accept a future where accountability is a luxury. We deserve leadership that sees beyond power plays and recognizes that real security lies in social trust and community resilience.

It should be obvious that when a government builds its strength on the ruins of our homes, on the shattered dreams of our people, then it has truly lost — regardless of any military aims achieved or any nuclear facilities destroyed. But that concept doesn't seem to land in this Holy Land.

Even in the wake of October 7, it wasn't the government that stepped up. It was us — civilians. It was young people delivering aid across towns. It was volunteers running logistical coordination that the state should have handled. I was one of them, working tirelessly to ensure that those in immediate danger weren't alone. This shouldn't have been our job. But we did it anyway, because we care about each other. Because that's what community means.

There’s no world in which Israel’s war machine is sustainable: not morally, not economically, not environmentally. What we need is a national reckoning. We need accountability. And we need a seat at the table — not as victims, not as statistics, but as citizens with voices, ideas and the right to live a decent life without being collateral damage in someone else’s power game.

The compensation packages offered to those displaced by yet another volley of missiles are honestly insulting. They don't account for the actual cost of rebuilding a life. They certainly don't account for trauma, loss of income or the unquantifiable ache of seeing everything you've built wiped away overnight. What do you do when your house, your safe space, becomes a hole?

I don't want to suffer anymore because our world is run by man-children like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I don't want anyone — Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian — to bury their children because our leaders can't let go of their egos. This is my last straw. And I know I'm not alone.

I've spent the last few years working at the intersection of climate justice and peacebuilding. I believe in healing the earth alongside its people. Even before this war began, I was advocating for intersectional environmentalism across borders, for regional cooperation grounded in trust and survival. But now, from abroad — displaced by closed airspace and closed resources — I find myself writing not as an activist, but as someone who has just lost her home to a war I never asked for. A war that feels less like security and more like a personal price tag slapped on each one of us who still dares to hope for peace.

I wish this were exceptional. But in Israel, this is the pattern. Netanyahu manufactures conflict like clockwork — because chaos keeps him in office and the courtrooms at bay.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are just trying to live. My heart aches for the countless families forced to watch their lives unravel. Instead I envision a future where governments invest in rebuilding not just physical structures, but also trust and solidarity, the true infrastructure of peace. If we are to build a society that values justice, dignity and sustainability, we must begin by recognizing that every citizen has a stake in our collective future.

We must demand a voice at the decision-making table. To insist that our lived experiences, our tragic losses and our hard-won moments of communal solidarity inform the policies that shape our lives. I refuse to be cast aside as an afterthought.

If this horrific tragedy has taught me anything it's that we must reclaim our home — and not just its bricks and mortar, but its soul.

At least 34 Palestinians were killed across Gaza by Israeli strikes overnight into Saturday, health officials in the Strip say, as Palestinians face a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and cease-fire prospects inch closer.

The strikes began late Friday and continued into Saturday morning, among others killing 12 people at the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, and eight more living in apartments, according to staff at the Al-Shifa hospital where the bodies were brought.

Six other Palestinians were killed in southern Gaza when a strike hit their tent in Muwasi, once considered a safe zone by the IDF, according to the hospital.

The […] attacks came as U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday a cease-fire in Gaza could be imminent, telling reporters, "We think within the next week we're gonna get a cease-fire."

"I'm often asked — I think it's close," Trump said. "I just spoke with some of the people involved. It's a terrible situation."

Trump also emphasized the scope of U.S. humanitarian aid to Gaza, as the U.S.-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is responsible for the vast majority of aid in the territory. "We're supplying a lot of money and a lot of food to that area. We have to. In theory, we're not involved, but we're involved. People are dying," he said. "I look at those crowds of people with no food, no anything. We're the ones getting it there."

On Friday, Haaretz reported that […] soldiers who spoke with the newspaper said that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.

Six […] settlers were arrested overnight into Saturday after assaulting IDF reservists, including a battalion commander at the rank of lieutenant colonel, near the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik, according to a joint statement from the military and police.

The incident occurred days after three Palestinians, residents of the West Bank village, were killed by IDF gunfire.

Security officials told Haaretz they believe approximately 40 settlers entered a closed military zone near the village, north of Ramallah, from a newly established outpost in the Tall Asur region (Hebrew: Baʻal Hatzor).

According to a security source, the settlers threw stones at the soldiers, beat and choked them, and punctured the tires of army vehicles. The troops used crowd dispersal measures in an attempt to regain control, and one soldier fired three warning shots into the air.

On Wednesday, three Palestinians were killed and seven were wounded by Israeli army gunfire in Kafr Malik near Ramallah.

According to the IDF, dozens of settlers set fire to property in the village and threw stones at residents. Israeli forces who arrived at the scene said that several village residents fired at them and threw stones, prompting the soldiers to return fire, which killed three and wounded several others.

The IDF said five settlers were arrested and handed over to the police. All five were released the following morning after being cleared of any suspicion, according to the […] Police.

On Thursday, following the funerals of the Palestinians killed in Kafr Malik, dozens of settlers attacked residents of the nearby village of Turmus Ayya. Palestinians from neighboring villages arrived in an attempt to repel the attackers, who tried to enter homes and set fire to the fields.

"Dozens of young men stood on the road, forming a human wall," a Turmus Ayya resident told Haaretz, adding that the soldiers only fired warning shots into the air after the Palestinians began pushing the settlers back.

ETA:

Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said following Friday night's settler attack on IDF reservists that he "strongly condemns" the assault.

"I call on law enforcement authorities to act immediately, identify all those involved and bring them to justice, just as would have been done anywhere else," he said.

"Israel will not allow violence or the taking of the law into one's own hands," he added.

(Source.)

Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.

Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.

One soldier described the situation as a total breakdown of the Israel Defense Forces' ethical codes in Gaza.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, 549 people have been killed near aid centers and in areas where residents were waiting for UN food trucks since May 27. Over 4,000 have been wounded, but the exact number of those killed or injured by IDF fire remains unclear.

