Just over two months ago, Israel forced more than a million Palestinians who were taking shelter in southern Gaza to flee, once again, to an area it designated as a “humanitarian safe zone” — an area that the Israeli military has since attacked at least 10 times, new research finds.
According to London research group Forensic Architecture, the area in Al-Mawasi now sheltering thousands of Palestinians has been subject to Israeli attacks since May 6, when Israeli officials first delineated the “safe” zone.
The attacks started as early as two weeks after Israel forced Palestinians to flee to the area, a desert region with essentially no infrastructure, laying waste to tents and makeshift shelters set up to house people who Israel has displaced time and again in the past nine months.
“As with its relentless targeting of hospitals, Israel’s regular attacks on the so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ in al-Mawasi threaten to normalise such flagrant violations of international law,” Forensic Architecture wrote on social media. “The deadly strike on Saturday is just one in a series of repeated attacks on the designated humanitarian zone: we have mapped 10 attacks since 6 May.”
These findings contradict Israel’s claims that Al-Mawasi — and other supposed “safe zones” in Gaza — are exempt from the Israeli military’s campaign of “total annihilation.” They also demonstrate Israel’s strategy of forcing Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas in Gaza and then bombing those areas.
Israel’s attack on the Al-Mawasi “safe” zone on Saturday, in which the military dropped 8 2,000-pound bombs on a civilian area, killed at least 90 Palestinians and injured 300 more, officials reported. At least one of the bombs dropped was made in the U.S.
Those sheltering in the “safe” zone during the massacre included desperate families who had been forced to evacuate multiple times since October, and at least one survivor of the 1948 Nakba.
Survivors of the massacre describe scenes of horror as Israel’s shells rained down — children with severed limbs, people beheaded, and shrapnel, blood, and body parts flying everywhere.
Just days after, Israel unleashed another set of bombs on Al-Mawasi on Tuesday, killing at least 17 Palestinians.
At least two of these attacks on the “safe” zone have used U.S. bombs. An Israeli strike on May 26 that killed at least 45 people and injured 250 more used two Boeing-made bombs on a camp for displaced Palestinians.
These attacks on the explicitly designated “safe” zone come as Israel has relentlessly attacked other areas of Gaza in violation of international humanitarian law, which forbids targeting civilian infrastructure.
The UN reported on Wednesday, for instance, that it has recorded eight attacks on schools in Gaza in the past 10 days, including six UN schools. This includes an Israeli attack on a UN school in Nuseirat refugee camp on Tuesday, in which two Israeli strikes killed 20 people in the facility, now a shelter for displaced people.
The World Health Organization also reported that the Israeli military has attacked health care facilities in Gaza over 1,000 times since October — part of Israel’s systematic campaign to destroy all infrastructure essential to life in Gaza.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy