‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 108: Israel is systematically obliterating Gaza, section by section
As Israeli forces surround yet another hospital in Gaza, Hamas releases a letter clarifying its motives behind the October 7 attack, reiterating the Palestinian demand for the right to self-determination.
Casualties
- 25,295+ killed* and at least 63,000 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 387+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
- 532 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 3,221 injured.**
*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 22. Some rights groups put the death toll number higher than 32,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.
Key Developments
- UNOCHA: Only 15 bakeries still operational across Gaza, none in north.
- UNOCHA: Approximately 1.7 million internally displaced people in Gaza.
- Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor: Israel killed 94 professors in Gaza since October 7.
- Palestine Red Crescent Society: Israeli tanks near al-Amal City Hospital in Khan Younis, all contact with PRCS team in area lost.
- Palestine Red Crescent Society: Israel besieges ambulance center in Khan Younis, prevents lifesaving movement.
- Israeli forces destroy entire neighborhoodin Khan Younis via demolition, after soldier takes selfie with explosives.
- Two Hezbollah fighters killed in Lebanon by Israeli drone strike.
- Palestinian Ministry of Health: 190 Palestinians killed and 34 injured in the last 48 hours.
- Hamas publishes 16-page report to “clarify” background and dynamics of October 7 surprise attack.
- Israelis protest outside Netanyahu home, demand return of Israeli captives.
Hospitals under attack in southern Gaza
The Israeli army is systematically destroying Gaza as its genocidal war on the beleaguered strip enters its 108th day. The Israeli army, after having almost completely decimated northern Gaza, continues to move further south, setting its sights on Khan Younis, the second-largest district in the besieged enclave.
The area was initially designated a safe zone by Israel, leading hundreds of thousands of residents from the north to seek refugee in the city. Yet Khan Younis has now already become a shadow of itself after extensive damage and destruction wrought by the relentless Israeli airstrikes.
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The ground invasion continues the campaign of obliteration, as Israeli soldiers filmed themselves blowing up 40 residential buildings at once with the use of explosives. Earlier, soldier Itamar Bello shared a selfie of himself posing with the mines used for the demolition.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks and military vehicles are approaching al-Amal Hospital in the center of Khan Younis, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported on Monday morning.
As a result, PRCS has lost all contact with its crews in the area.
PRCS later added that the Israeli military was preventing first responders from reaching the wounded in Khan Younis as it intensified the ground assault and attacked the PRCS ambulance center.
Meanwhile, about 1 kilometer away, the Nasser Medical Complex was surrounded on three sides by the military in conjunction with the ongoing Israeli artillery bombardment in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital, Wafa reported.
“This is not the first time. There were several attacks and bombings in the area of Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis [in the last few weeks]. We got direct attacks at the Palestine Red Crescent headquarters with artillery shelling, which literally destroyed three floors and killed at least seven people inside the building,” Nebal Farsakh, a PRCS spokesperson, told Al Jazeera.
Farsakh said both facilities are under siege and enduring a communication blackout. Ambulances are unable to respond to calls from the wounded in the area.
“The situation there is extremely dangerous, they are hearing strong bombing in the area. Anyone who tries to move out or just walk in the street is being targeted,” Farsakh continued.
The medical infrastructure in Gaza has collapsed, with most of the enclave’s 36 hospitals no longer functioning and those still open running far over capacity, according to the World Health Organization.
A French field hospital aboard a ship that has been docked off the coast of Egypt, 50 km west of the Gaza Strip, has treated about 1,000 people from Gaza since November.
Reuters reported that the vessel has 70 medical staff and is equipped with wards as well as operating theaters where nearly 120 injured people have been hospitalized, and hundreds more have been seen for outpatient consultations, including follow-ups on injuries and psychiatric issues.
However, with over 60,000 people wounded by Israel’s attacks and extremely limited access to healthcare, the field hospital is not enough to compensate for the ongoing attacks and barely functioning healthcare facilities.
French Captain Alexandre Blonce told Reuters it is an “unprecedented mission.”
In Gaza, ‘the situation gets worse by the hour.’