(Why do the mainstream media keep saying that the health ministry is ‘Hamas-run’? Are they contractually obligated to say that?)

Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism — a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war — to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid centers began operating in the Strip at the end of May. The circumstances of the foundation's establishment and its funding are murky: it is known to have been set up by Israel in coordination with U.S. evangelicals and private security contractors. Its current CEO is an evangelical leader close to U.S. President Donald Trump and […] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The GHF operates four food distribution sites — three in southern Gaza and one in the center — known in the IDF as "rapid distribution centers" (Mahpazim). They are staffed by American and Palestinian workers and secured by the IDF from a distance of several hundred meters.

Thousands, and at times tens of thousands, of Gazans arrive daily to collect food from these sites.

Contrary to the foundation's initial promises, distribution is chaotic, with crowds rushing the piles of boxes. Since the rapid distribution centers opened, Haaretz has counted 19 shooting incidents near them. While the shooters' identities are not always clear, the IDF does not permit armed individuals in these humanitarian zones without its knowledge.

The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning. According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night — ahead of the opening — it's possible that some civilians couldn't see the boundaries of the designated area.

"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."

The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish — the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".

IDF officers told Haaretz that the army does not allow the public in Israel or abroad to see footage of what takes place around the food distribution sites. According to them, the army is satisfied that the GHF's operations have prevented a total collapse of international legitimacy for continuing the war. They believe the IDF has managed to turn Gaza into a "backyard," especially since the war with Iran began.

"Gaza doesn't interest anyone anymore," said a reservist who completed another round of duty in the northern Strip this week. "It's become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It's not even an 'unfortunate incident,' like they used to say."

An officer serving in the security detail of a distribution center described the IDF's approach as deeply flawed: "Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire — that's highly problematic, to say the least," he told Haaretz. "It's neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells."

The officer explained that the security on the sites is organized into several tiers. Inside the distribution centers and the "corridor" leading to them are American workers, and the IDF is not permitted to operate in that space. A more external layer is made up of Palestinian supervisors, some of them armed and affiliated with the Abu Shabab militia.

The IDF's security perimeter includes tanks, snipers, and mortars whose purpose, according to the officer, is to protect those present and ensure the aid distribution can take place.

"At night, we open fire to signal to the population that this is a combat zone and they mustn't come near," the officer said. "Once," he recounted, "the mortars stopped firing, and we saw people starting to approach. So we resumed fire to make it clear they weren't allowed to. In the end, one of the shells landed on a group of people."

In other cases, he said, "We fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades. There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog. It wasn't intentional, but these things happen."

He noted that there were also casualties and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents. "A combat brigade doesn't have the tools to handle a civilian population in a war zone. Firing mortars to keep hungry people away is neither professional nor humane. I know there are Hamas operatives among them, but there are also people who simply want to receive aid. As a country, we have a responsibility to ensure that happens safely," the officer said.

The officer pointed to another issue with the distribution centers — their lack of consistency. Residents don't know when each center will open, which adds to the pressure on the sites and contributes to harm to civilians.

I don't know who's making the decisions, but we give instructions to the population and then either don't follow through with them or change them," he said.

"Earlier this month, there were cases where we were notified a message had gone out saying the center would open in the afternoon, and people showed up early in the morning to be first in line for food. Because they arrived too early, the distribution was canceled that day."

Contractors as sheriffs

According to accounts from commanders and fighters, the IDF was supposed to maintain a safe distance from Palestinian population areas and food distribution points. However, the actions of the forces on the ground do not align with the operational plans.

"Today, any private contractor working in Gaza with engineering equipment receives 5,000 [roughly $1,500] shekels for every house they demolish," said a veteran fighter. "They're making a fortune. From their perspective, any moment where they don't demolish houses is a loss of money, and the forces have to secure their work. The contractors, who act like a kind of sheriff, demolish wherever they want along the entire front."

As a result, the fighter added, the contractors' demolition campaign brings them, along with their relatively small security details, close to distribution points or along the routes used by aid trucks.

“In order [for the contractors] to protect themselves, a shooting incident breaks out, and people are killed,” he said. “These are areas where Palestinians are allowed to be — we’re the ones who moved closer and decided [they] endangered us. So, for a contractor to make another 5,000 shekels and take down a house, it’s deemed acceptable to kill people who are only looking for food.”

A senior officer whose name repeatedly comes up in testimonies about the shootings near aid sites is Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of the IDF's Division 252. Haaretz previously reported how Vach turned the Netzarim corridor into a deadly route, endangered soldiers on the ground, and was suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorization.

Now, an officer in the division says Vach decided to disperse gatherings of Palestinians waiting for UN aid trucks by opening fire. "This is Vach's policy," the officer said, "but many of the commanders and soldiers accepted it without question. [The Palestinians] are not supposed to be there, so the idea is to make sure they clear out, even if they're just there for food."

Vach's division is not the only one operating in the area, and it's possible that other officers also gave orders to fire at people seeking aid.

A reserve tank soldier who recently served with Division 252 in northern Gaza confirmed the reports and explained the IDF's "deterrence procedure" for dispersing civilians who gather in violation of military orders.

"The teenagers waiting for the trucks hide behind dirt mounds and rush them as they pass or stop at distribution points," he said. "We usually see them from hundreds of meters away; it's not a situation where they pose a threat to us."

In one incident, the soldier was instructed to fire a shell toward a crowd gathered near the coastline. "Technically, it's supposed to be warning fire — either to push people back or stop them from advancing," he said. "But lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders."

In that case, some people began to flee after the shell was fired, and according to the soldier, other forces subsequently opened fire on them. "If it's meant to be a warning shot, and we see them running back to Gaza, why shoot at them?" he asked. "Sometimes we're told they're still hiding, and we need to fire in their direction because they haven't left. But it's obvious they can't leave if the moment they get up and run, we open fire."

