300,000 Gazans make historic return to the north – Ceasefire Day 9

contact@ifamericansknew.org January 28, 2025 gaza return, Jenin, Peter Beinart, West Bank

Hundreds of thousands of displaced families are returning to northern Gaza, walking for hours through rubble, trying to find what’s left of their homes & reunite with loved ones. (social media)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

A five-year-old Palestinian girl was killed Monday near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza when Israeli forces struck an animal-drawn cart that was among the crowd of Palestinians returning to northern Gaza. The Israeli military claimed its aircraft fired on a group of Palestinians that “posed a threat” to IDF troops.

The Gaza Government Media Office has said that more than 300,000 people have returned to northern Gaza since Monday morning.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said teams retrieved 10 decomposed bodies Monday from various locations along Gaza’s Rashid Street.

Mother of 5-year-old girl, Neda Muhammed al-Amudi, who was killed in the Israeli army’s attack in Nusairat Refugee Camp, violating the ceasefire, mourns over her body at Awda Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on January 27, 2025 (Fadel A. A. Almaghari/Anadolu Agency)

Masses of Palestinians return to north Gaza after one year of displacement

Tens of thousands of Palestiniansbegan returning to the northern Gaza Strip via the Netzarim corridor on 27 January after over a year of displacement and a genocidal Israeli war.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are expected to return for the first time since being displaced at the start of the war in October 2023 and in the months that followed.

“The scenes of the return of the masses of our people to the areas from which they were forced to flee, despite their destroyed homes, confirm the greatness of our people and their steadfastness in their land, despite the depth of the pain and tragedy,” Hamas said in a statement.

Member of the Hamas political bureau Ezzat al-Rishq said the return of Palestinians to their homes “shatters all the dreams and illusions of the occupation in displacing [the Palestinian] people.”

About the massive northward movement of Palestinians, said Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party, said, “This is not what ‘total victory’ looks like – this is what total surrender looks like,” adding, “we must return to war — and destroy!”

Al Jazeera journalist Tamer Almisshal said of the day: “It’s a significant and historic moment for the Palestinians because it’s the first time since 1948 those who have been forced out of their homes and land managed to get back – despite the destruction and despite the genocide.”

After over a year of displacement, residents begin their return to the north of the strip. (MEE/Ahmed Aziz)

North Gaza needs at least 120,000 tents to accommodate returnees

An official from the Gaza Government Media Office told Al Jazeera that at least 120,000 tents are needed to shelter those displaced people who returned to destroyed homes.

Officials have set up 33 camps to accommodate the displaced, prepared about 50 shelters, and dug wells.

More than 350 UNICEF aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip

UNICEF has accelerated the distribution of supplies and services to children in the Gaza Strip, with more than 350 trucks entering in the first week of the long-awaited ceasefire.

The trucks, filled with water, hygiene kits, malnutrition treatments, warm clothes, tarpaulins and other critical humanitarian aid, have been entering from crossing points at both the north and south of the Gaza Strip and being distributed with partners to families in need.

Humanitarian aid trucks, crossing from Egypt to Rafah Border Crossing, wait on the border, January 19, 2025 in Egypt. (Mohamed Elshahed – Anadolu Agency)

West Bank: Israel continues offensive in Jenin for 7th day

The Israeli army on Monday continued its offensive in the West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp for the seventh day.

Witnesses said the Israeli army was still cordoning off the refugee camp from all directions, and clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters along with sounds of explosions were reported. The Israeli army also continued to demolish homes in the camp, sources said.

Mohammad Jarrar, the mayor of Jenin, on Sunday said some 15,000 people were forced to flee their homes and areas in the camp due to Israeli attacks, adding that the Israeli army has completely demolished between 30 and 40 homes in Jenin.

Israeli forces launched the military operation on Tuesday, and has since killed at least 16 people and injured 50 others, according to Palestinian figures.

Israeli Forces Assassinate Two Palestinians, Injure Six, in Tulkarem

On Monday, the Israeli military assassinated two Palestinian young men and injured four others in the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarem in the northwestern part of the occupied West Bank.

The army stormed the city of Tulkarem and the Tulkarem refugee camp, shot two young men and abducted two others.

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced the death of the two young men, Ramez Bassam Damiri, 24, and Ihab Mohammad Attawi, 23, as a result of an Israeli drone strike which targeted their vehicle.

West Bank: Israel to demolish entire village east of Bethlehem in latest land grab

On January 26, Israeli authorities notified the residents of al-Numan village, located east of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, of plans to demolish all homes and displace dozens of Palestinian families in order to annex their land to the boundaries of occupied Jerusalem, according to Hassan Breijieh, director of the Wall and Settlement Affairs Commission Office in Bethlehem.

“The demolition orders were issued under the pretext of lacking building permits, despite the village being established before 1948, with the last house built in 1993,” Jamal al-Daraawi, head of the al-Numan village council, said to reporters.