Palestinians in Gaza have little hope for their future as Israel’s relentless attacks go unchecked, destroying the besieged enclave’s society beyond recognition.
“The most accurate way to describe what’s going on right now in Khan Younis is more death and destruction. For more than a month the southern city has been under heavy bombardment,” said Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud from Rafah.
Mahmoud said that Israel’s attacks are also targeting Gaza’s largest university, where thousands of people are sheltering, and that attack drones are hovering everywhere over Khan Younis, shooting at moving objects.
“The area is being bombed by land, air, and sea — there’s no safe corridor for them to escape,” he continued, “Very dark days ahead as the situation gets worse by the hour.”
Meanwhile, in the northern Gaza Strip, there are no bakeries left, and Israel is still denying Palestinians access to basic humanitarian aid.
The Jabalia refugee camp market in the northern Gaza Strip is suffering as they look to secure daily food sustenance amid dire shortages of flour and food in the markets and an absence of humanitarian aid.
“Today, we are searching for our daily food. There is no flour or wheat. People eat corn, and this is food for birds and animals, not for humans,” one person in the Jabalia refugee camp market told Al Jazeera.
“The average citizen in Gaza lives from day to day. We try to secure flour and ready-made bread, but unavailable. People do not have money. The situation is very difficult.”
“With a genocide unfolding in Gaza, it’s time to ask for justice for ALL,” Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian Territories, wrote on Twitter/X. “Hostages MUST be released immediately. And so the thousand Palestinian prisoners are arbitrarily detained by Israel.”
Albanese has also accused Israel of killing a greater share of the population in Gaza, 1.1%, than the proportion of people killed in the wars in Ukraine (0.2%) and Iraq (0.8%), and “in a much shorter time.”
“No war in this century comes even closer to [Israel’s] extermination campaign in Gaza,” Albanese said.
Israeli soldiers accused of looting
Dozens of reports have surfaced accusing the Israeli army of widespread looting across Gaza, including millions of dollars in money, dead Palestinian bodies, and archeological artifacts.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on the UN to investigate the reports of Israeli troops looting archeological artifacts.
“The ongoing genocide by the far-right Israeli government in Gaza is targeting all aspects of Palestinian culture and heritage,” CAIR’s Director Nihad Awad said in a statement.
“We urge the United Nations to investigate this latest war crime of cultural theft and for the Biden administration to open its eyes to the harm its blind support for this genocide and ethnic cleansing is doing to our nation’s humanity, core values, and interests worldwide.”
Israeli society at odds
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to reject the possibility of a deal with Hamas to end the war despite his failure to bring the Israeli captives back from Gaza via military operations.
As a result, Netanyahu has come under fire from Israeli society and leading politicians who are increasingly highlighting the incompatibility of Israel’s twin war goals of eradicating Hamas and freeing captives held in Gaza.
In exchange for the remaining 136 captives in Gaza, Hamas demands a permanent halt to the bombing, the withdrawal of ground troops from Gaza, and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to end military operations “means there is no chance for the return of the [Israeli] captives,” reported Al Jazeera.
“If we accept this, our soldiers have fallen in vain. If we accept this, we won’t be able to guarantee the safety of our own citizens. We will not be able to bring evacuees home safely and the next October 7 will only be a matter of time,” said Netanyahu, according to Al Jazeera.
On Sunday evening, the families of the captives pitched tents outside Netanyahu’s home in West Jerusalem, calling for their freedom, even if it meant ending the war.
A spokesperson for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, quoted by the Times of Israel, said that protesters would stay in their tents until “the prime minister agrees to a deal to return the hostages.”
The Forum also demanded that Netanyahu “clearly state that we will not abandon civilians, soldiers, and others kidnapped in the October debacle,” reported The New Arab.
“We must advance the deal now. If the prime minister decides to sacrifice the hostages, he should show leadership and honestly share his position with the Israeli public,” it continued.
Israeli media reports that the protesters feel neglected and forgotten and that too much time has gone by without their issues being seen or heard by the prime minister.
John Polin, whose son is a captive in Gaza, said, “We are asking the government to play its part, to propose an agreement to bring it to a successful conclusion and to bring the remaining hostages back alive.”