The soldier said this has become routine. "You know it's not right. You feel it's not right — that the commanders here are taking the law into their own hands. But Gaza is a parallel universe. You move on quickly. The truth is, most people don't even stop to think about it."

Earlier this week, soldiers from Division 252 opened fire at an intersection where civilians were waiting for aid trucks. A commander on the ground gave the order to fire directly at the center of the junction, resulting in the deaths of eight civilians, including teenagers. The incident was brought to the attention of former Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, but so far, aside from a preliminary review, he has taken no action and has not demanded an explanation from Vach regarding the high number of fatalities in his sector.

"I was at a similar event. From what we heard, more than ten people were killed there," said another senior reserve officer commanding forces in the area. "When we asked why they opened fire, we were told it was an order from above and that the civilians had posed a threat to the troops. I can say with certainty that the people were not close to the forces and did not endanger them. It was pointless — they were just killed, for nothing. This thing called killing innocent people — it's been normalized. We were constantly told there are no noncombatants in Gaza, and apparently that message sank in among the troops."

A senior officer familiar with the fighting in Gaza believes this marks a further deterioration in the IDF's moral standards. "The power that senior field commanders wield in relation to General Staff leadership threatens the chain of command," he said.

According to him, "My greatest fear is that the shooting and harm to civilians in Gaza aren't the result of operational necessity or poor judgment, but rather the product of an ideology held by field commanders, which they pass down to the troops as an operational plan."

Shelling civilians

In recent weeks, the number of fatalities near food distribution areas has risen sharply — 57 on June 11, 59 on June 17, and around 50 on June 24, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. In response, a discussion was held at Southern Command, where it emerged that troops had begun dispersing crowds using artillery shells.

"They talk about using artillery on a junction full of civilians as if it's normal," said a military source who attended the meeting. "An entire conversation about whether it's right or wrong to use artillery, without even asking why that weapon was needed in the first place. What concerns everyone is whether it'll hurt our legitimacy to keep operating in Gaza. The moral aspect is practically nonexistent. No one stops to ask why dozens of civilians looking for food are being killed every day."

Another senior officer familiar with the fighting in Gaza said the normalization of killing civilians has often encouraged firing at them near the aid distribution centers.

"The fact that live fire is directed at a civilian population — whether with artillery, tanks, snipers, or drones — goes against everything the army is supposed to stand for," he said, criticizing the decisions made on the ground. "Why are people collecting food being killed just because they stepped out of line, or because some commander doesn't like that they're cutting in? Why have we reached a point where a teenager is willing to risk his life just to pull a sack of rice off a truck? And that's who we're firing artillery at?"

In addition to IDF fire, military sources say some of the fatalities near the aid distribution centers were caused by gunfire from militias that the army supports and arms. According to one officer, the IDF continues to back the Abu Shabab group and other factions.

"There are many groups that oppose Hamas — Abu Shabab went several steps further," he said. "They control territory that Hamas doesn't enter, and the IDF encourages that."

Another officer remarked, "I'm stationed there, and even I no longer know who's shooting at whom."

In a closed-door meeting this week with senior officials from the Military Advocate General's Office, held in light of the daily deaths of dozens of civilians near aid zones, the legal officials instructed that the incidents be investigated by the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism. This body, established after the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, is tasked with examining cases where there is suspected violation of the laws of war, to fend off international demands to investigate IDF soldiers for alleged war crimes.

During the meeting, senior legal officials said global criticism over the killing of civilians is mounting. Senior officers in the IDF and Southern Command, however, claimed the cases are isolated and that the gunfire was directed at suspects who posed a threat to the troops.

A source who attended the meeting told Haaretz that representatives of the Military Advocate General's Office rejected the IDF's claims. According to them, the arguments do not hold up against the facts on the ground. "The claim that these are isolated cases doesn't align with incidents in which grenades were dropped from the air and mortars and artillery were fired at civilians," said one legal official. "This isn't about a few people being killed — we're talking about dozens of casualties every day."

Although the Military Advocate General instructed the Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism to examine recent shooting incidents, these represent only a small portion of the cases in which hundreds of uninvolved civilians were killed.

Senior IDF officials expressed frustration that the Southern Command has failed to investigate these incidents thoroughly and is disregarding civilian deaths in Gaza. According to military sources, Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman typically conducts only preliminary inquiries, relying mostly on the accounts of field commanders. He has not taken disciplinary action against officers whose soldiers harmed civilians, despite clear violations of IDF orders and the laws of war.

An IDF spokesperson responded: "Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that starves the Gazan population and endangers them to maintain its rule in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does everything in its power to prevent the successful distribution of food in Gaza and to disrupt humanitarian aid. The IDF allows the American civil society organization (GHF) to operate independently and distribute aid to Gaza residents. The IDF operates near the new distribution areas to enable distribution while continuing operational activities in the Strip."

"As part of their operational conduct in the vicinity of the main access roads to the distribution centers, IDF forces are conducting systematic learning processes to improve their operational response in the area and minimize, as much as possible, potential friction between the population and IDF forces. Recently, forces worked to reorganize the area by placing new fences, signage, opening additional routes, and more. Following incidents where there were reports of harm to civilians arriving at distribution centers, in-depth investigations were conducted, and instructions were given to forces on the ground based on lessons learned. These incidents were referred for examination by the General Staff's debriefing mechanism."

On Monday of this week, [the] Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip published an updated list of those killed in the war, a 1,227-page chart, arranged from youngest to oldest. The Arabic-language document includes the deceased person's full name, the names of the father and grandfather, date of birth and ID number.

Unlike previous lists, this compilation notes the precise age of children who were under the age of one year when they were killed. Mahmoud al-Maranakh and seven more children died on the same day they were born. Four more children were killed on the day after they entered the world, five others lived to the age of two days. Not until page 11, following 486 names, does the name appear of the first child who was more than six months old when he was killed.

