The IDF Arabic spokesperson posted images of the civilians evacuating and announced an additional humanitarian corridor, supplementing the one recently established, which will be open for Gazans wishing to relocate southward until 2pm local time.
“Use this opportunity to go south to the other side of Wadi Gaza,” he said, referring to the body of water that delineates the southern and northern parts of the Palestinian territory. “Many are doing so at this time. If you care for yourselves and your loved ones, move south according to our instructions. You can be sure Hamas leaders have already taken care of their own needs.”
The refugee camp you’re referring to is Jabiliya Camp, established in 1948. It is high density multi-unit residential.
According to the IDF, the ground forces who were hunting down that single commander came under small arms and RPG fire from the building and called in air support. The bomb that was dropped on the building killed everyone inside, but apparently either dropped directly into the tunnels underneath, or caused secondary explosions from munitions being stored in those tunnels. The result was that seven other buildings not adjacent to the building that was bombed collapsed as well. The ground forces operating there confirmed their target was dead and left the camp. This is why Israel asked all civilians to evacuate Gaza City a month ago - they can’t control which buildings collapse when the tunnels blow up.
Mind you, the US has been conducting drone flights over Gaza, watching all of these incidents. The fact the US didn’t immediately condemn Israel for bombing the building should give you a hint that they saw what happened and think it was justified.
I am glad you are diverging from the disgusting argument that random Palestinian children are valid military targets.
But the US is literally one of the countries least critical of Israel. It’s like saying “Well the fact that Fox News hasn’t condemned Trump is pretty telling.” No it’s not. That attack has drawn international condemnation. Even the US agrees that the way that the war is being waged leads to a needlessly dire humanitarian crisis. People are drinking salt water and subsisting on a starvation diet.
I am not one of those people who thinks this is some easy choice for Israel. But I read comments like yours and wonder if there is literally anything the IDF and Likud can do, no matter how extreme, that you won’t defend?
Any civilian is not a valid military target, whether they are men, women, children, or the elderly. But if they pick up arms, they become a valid military target, even if they’re 13 years old. It’s tragic, but it’s also the reality - a 16 year old was killed yesterday because he stabbed two police officers with a knife before he was shot.
Turning off the water at the start was horrible - it was purely motivated by vengeance and spite rather than any legitimate military or political objective. The Likud are a party that have been subverted by a huckster who converted it into a cult of personality - but Israel is not a two-party system, there are legislators who were elected from a wide range of political parties. But my personal thoughts on the flaws of internal Israeli politics are not relevant at the moment. The IDF for sure is releasing propaganda, and you’d be stupid to take their statements on face. But when it’s been corroborated or is extremely clear - like the drone footage of armed men climbing out of a tunnel under the Indonesian Hospital then I’m inclined to believe exactly the parts that have been confirmed.
On the whole, the war is being conducted in a manner to maximize the chances of mission success - the complete destruction of Hamas and rescuing the hostages - while minimizing Israeli casualties. Minimizing civilian casualties is a distant third and only prioritized over the other two if it were to jeopardize the mission. Most militaries will follow the same decision calculus.
So you have an underground weapons cache that has just been collapsed by a bomb. You know roughly where to dig and how far down to dig to recover the weapons from your cache. However you have a problem. Even if you could use traditional heavy machinery (excavators, skid steer etc) without getting detected or could gather enough men with shovels to get there quick, you can’t risk using metal implements to dig down there once you get close. One “ting” and you could trigger a chain of explosions that kills your men and collapses the still functional parts of the tunnel near it. Heck depending on the size of the cache and the design of the tunnel networks in that section, it might even set the next cache of weapons off (an actual problem. Hamas has been having).
So how do you dig? With pressurized water!. Add a common sump pump a hose and an outlet once you’ve got close and use the power if water to blast the dirt and rock away. Recover your ammunition safely to be used against the infidels!
Common access to water in sufficient pressure is a key building tool for tunnelling.
That’s a good point, but from what I understood it was primarily used as a source of potable water to supplement locally treated water.
As for using it to tunnel, I would imagine it’s easier and simpler to just use a compressor powered by the tunnel power grid rather than deal with piping and water distribution down to the deep tunnel depths (>50m).
But this wasn’t the justification provided - none was. Which is part of the problem - it leads to people speculating the reasons. It also makes it possible for someone to automatically assume the worst reason possible.
A compressor can be ran off a garden hose.
Good point
Ah yes, for a month they managed to save 1/240 hostages, great success. Mind you most likely they killed a couple of dozens with those air bombardments, so pretty sure your war cabinet is considering them as collateral to give them the moral high ground.
The reality is that the IDF doesn’t care much about civilian casualties either.
And regarding those 16 years old radicalized boys, I bet after all this insanity is over there would be a lot more of them.
The other day some Israelian politician was expressing his thoughts on the UN citing 34 kids were killed. Compare that to the kids killed in Gaza, 100 times more. And it all comes to prove how much those people care about the lives of the Gazans.
Did Hamas ask those 34 children to move south or were they murdered at gun point by terrorists?
All war is horrific.
But I’m so tired of hearing about how one side is righteous and innocent and the other is murdering children.
Both sides are engaging in war.
People will die in war.
Those 1,200 Israeli civilians, those 34 children were not “civilian casualties” that refused to evacuate. They were gunned down by over 1500 hamas terrorists in person, face to face.
Does that make it any less horrific that bombs are killing civilians in Gaza? No of course not. But it doesn’t give anyone the moral high ground either. It’s fucking war. Start a fucking war and people are going to die.
Hamas said they would do it again. Israel will operate on the standard for war: remove the attackers ability to fight or their will to fight. Israel is not going to tit for tat try to exchange proporte firepower. Why would they? How does that win a war?
Israel has said it’s mission is to destroy Hamas. I would take Israels word at face value to move south. Hamas never gave Israelis the option to move south before thet invaded.
It is not like IDF isn’t bombing the south you know, or causing humanitarian catastrophe and refusing to acknowledge it. And also refusing to stop the fighting even to let so much needed humanitarian aid to reach the civilians.
That’s despicable and unforgivable. It screams volumes what your government and IDF thinks about the civilian population of Gaza and how much they really care about those civilians. And all this coming from the “most moral army in the world”. If you can’t see the double standards and extreme hypocrisy in this situation I would say you are either a paid bot or a human being with a very questionable moral values.
What Hamas did is horrible, I agree, but as Antonio Gutierrez said it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Hamas is the reaction of years long military, economic and what not occupation of Gaza and is a symbol of people’s discontent of the status quo. I am pretty sure a similar faction would have emerged in Israel if they were in this situation.
People want to live in peace and have some guarantees that they will be treated equally.
And there are so many reported and documented violations of human rights in Israel against Palestinians prior to this war, who were never properly investigated from Israel or came with the approval of your government.
Do you know how those tunnels first emerged, they were dig, because Gazans were refused the right of free movement.
This Gaza strip even before the war broke out was more or less an open air prison and now it turned into a mass grave and the civilian infrastructure is severely damaged. People lost their homes, family members, their loved ones, neighbours, friends.
And again one wrong doesn’t justify committing another wrong. If you kill my brother this doesn’t give me the right to kill your Ur brother, wife, kids and parents and say oh but you killed my brother.
You will just go into a spiral of violence, hatred and nothing good would emerge from this for years to come. This is the road Israel chose for themselves.