Members of the Israeli war cabinet are also at odds with each other regarding how to proceed in Gaza, with one member, former IDF Chief of Staff and author of the Dahiya Doctrine, Gadi Eizenkot, saying that perhaps a total defeat of Hamas is unrealistic and calling for elections so that the public can show its confidence in the Israeli government.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, also in the cabinet, told representatives of the families of captives held in Gaza that the army is getting closer to releasing them through military operations.
“Operations in Khan Younis are at a high point, and there are early signs that are arriving at the most sensitive locations for Hamas are getting us closer to the two goals of the war,” Gallant said, reported the Jerusalem Post.
“The plumes of smoke from the tanks, artillery, and air force planes will continue to cover the skies of the Gaza Strip until we achieve our goals — chief among them the defeat of Hamas and the return of hostages to their homes.”
Hamas media office releases report, ‘Our narrative’
On Sunday, the Hamas Media Office released a 16-page report titled “Our Narrative” in order to “clarify” the background and dynamics of the surprise attack it dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7.
Hamas, which governs over Gaza, said the operation was “a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people.”
However, Hamas admitted there were “faults” in the attack it led on southern Israel, but claimed its fighters only targeted Israeli soldiers and people carrying weapons.
The organization also pointed to media reports about Israeli troops targeting cars and homes with Israelis inside killing their own people.
At least 1,139 people in Israel, about two-thirds of whom were civilians, were killed in the attack, according to an Al Jazeera tallybased on official Israeli statistics, and about 240 others were seized as captives.
In the document, Hamas stresses the historical context of Israel’s occupation and the injustices that Palestinians have endured for decades, adding that Israel has been intensifying its abuses under Israel’s right-wing government.
The group says the October 7 attack was a “natural response” to the Israeli push to liquidate the Palestinian cause and emphasized that its grievances are with “the Zionist project,” not against Jews due to their religion.
Israeli authorities have accused Hamas fighters of committing war crimes during the attack, including torture, rape, and mutilation. Hamas has firmly rejected these allegations, including allegations of sexual violence and mutilation, which it reiterated in its report. The group acknowledges, however, that disorder ensued during the attack as the Israeli security apparatus collapsed swiftly and unexpectedly around Gaza.
In the report, Hamas has called for ending Israel’s offensive on Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory, saying that Palestinians should have the right to self-determination. Hamas also urged an investigation into “all crimes in occupied Palestine” by the International Criminal Court, calling on its prosecutor to “immediately” start a probe on the ground.
Ansar Allah acting ‘in solidarity’ with Palestine, says Irish EU parliamentarian
The Yemeni group, Ansar Allah (commonly known as “the Houthis), has continued targeting Israeli-affiliated boats in the Red Sea, affecting freight rates for goods heading to Europe.
Ansar Allah official Mohammed Abdulsalam said the group is carrying out their attacks to pressure Israel to end its “criminal and fascist aggression” against the Gaza Strip.
Abdulsalam also accused the U.S. of trying to blatantly “mislead” the world by pushing to separate the Red Sea attacks from what is happening in Gaza.
“America itself must stop escaping responsibility by creating crises that no one needs and end the aggression against Gaza,” he said, adding that Yemen will continue to defend itself against violations of its sovereignty.
Irish Member of the European Parliament Mick Wallace praised Ansar Allah’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, describing the attacks as a form of “humanitarian intervention” to stop the genocide in Gaza.
Wallace emphasized that the group has killed nobody, while Israel has killed tens of thousands of civilians, including over 10,000 children.
“So who did the U.S. and UK attack? No, they didn’t attack the Israeli regime because they are supporting the genocide,” Wallace said.
“They attacked the Houthis instead, killing at least six people. So Western powers are prepared to kill people to protect the movement of goods but the same Western powers kill thousands with sanctions in Iran, in Syria, in Venezuela.”
Wallace likened the “solidarity” shown by Ansar Allah toward Palestinians to South Africa’s show of solidarity with Gaza at the ICJ.
“But sadly, the EU solidarity is with U.S. empire and the Zionists,” he continued. “Shame on the EU!”
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