The names of the children under the age of 18 cover 381 pages and amount to 17,121 children, all told. Of the total of 55,202 dead people, 9,126 were women.

Israeli spokespersons, journalists and influencers reject with knee-jerk disgust the data of the Palestinian Health Ministry, claiming that it's inflated and exaggerated. But more and more international experts are stating that not only is this list, with all the horror it embodies, reliable — but that it may even be very conservative in relation to reality.

Prof. Michael Spagat, an economist at Holloway College at the University of London, is a world-class expert on mortality in violent conflicts. He's written dozens of articles on the wars in Iraq, Syria and Kosovo, among others. This week he and a team of researchers published the most comprehensive study to date on the subject of mortality in the Gaza Strip.

With the aid of Palestinian political scientist Dr. Khalil Shikaki, the team surveyed 2,000 households in Gaza, comprising almost 10,000 people. They concluded that, as of January 2025, some 75,200 people died a violent death in Gaza during the war, the vast majority caused by Israeli munitions.

At that time, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip placed the number of those killed since the war's start at 45,660. In other words, the Health Ministry's data undercounted the true total by about 40 percent.

The study hasn't yet undergone peer review — it was published as a "preprint" — but its results are very similar to those of a study conducted by completely different methods and published last January by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That group also estimated the disparity between the Health Ministry data and the true figures to be about 40 percent.

Another report, published this week by Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill, a history doctoral student at the London School of Economics, carried out for the organization Action on Armed Violence, also cites larger numbers than those of the Gaza Health Ministry. Cockerill and his team examined the names of 1,000 children out of 3,000 that the Health Ministry erased from its lists, and concluded that, despite the erasure, solid evidence exists that most of those children were killed.

The study by Spagat and his colleagues also tries, for the first time, to answer the question of excess mortality in the Strip. In other words, how many people died from the indirect effects of war: hunger, cold, diseases that could not be treated because of the destruction of the health system, and other factors.

During the first year of the war, various estimates about the excess mortality rate were published by researchers and physicians, most of which turned out to be highly exaggerated. According to the new survey, the number of excess deaths until January stood at 8,540. That's a huge number by any standard, but low compared to the estimates that tens of thousands would die in Gaza due to hunger and disease.

Haaretz spoke to a number of experts on this subject. The conventional answer is that before the war, the health of the Gaza Strip's population and the condition of the health-care system there were relatively good, certainly compared to other places plagued with ongoing conflicts, such as Africa or Yemen. For example, the vaccination rate in Gaza was very high, in part thanks to a multi-year effort by UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency.

Another explanation the researchers offer for what was previously a relatively low excess mortality rate is Gaza's social and communal structure. The family support networks proved their effectiveness in times of hunger and deprivation, and apparently saved many Gazans from death. Spagat also notes favorably the activity of the UN and the other aid organizations, which during the war's first year were successful in feeding the population and looking after the state of its health.

But all those protections, Spagat emphasizes, were effective only during that first year. During the past half-year, it's been evident that the Gazan population increasingly lacks the ability to protect itself against excess mortality.

For one, the displacement of 90 percent of the Strip's residents and the collapse of the health system led to a decline in the vaccination rate. Additionally, exposure to cold, heat, accidents, crowding and diseases in the tent cities in which the majority of Gaza's inhabitants now live has left them increasingly vulnerable.

The shortage of food and the neutralization of a large proportion of the UN's activity in Gaza, in the wake of the full siege of 78 days (March 2–May 19), and the partial siege that has continued for more than a month since then, are causing a deficiency of vitamins, minerals and proteins, affecting Gazans' immune systems. The ongoing destruction of the hospitals and the rest of the Strip's medical infrastructure has increased extensively since the resumption of hostilities.

The conclusion from these developments is that it's very likely that Gaza will continue to experience waves of excess mortality in the near future. "I would speculate that the ratio of nonviolent to violent deaths has gone up since [the January study]," Spagat says.

In the 'Africa league'

In the meantime, even without the anticipated future waves of excess mortality, the combination of casualties from violence and those who died from diseases and hunger led to the death of 83,740 people prior to January, taking into account the survey and the excess mortality. Since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 10,000 people have been killed, and that doesn't include those in the category of excess mortality. The upshot is that even if the war hasn't yet crossed the line of 100,000 dead, it's very close.

These data, says Prof. Spagat, position the war in the Gaza Strip as one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century. Even if the overall number of war victims in Syria, Ukraine and Sudan is higher in each case, Gaza is apparently in first place in terms of the ratio of combatants to noncombatants killed, as well as in terms of rate of death relative to population size.

According to the survey's data, which is consistent with those of the Palestinian Health Ministry, 56 percent of those killed have been either children up to the age of 18, or women. That's an exceptional figure when compared with almost every other conflict since World War II.

Data compiled and published by Spagat indicates that the proportion of women and children killed via a violent death in Gaza is more than double the proportion in almost every other recent conflict, including, for example, the civil wars in Kosovo (20 percent), northern Ethiopia (9 percent), Syria (20 percent), Colombia (21 percent), Iraq (17 percent) and Sudan (23 percent).

Another extreme datum found in the study is the proportion of those killed relative to the population. "I think we're probably at something like 4 percent of the population killed," Spagat says, adding, "I'm not sure that there's another case in the 21st century that's reached that high.

"I should have another look at the new data coming out of Sudan, and there's controversy regarding the Democratic Republic of Congo. But we are in the league of Africa, not the Middle East." That's not good company.

Despite these numbers, Spagat is in no hurry to employ the term "genocide," which has been adopted by a large part of the international community of conflict researchers about the war in Gaza. "I don't think this survey can give a verdict [on this question]," he says. It's still necessary to prove Israel's intention to perpetrate genocide, he adds, but "I think that South Africa had a pretty strong case to make" at the International Court of Justice.

The best scenario, he says, is that what's taking place in Gaza amounts to "only" ethnic cleansing.

In contrast to the richness of the data, offered by the official ministry lists and the research studies, that corroborate the numbers of the Gaza Health Ministry, the silence of official Israeli spokespeople about the number of those killed is striking. The October 7 war is the first in which the Israel Defense Forces has not provided estimates of the number of enemy civilians killed.

The only figure that the IDF Spokesperson's Unit and other official Israeli spokespersons repeat is of 20,000 terrorists from Hamas and other organizations who were killed. That figure is not backed up by a list of names or other proof or sourcing.

According to Spagat, there was an attempt to count the number of names of terrorists that were published by Israel. His team managed to arrive at a few hundred, but it's difficult to compile a list of even a thousand, he says.

Cockerill, too, maintains that that number is not credible. "Based on an overwhelmingly consistent historical pattern," he says, "we know that [in general,] at least twice as many combatants will be wounded as killed. So if Israel says 20,000 have been killed, we assume at least 40,000 have been injured, and it doesn't make sense that Hamas had 60,000 militants."

Cockerill says that Israel is “engineering the combatants figure” by two main means. “One is by redefining civilians who work for the government as combatants, the other is ‘kill zones,’” in which everyone who is killed is considered a combatant.

One way or the other, even if we accept the official figure, it still comes down to a ratio of four noncombatants killed for every Hamas militant. That's very far from the statements of Israeli spokespersons, who talk about a 1:1 proportion.

The recent research raises a question: If the number of dead is indeed significantly greater than what's reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, where are the bodies? The ministry's records are based primarily on bodies that have been brought to hospital morgues.

Spagat and other researchers think that thousands of people are still buried under the rubble of tens of thousands of buildings in the Strip, and therefore their names do not appear on the lists. Some people were close to the epicenter of explosions and nothing remains of them. But that cannot account fully for the disparity between the Health Ministry and the survey.

Another explanation suggested by Spagat is that families who lost loved ones simply buried them without bringing the bodies to the hospitals and without reporting the deaths to the Health Ministry. "Some families just don't want to report or are unable to report," Korkil avers. "Maybe the parents die, and the children, and an 8-year-old remains. How is the 8-year-old going to report this?"

'Can I die, please?'

At Nasser Hospital, in the city of Khan Yunis, the statistics take on real form. "You cope every day with cases of trauma, blast injuries and shrapnel," says Dr. Goher Rahbour, a British surgeon who returned home last week from a month at the Gaza hospital. "Every two or three days, there was a mass-casualty event, and then the ER was totally flooded, complete chaos."

One case that remains engraved indelibly in Rahbour’s memory is that of a 15-year-old boy whose entire family was killed and who had himself been wounded and left paralyzed. “He has shrapnel going through the spinal cord, so he is paraplegic, which means he’s got no sensation below the waist or the belly button.

“He’s lived in Gaza for 15 years, he knows what’s coming next, what’s waiting in Gaza for a 15-year-old boy in a wheelchair. No family, no physiotherapy, all these things that we take for granted.

“So he goes around in the hospital and says to us, ‘Can I die, please?’”

Even though Israel has for the past month been allowing the entry into Gaza of a limited supply of food via the UN and the Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the nutrition situation in the Strip continues to worsen. Last month, 5,452 children were hospitalized because of severe malnutrition, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“People are simply gaunt,” says Rahabour. “You can see the bones on their face, the bent appearance, the protruding jawbones. For a month, I haven’t seen fruits, vegetables, meat or fish here.

"They have formula which they can give to children from the age of six months to five years. So I asked what happens if a hungry child of seven arrives. Sorry, we have to say bye-bye and send them home to die."

Dr. Rahabour and other physicians in the Strip say that the general health situation of the population is deteriorating steadily, because of the hunger and displacement. "You see that the body has no wound-healing capabilities," says Dr. Victoria Rose, a British surgeon who was a volunteer in the Gaza Strip until three weeks ago.

"One of the first things you lose in malnutrition is your ability to fight infection," she adds. "The children have very little healing ability left, and they're living in tents. There's no sanitation, there's no sewage [treatment] or anything like that. Everything has been destroyed and clean water is running out. All of that combined means that you just can't get anything clean, so it can't heal without infection."

If the hunger itself were not enough, hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks by Israeli gunfire while on their way to collect food from the distribution centers.

Two weeks after Goher Rahabour arrived at Nasser Hospital, on June 1, he observed that the profile of the wounds had changed. Instead of blast and detonation injuries, many more people began arriving with bullets in their body, after Israeli troops opened fire at the starved crowd.

On the first day, he recalls, 150 or 200 wounded people arrived, in addition to 30 dead. “With some of them you can see that they were shot while they lay on the ground, trying to evade being shot. Most of them were young men, but there was one woman in her early 30s, who was 24 weeks pregnant. The bullet went through the fetus. She survived but needed a hysterectomy, so no more children. When we opened the abdomen, we could see the hand and the formed foot of the dead fetus.

“I'm just staring, like what the hell, but the [Palestinian] anesthetist, gynecologist and scrub nurse are carrying on as though this is normal. It's because they've seen this again and again. You just become numb to it.

“It’s as if it’s just normal, you know?”

I miss Khan Younis. I feel a kinship with the city and its people. Its eastern areas are agricultural, and its western areas are densely populated, with houses tightly packed together. The southern areas are quieter, with houses surrounded by green spaces.

I have to say that I am anxious about what will come next. We are trying to find a place to stay that will give us more privacy. My emotions are never settled.

Sometimes, when people here hear the shelling in Khan Younis, they close their ears with their hands and can’t bear the sound. One time, I asked my aunt, “What would you do if you heard the sounds of tanks the way I did?”

