Assault on Jabalia hints at controversial Israeli plan for northern Gaza

On Saturday morning, a message was posted on social media by the Israeli navy’s Arabic spokesman warning individuals dwelling within the ‘D5’ space of northern Gaza to maneuver south. D5 is a sq. on the grid superimposed over maps of Gaza by the Israel Protection Forces (IDF). It’s a block that’s cut up into a number of dozen smaller areas.

The message, the newest in a collection, mentioned: “The IDF is operating with great force against the terrorist organisations and will continue to do so for a long time. The designated area, including the shelters located there, is considered a dangerous combat zone. The area must be evacuated immediately via Salah al-Din Road to the humanitarian area.”

A map is connected with a big yellow arrow pointing from block D5 right down to the south of Gaza. Salah al-Din Street is the primary north-south route. The message isn’t promising a swift return to the locations individuals have been dwelling in, an space that has been pulverised by a 12 months of repeated Israeli assaults. The guts of the message is that the IDF might be utilizing “great force… for a long time”. In different phrases, don’t anticipate to return again any time quickly.

The humanitarian space designated by Israel within the message is al-Mawasi, beforehand an agricultural space on the coast close to Rafah. It’s overcrowded and no safer than many different components of Gaza. BBC Confirm has tracked a minimum of 18 airstrikes on the world.

Hamas has despatched out its personal messages to the 400,000 individuals left in northern Gaza, an space that was as soon as the city heartland of the Strip with a inhabitants of 1.4m. Hamas is telling them to not transfer. The south, they’re informed, is simply as harmful. In addition to that, Hamas is warning them that they won’t be allowed again.

Many individuals look like staying put, regardless of Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments. After I went right down to an space overlooking northern Gaza I might hear explosions and see columns of smoke rising. The depth jogged my memory of the primary months of the warfare.

A few of the individuals who have stayed in northern Gaza when so many others have already fled south are doing so to stay with susceptible kin. Others are from households with connections to Hamas. Below the legal guidelines of warfare, that doesn’t mechanically make them belligerents.

One tactic that has been used during the last 12 months by civilians who need to keep away from IDF operations with out taking their possibilities within the overcrowded and harmful south of Gaza is to maneuver elsewhere within the north, for instance from Beit Hanoun to Gaza Metropolis, whereas the IDF is working close to their houses or shelters. When the military strikes on, they return.

The IDF is making an attempt to cease that taking place, in line with BBC colleagues who’re day by day contact with Palestinians in Gaza. It’s channelling households who’re transferring in a single route solely, down Salah al-Din, the primary street to the south.

Israel doesn’t permit journalists to enter Gaza to report the warfare, apart from temporary, uncommon and carefully supervised journeys with the IDF. Palestinian journalists who have been there on 7 October nonetheless do courageous work. The Committee to Shield Journalists says a minimum of 128 Palestinian media employees in Gaza have been killed because the warfare started. In northern Gaza, since Israel went again on the offensive, they’ve been filming panic-stricken households as they flee, usually with young children serving to out by carrying outsized backpacks.

One among them despatched out a quick interview with a lady known as Manar al-Bayar who was speeding down the road carrying a toddler. She was saying as she half-walked, half-ran on the best way out of Jabalia refugee camp that “they told us we had five minutes to leave the Fallujah school. Where do we go? In southern Gaza there are assassinations. In western Gaza they’re shelling people. Where do we go, oh God? God is our only chance.”

The journey is hard. Sometimes, Palestinians in Gaza say, people on the move are fired on by the IDF. It insists that Israeli soldiers observe strict rules of engagement that respect international humanitarian law.

But Medical Aid for Palestinians’ head of protection, Liz Allcock, says the evidence presented by wounded civilians suggest that they have been targeted.

“When we’re receiving patients in hospitals, a large number of those women and children and people of, if you like, non-combatant age are receiving direct shots to the head, to the spine, to the limbs, very indicative of the direct targeted attack.”

Once again, the UN and aid agencies who work in Gaza are saying that Israeli military pressure is deepening what is already a humanitarian catastrophe.

Desperate messages are being relayed from the remaining hospitals in northern Gaza, saying that they are running low on fuel to power the generators that keep the hospitals going, and keep badly wounded patients alive. Some hospitals report that their buildings have been attacked by the Israelis.

The suspicion among Palestinians, the UN and relief agencies is that the IDF is gradually adopting some or all of a new tactic to clear northern Gaza known as the “Generals’ Plan”. It was proposed by a group of retired senior officers led by Maj-Gen (ret) Giora Eiland, who is a former national security adviser.

Like most Israelis they are frustrated and angry that a year into the war Israel still has not achieved its war aims of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. The Generals’ Plan is a new idea that its instigators believe can, from Israel’s perspective, break the deadlock.

At its heart is the idea that Israel can force the surrender of Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar by increasing the pressure on the entire population of the north. The first step is to order civilians to leave along evacuation corridors that will take them south of Wadi Gaza, an east-west stream that has become a dividing line in Gaza since the Israeli invasion last October.

Giora Eiland believes Israel should have done a deal straight away to get the hostages back, even if it meant pulling out of Gaza entirely. A year later, other methods, he says, are necessary.

In his office in central Israel, he laid out the heart of the plan.

“Since we already encircled the northern part of Gaza in the past nine or 10 months, what we should do is the following thing to tell all the 300,000 residents [that the UN estimates is 400,000] who still live in the northern part of Gaza that they have to leave this area and they should be given 10 days to leave through safe corridors that Israel will provide.

“And after that time, all this area will become to be a military zone. And all the Hamas people will still, though, whether some of them are fighters, some of them are civilians… will have two choices either to surrender or to starve.”

Eiland wants Israel to seal the areas once the evacuation corridors are closed. Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant. The area would be under siege, with the army blocking all supplies of food, water or other necessities of life from going in. He believes the pressure would become unbearable and what is left of Hamas would rapidly crumble, freeing the surviving hostages and giving Israel the victory it craves.

The UN World Food Programme says that the current offensive in Gaza is having a “disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families”. The main crossings into northern Gaza, it says, have been closed and no food aid has entered the strip since 1 October. Mobile kitchens and bakeries have been forced to stop work because of air strikes. The only functioning bakery in the north, which is supported by WFP, caught fire after it was hit by an explosive munition. The position in the south is almost as dire.

It is not clear whether the IDF has adopted the Generals’ Plan in part or in full, but the circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests it is at the very least a strong influence on the tactics being used against the population. The BBC submitted a list of questions to the IDF, which were not answered.

The ultra-nationalist extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers. Among many statements he’s made on the subject, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas, and we will occupy the Gaza Strip… to tell the truth, where there is no settlement, there is no security.”