Daraawi highlighted that the Palestinian village, which covers an area of 1.5 square kilometers, is home to 150 residents who live in houses made of old stone and built before the Nakba of 1948.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel demolished 1,058 Palestinian structures in Area C of the occupied West Bank throughout 2024.

NOTE: Israel admits that its construction permit system is highly discriminatory. Between 2016 and 2020, 99.1 percent of Palestinian requests for building permits were rejected, according to dataprovided by the IDF’s Civil Administration.

RELATED: Israel has turbocharged West Bank housing demolitions under the cover of war

Israeli security forces demolish buildings and mosque in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, in Negev Region, Israel on November 14, 2024 (Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency)

West Bank: In shades of Gaza, Israeli soldiers film themselves in Palestinian women’s lingerie

Footage circulating on social media shows Israeli occupation soldiers parading around in a Palestinian woman’s lingerie during a raid in Bethlehem, the occupied West Bank. During Israel’s 15-month genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli forces regularly posed for videos and photos in Palestinian women’s underwear, and the new footage shows it is now happening in the West Bank.

RELATED: In shades of Gaza, Palestinian medics in the West Bank have become Israel’s targets

‘A moral wreckage that we need to face’: Peter Beinart on being Jewish after Gaza’s destruction (excerpt)

Interviewer: Over the years, you’ve shown a willingness to change your mind and to do it publicly. Not a lot of people are willing to publicly admit they were wrong. Why do you think that is?

Peter Beinart: My learning process has been slow partly because of fear. I think perhaps that I was too comfortable living in an environment where I was not really exposed to many things, a relatively privileged and cloistered existence.

But I’ve also always been afraid of what the consequences would be, career-wise and interpersonally, if I became too radically out of step with people around me. It’s still something I worry about all the time.

For me, there was a process of unpeeling, like an onion, that began when I first went to the West Bank more than 20 years ago. It’s one thing to know in an abstract way that it’s not great for Israel to be occupying people…but there was always a notion of wanting to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. But the more one looked, the more that was just unsustainable.

I was also forced to confront the degree to which I had dehumanized Palestinians…I realized that I wasn’t engaging with Palestinians as human beings.

What Israel has done in Gaza is the most profound desecration of the central idea of the absolute and infinite worth of every human being. And yet the organized American Jewish community acts as if Palestinians in Gaza have essentially no value. Their deaths are dismissed on the flimsiest of pretexts. These people are basically saying that the state has absolute value, but the human beings who live in this state, if they have the misfortune of being Palestinian, don’t have value.

There was a real shock that came with engagement with ordinary people and the realization that these were human beings who were enduring these things that I and the people around me would never be willing to tolerate. I was able to shed the preconceptions that I was raised with, that so many Jews are raised with, about Palestinians, that they have a tendency towards violence. I was able to unlearn those things. So that has been for me an experience of liberation (read the full interview here).

Trump’s call to ‘clean out’ Gaza serves as ‘explicit support for Israel’s crime of genocide’: Rights group

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor expressed “deep concern” Sunday over US President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle Gazans in Jordan and Egypt, calling for a regional and global stance opposing it.

Describing Gaza as a “demolition site,” Trump said Saturday that “we (should) just clean out” the Palestinian enclave and resettle Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt.

The Geneva-based group said these remarks, which were made after Israel egregiously violated international law by committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, are “deeply concerning.”

“The Palestinians, who are already suffering from the devastating effects of Israel’s attempts to annihilate them, should not have to pay a further price for this genocide by being forcibly displaced outside of their homeland,” it said in a statement.

Former US President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) as they pose for a photo within their meeting at Mar-a-Lago estate, in Palm Beach, Florida, United States on July 26, 2024 (Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu Agency)

Is Netanyahu coming to the US this weekend to meet with Trump?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied Monday media reports that he plans to visit Washington this weekend to meet with US President Donald Trump.

Israeli media reported early Monday that Netanyahu will travel to Washington on Saturday evening to meet Trump despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri, however, said that “no official invitation” has been received from the White House for the visit.

The New Arab: Knesset approves draft bill allowing settlers ‘own’ occupied Palestinian land

Looking for a way to help get the word out about Palestine? Go here.

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – JANUARY 27, 2025 (ongoing count):

At least 48,228 Palestinians killed, 118,563 injured – including:

at least 47,354 killed in Gaza (~20,600 children)
at least 874 killed in the West Bank (~177 children)
at least 111,563 injured in Gaza
at least 7,000 injured in the West Bank

WAR STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 (Hamas attack) – JANUARY 19, 2025 (Ceasefire):

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 19, 2025: at least 48,143 – including at least 47,283 in Gaza (~20,600 children), and 860 in the West Bank (~177 children). Palestinian injuries: at least 118,472 – including at least 111,472 in Gaza, and 7,000 in the West Bank.

Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 11,000 more are still buried under rubble.

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 19, 2025: ~1,616 (or 1,590) – including ~1,139 on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 436 (or 405) military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, 46 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

Tuesday, 28 January 2025