Transportation for Palestinians in the Bethlehem and Hebron governorates to Jericho in the Jordan Valley would go through a new underground tunnel [that the régime] is planning to build to bypass the wilderness east of Jerusalem. What this means is that the entire space between Jerusalem and the edges of the Jordan Valley would become accessible to Israelis only.

The project, approved by the Israeli government earlier this month, will cost $90 billion, which Israel plans to cover from a special fund it feeds with pirated Palestinian customs money collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). These funds are ostensibly meant for development projects for the Palestinian population in the West Bank, but the project isn’t about the improvement of Palestinian transportation — it’s about the consolidation of Israeli control over the geographic area of the West Bank east of Jerusalem. The Fabric of Life project would effectively ban any Palestinian circulation in this zone.

The larger context of the Fabric of Life is only one piece in Israel’s larger “Greater Jerusalem” development plans, which Israel first laid out in the early 2000s under then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The idea is simple; connect East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1981 and treats like a part of its territory, to a series of […] settlements which extend east of the city through the Jerusalem desert, reaching the very edge of the Jordan Valley. This would transform the some 12-square kilometers in the West Bank targeted by this project into an extension of the eastern limits of Jerusalem. On Israeli maps, this is known as the E-1 area, which stands for “East-1.”

This strip of land, which is 35 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide, would become a part of Israel proper, cutting through the West Bank from West to East.

In 2007, Israel approved another similar project, dubbed the “Sovereignty Road,” which includes building another underground tunnel that runs under Israel’s Road-1 connecting the southern West Bank to the center, making it the only available route to Palestinians and clearing the road above ground for exclusive Israeli use.

As the Sovereignty Road bypasses the eastern periphery of Jerusalem, which represents Palestinian continuity between the center and the south, the Fabric of Life would bypass the wilderness to the east, which represents Palestinian continuity between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. Together, both projects would drain the entire West Bank area east of Jerusalem of Palestinian circulation, isolating the Palestinian communities still living there.

(Spotted here.)

The killings are the latest in a wave of daily carnage, targeting hungry Palestinians who continue to make the perilous journey to the food distribution points. Critics have slammed the sites as “human slaughterhouses” amid a worsening hunger and looming famine crisis.

Israeli attacks on Palestinians near aid centres have killed more than 400 people and wounded about 1,000 since the GHF began distributions on May 27.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Israel is engaged in its conflict with Iran while it also continues “the killing of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip with deadly air strikes on tents or residential homes”.

“Hungry crowds gather at food distribution centres in Rafah or the Netzarim Corridor. So far, 13 aid seekers have been shot dead today. They are among 30 people killed by Israel’s military since the early hours,” Mahmoud said.

Meanwhile, the Wafa news agency reported that at least four people were killed and several others wounded by an Israeli air attack on a residential building in northern Gaza’s Jabalia.

Three others, all brothers, were killed by Israeli forces while they were inspecting their damaged home in the al-Salateen area of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

In central Gaza, al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp announced it had received the bodies of two Palestinians and treated 35 others injured in Israeli strikes on crowds gathered along Salah al-Din Street.

Sixteen of the wounded were in critical condition and transferred to other hospitals in the central governorate, Wafa said.

Israeli artillery also shelled the Shujayea neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

The latest casualty figures bring the number of people [confirmed] killed in the territory since the start of Israel’s 20-month war more than 56,000, with at least 131,559 wounded.

ETA: The IOF just exterminated twenty-five more Gazans.

🔹Iran's powerful rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Haifa in the Israel have caused a wave of panic and concern among Israeli, to the point that they are trying to leave the country by any means and reach other countries. This is happening despite the Israel authorities announcing last week that no one has the right to leave the Israel.

🔹Although Israeli authorities have strictly prohibited Israelis from leaving the occupied territories – except for traders, diplomats and foreign tourists – many israelis are trying to pose as foreign tourists and insist that they must return to their homes abroad

Mattan here. I am a refuser, I spent several months in an Israeli prison at the age of 20 for refusing to serve the […] occupation, and today I serve as the Executive Director of Refuser Solidarity Network. We are in the midst of an unprecedented refuser wave, with hundreds of soldiers refusing to carry out war crimes in Gaza.

The stakes are only rising: the […] régime has resorted to expanding its regional war of annihilation to Iran. Refusers are our best chance to end the assaults on Gaza and Iran — refusal waves have ended Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people at least twice in the past: the end of the first Lebanon war and the withdrawal in 2000, and the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Refuser Solidarity Network is the only international group dedicated to supporting Israeli refuser movements, and has been for 20 years. We are financing legal aid, press and social media campaigns that amplify their refusal, training and mentorship, and urgently need your support to keep up with the momentum. We achieved 54% of our mid-year goal. Help us reach our goal of $30,000 so we can continue to expand the essential support we provide to refusers to end the genocide today.

In a militarized society like Israel, built on mandatory service, refusal has always been a powerful way to force the government to back down. There can be no occupation with no soldiers. Today, we at Refusal Solidarity Network are aggressively supporting those leading the latest wave of refusal and fighting to bring the genocide to an end.

Our ability to support emerging groups of refusers is expanding. We successfully backed several reservists in forming the group Soldiers for Hostages over the last year. However the need to support crucial anti-war initiatives grows even faster, especially as Israel expands its regional assault to include Iran, we need more support from our friends around the world.

Beyond funding for lawyers, for press and social media campaigns, we are helping them to build the necessary infrastructure to organize and build a community of resistance to the genocide in Gaza and imperialist war in Iran. Refusers numbers are currently growing exponentially, and if they continue to grow, they will end this war. Refuser movements have already done so in the past, and can do it again today, but they urgently need your support.

