Palestine’s UN envoy says ‘genocide within genocide’ going on in north Gaza

In response to Israel’s ongoing siege of northern Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past week and hundreds of thousands of civilian residents have been trapped or ordered to flee, a senior Palestinian diplomat to the UN has sounded the alarm.

At least 200 people have died as a result of the military’s 10-day siege, according to Palestinian authorities, as the camp’s Jabalia refugee camp and its surrounding area drew to its 10th day on Sunday.

At least 17 more people were killed on Sunday morning in central and northern Gaza, including five people from the al-Ettesalat area west of the Jabalia refugee camp and eight members of a family in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The deputy permanent observer to the UN, Palestinian Ambassador Majed Bamya, wrote on X: “What is happening in northern Gaza right now is a genocide within the genocide.”

The “Continuation of Genocidal Acts”

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said about 400, 000 Palestinians are trapped in northern Gaza, with the Israeli military not allowing anyone to leave the area despite issuing an evacuation order.

More than 70 bodies are still on the streets, with civil defense workers unable to retrieve them as a result of persistent Israeli attacks, he said, adding that “what’s happening now is a continuation of the genocidal acts that started a year ago.”

In Jabalia, desperate residents are posting about their dire situation on social media with one declaring, “We will not leave, we die and we don’t leave”.

Nasser, a resident of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, said: “As the world is focused on Lebanon and possible Israeli strike against Iran, Israel is wiping out Jabalia.

The occupation is “destroying residential districts and blowing up roads.” People can’t find anything to eat. They fear that bombs could fall onto their heads because they are confined to their homes.

In a statement released on Sunday by the Israeli military, 40 targets were hit in Gaza during the past 24 hours, according to a statement from the military. Those targets included Hamas fighters and their families.

One person was killed when Israeli warplanes struck a gathering east of Deir el-Balah, according to Wafa, among the reported fatalities in the Sunday strikes. In the Bureij refugee camp, according to the report, three Palestinians were killed and several others were hurt in Israeli artillery shelling.

Explosions were also heard from the Israeli army’s demolition of dozens of homes in Jabalia and its surroundings, particularly in the al-Safatay and al-Tuwam neighbourhoods, according to Wafa.

Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera that Israel has” prevented the entry of food supplies to the north for 10 days”, describing what is happening in Jabalia as” a crime against humanity”.

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, “prisoning” civilians of “objects essential to their survival,” including willfully preventing relief supplies, is a war crime.

Meanwhile, six Palestinians, most of them children, were injured when the Israeli military bombed a home in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, Wafa said.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, accused Israel of committing” another massacre”, adding that its troops” have accepted to be willing executioners of a genocidal plan”.

Source: Aljazeera