Israeli refusal movements were at the center of putting a stop to Israeli atrocities. This has happened at least twice: in 1982, helping to end the Israel–Lebanon war and in 2002–2005, helping to force Israel's pullout from Gaza in response to the Second Intifada. Reservists are the backbone of the Israeli military, from ensuring the army's day-to-day functioning to flying Israel's warplanes to bomb Gaza. The army cannot carry on with its daily operations without them, which is why refusal is such an effective form of resistance that we must support at all costs.

The most powerful kind of support that our global supporters can offer them right now is long-term, for the years and decades to come. Even small donations are what helps the Israeli refuser movement work towards the long-term, not just to end this genocide but to put a stop to all future wars and the occupation itself. This is our goal and we will achieve it.

Support our campaign to raise the money needed to continue our work. If you already donated, let your communities know about our campaign. We truly believe that this unprecedented stage in the struggle against the genocide has the power not only to end the assault on Gaza but open up a new political horizon here. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and Refuser Solidarity Network is increasing our support at unprecedented levels to meet the needs of the anti-war movement. […] we truly need your help to bring freedom, equality and justice to all.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Executive Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)

Every few days, the IDF Arabic Spokesman, Avichay Adraee, issues an evacuation order to Gaza residents. The wording is almost always identical: "The IDF is operating with great force to destroy terror organizations. For your safety’s sake, evacuate immediately." A map marking forbidden areas in red accompanies the announcement.

This is precisely where frequent changes are made: a darker shade of red marking the new forbidden area. It gets added to all the other, constantly expanding, red areas. The evacuation order has no expiration date. Areas that the army marked red never become clear again.

Even a quick peek at the maps reveals that the permitted area for two million residents is shrinking. The forbidden areas already constitute 82 percent of the Gaza Strip, stuffing them into the remaining 18 percent. Since Israel violated the cease-fire three months ago, 680,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, including 242,000 in just the past month.

The result is growing population density in the evacuee camps, a decline in living conditions, the spread of infectious diseases, loss of privacy and worsening mental stress — particularly among women and girls.

“It has become much more crowded since Operation Gideon’s Chariots began,” Gazan journalist Eman Hillis told Haaretz, “The entire north was evacuated to Gaza City. Even within the city, the dangerous areas expanded from Shujaiyeh to new areas, like Tufah, Zaytun and the Old City.”

"Even areas considered safe were evacuated, and residents are setting up tents anywhere they can," Hillis added. "There’s an open field in the city that the municipality used for months as a garbage dump. People couldn’t find free space, so they moved the garbage piles and set up tents between them. It’s a very, very sad place. People even put up tents in the middle of the street, but the municipality negotiated with them to move."

Territory is shrinking

The overcrowding is visible even from space. Tent encampments, like in Khan Yunis, Gaza City and other places, were destroyed and evacuated. Tents have popped up in every available space in the remaining areas outside the red zone, mainly in Muwasi in southern Gaza and in western Gaza City. There, tents were put up along the beach, on the piers stretching into the sea, between the ruins, on sidewalks and roads and within garbage dumps. Thousands of other displaced people are crowding within schools and public buildings amid worsening conditions.

The crowdedness is also palpable in the Damour camp for displaced persons, which the Damour for Community Development organization established with the support of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The camp has 4,000 registered residents, but the people running services for the camp estimate that another 20,000 displaced people have arrived. They built tents in the alleys and around the compound.

The camp, which was also supposed to provide basic education for children and a community kitchen, is struggling to function. So, children there, like children elsewhere in Gaza, haven’t gone to school for nearly two years. "We’re currently in survival mode," said Barak Talmor, who managed the Arava Institute’s Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza program.

And there’s another difficulty. Anyone who manages to get their hands on food will have a hard time finding a place to assemble a meal. The tents don’t have enough space to cook, and most things are done at their entrances. The lucky ones cook on a fire they built from wood fragments or cardboard. Others are forced to burn plastic, causing foul and hazardous smells that pollute the atmosphere.

Victoria Rose, a British physician who volunteered until recently at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, said that many of the injured patients she treated included children who were injured in the displaced persons camps, many of them suffering burns from fire or boiling water.

One toilet per 200 people

The overcrowding makes daily life in Gaza insufferable, even regarding the most basic needs. Although several tent camps have proper public bathrooms, most residents are forced to rely on improvised toilets built over cesspools or jerry-rigged collection devices. Consequently, a pungent stench develops, and privacy is hard to maintain.

In some tent areas, there is only one toilet per 10 families. Most are separated only by a sheet of cloth or plastic that doesn’t offer sufficient privacy. There is approximately one toilet per 200 people in the displaced persons camp that the Arava Institute and Damour organization built. The World Health Organization recommends a ratio of no more than 20 people per toilet.

Women and girls suffer the most from the overcrowding. A UN report warned recently that many Gazan women avoid drinking water, so they won’t need to pee. Many women avoid walking to a bathroom or shower, lest strange men see them. Moreover, women are taking measures to stop their monthly period because they lack hygienic products. The UN also reported that nursing women have stopped breastfeeding because they have no privacy to do so. Hundreds of thousands of women in Gaza are dealing with emotional distress stemming from a lack of privacy and basic hygiene.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights collected accounts indicating that women fear going to the bathroom during the day due to feelings of shame. They also fear going at night because of the packs of dogs wandering among the tents. “Gaza is a conservative society,” Hillis said. “When you live in a tent and people see you, it’s challenging for women. They need to always wear a hijab.”

S., a 38-year-old Gazan, told the center: “I found myself cramped inside a tiny tent with my brother-in-law’s family. We’re on top of each other, with no space, no privacy, no sleep, not an ounce of dignity. I never remove my hijab and clothes, day or night, like I’m holding onto my last thread of modesty. Sometimes, I wait 10 days to shower. I’m suffering from lice and constantly feel disgusted with myself.”

Another woman, Riham, described how three families were living together in a classroom that measures 8 square meters. A cloth screen separates the families.

“I’m forced to sleep fully dressed, always on the edge, scared of any movement around me. I hold my blanket, looking for a shred of security among strangers,” Riham said. “The only thing separating us, the cloth, doesn’t afford privacy. I’m always worried I could be exposed.”

Tortuous nights

Fleas, mosquitoes, mice, rats and parasitic worms all thrive in the conditions created in the Gazan camps. If that weren’t enough, bombings destroyed the sewage system. The facilities that are still operating are partially shut down due to fuel shortages. The Israel Air Force also destroyed engineering equipment that the municipalities used in Gaza to clear away debris and garbage. Today, the authorities have limited capabilities to act — another factor contributing to the growth of pests. “Biologists could write entire research papers on the insects growing here,” the Arava Institute’s Talmor says.

Moreover, water is collecting amid the ruins and tens, providing ideal sites for mosquitoes. However, Israel doesn’t allow the introduction of chemicals that could treat the danger or sewage system equipment to prevent the creation of pools. Consequently, they cause residents constant suffering. “The nights are torturous. Everyone is scratching themselves and covering themselves up from head to toe,” one Gazan told the Palestinian Information Center. “But then it’s too hot and they remove something, and then the mosquitoes ambush them, and that’s how it is all night.”

“Pools are found everywhere possible near the tents because people use water, and these pools attract mosquitoes,” Hillis confirmed. “It’s become a serious problem in Gaza. The rodents also get in everywhere in the tent and can ruin the food. People often find worms crawling around the tent or ants crawling on the mattress. The sand is also very bothersome, especially when there’s wind. The displaced people eat bread with sand.”

Recent shooting incidents in the West Bank, in which one Palestinian was killed and two others seriously wounded by Israeli army fire, appear to contradict the IDF’s version of events and raise concerns over a possible reckless breach of the military’s rules of engagement.

On Tuesday, Israeli army soldiers shot and killed a 22-year-old Moataz Hajajla in the West Bank village of Al-Walaja, south of Jerusalem.

According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Hajajla pulled a knife, attempted to stab the soldiers and tried to seize one of their weapons. However, his family and village residents claim the soldiers were not under any real threat and shot Hajajla only after assaulting him and his relatives.

The army also provided Haaretz with a photograph of the knife allegedly in Hajajla’s possession at the time of the incident.

Residents of Al-Walaja told Haaretz that for several weeks, soldiers have been entering the village each night, conducting patrols to assert their presence.

“They come between midnight and 5 A.M.,” said one resident. “They break down doors, destroy furniture and search homes — but never arrest anyone. What is this, [are we in] China? They just come in for no reason.”

According to Abed Hajajla, the victim’s uncle, soldiers entered the village early Tuesday morning, around 2 A.M. “They went to my brother’s house and asked him where his kids were,” he said.

“He told them they were next door. They then took him with them and said, ‘Show us.’ They didn’t hit him, but they forced his head down. When they got to the house, Moataz saw what was happening and said, ‘What are you doing? He’s an elderly and sick man.’ And without saying a word, they attacked and beat him.”

According to the family, the soldiers dragged Hajajla into an unfinished building nearby, where a group of young men were sitting and drinking coffee, and began beating him along with the others.

“Around 15 soldiers entered the house,” the uncle said. At some point, the soldiers separated Hajajla from the group and took him to the balcony. There, according to the army, he pulled out a knife and attempted to seize a soldier’s weapon. The soldiers shot him at least three times, killing him on the spot.

“Does it make any sense that someone would try to stab and disarm 15 soldiers inside a room?” Abed asked. “I’ve never seen a knife in his hand, and I’ve never seen the knife they’re talking about. He was just sitting at a neighbor’s house — why would he have a knife on him?”

Shortly afterward, the soldiers left the scene, taking Hajajla’s body with them. The army is still holding the body, and the family has not been informed when it will be returned for burial.

Also on Tuesday, in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of At-Tur, an Israel Police sniper seriously wounded a 12-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man.

Police claim that 12-year-old Iyass Raʻad Abu Mufreh and his 21-year-old cousin, Oudai Fadi Abu Jomaa, had been throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at officers. However, their families contend they were shot without provocation and have presented evidence to support their account.

According to family members and several Palestinian eyewitnesses, the two were standing on the street eating pizza, and there were no disturbances in the area. A video recording of the shooting, obtained by Haaretz, appears to support the family’s version of events.

“Their grandmother, my mother, had just returned from the Hajj pilgrimage, and we had all gathered at her place to welcome her,” their uncle Iyad said.

“The young guys went downstairs and ordered pizza. The street was quiet. They put the pizza box in the car and started eating. Suddenly, they saw something in the sky and thought it was a missile. Turns out it was a flare fired by the police, and then the shooting started.”

Lilana, a Jewish woman married to Abu Jomaa’s father and among the first to reach the scene, said, “I was cooking when I heard the shots and I ran outside. His father was next to him in shock. I told him to take off his shirt, and I started pressing on the wound in his back to stop the bleeding. The shooting was completely random as the neighborhood was absolutely quiet.”

The family presented a video recording that captures several of the sniper’s shots, fired from dozens of meters away. The area appears largely calm, and even if there had been some stone-throwing, the footage shows no immediate threat to police officers. In another clip, a pizza box is still visible on a car as family members attempt to evacuate the wounded.

Several hours after the incident, police officers arrived and confiscated all security cameras from the street.

Abu Jomaa sustained serious wounds to his abdomen and back and was taken to Al-Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. He has undergone four surgeries so far, and doctors fear he may be left paralyzed from the waist down.

12-year-old Abu Mufreh was taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital and underwent surgery on his shoulder. Both remain hospitalized and face a lengthy rehabilitation process.

The Israel Police said in response, “During a recent operation by Border Police officers in the At-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem, several assailants were identified launching fireworks and throwing Molotov cocktails at the forces, endangering the lives of the officers. They returned fire to neutralize the threat. The incident is still under investigation.”

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