Death march from Beit Lahia
Hossam Shabat reports from northern Gaza on Israel’s mass expulsion campaign
Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old journalist with Al Jazeera Mubasher, is one of the few reporters to have remained and survived in northern Gaza since Israel’s genocidal assault began 14 months ago. His bravery and dedication to covering one of the most brutal military campaigns in recent history is almost beyond comprehension. Hossam has witnessed untold death and suffering on a daily basis. He has been displaced over 20 times. His colleagues have been killed in front of him. Last month he was wounded in an Israeli airstrike. Hossam is among six Al Jazeera journalists the Israeli military has publicly accused of being terrorists. He recently said that he feels hunted.
Hossam will be reporting for Drop Site News from northern Gaza. In his first dispatch, he documents a vicious mass expulsion campaign by the Israeli military in Beit Lahia that forced thousands of Palestinian families to flee one of the last remaining shelters in the besieged town.
Story by Hossam Shabat
GAZA CITY — The Israeli military forced thousands of Palestinians in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, to flee from one of the last remaining shelters and surrounding homes in the besieged town in the early hours of Wednesday morning, sending men, women and children on an hours-long death march under heavy artillery shelling and gunfire.
Thousands of displaced families had been taking shelter in the Abu Tamam school complex in Beit Lahia in a last ditch effort to remain in the town amid a brutal extermination and expulsion campaign conducted by Israeli forces in northern Gaza over the last two months.
Israeli troops assaulted the school complex, shelled and bombed the area, and issued expulsion orders through quadcopters fitted with loudspeakers, according to witnesses, forcing terrified families outside in the middle of the night. Leaving much of their scant belongings behind, civilians were forced to walk for an hour and a half, along Salah al-Din road—the main thoroughfare running through the enclave—before being forced to pass through an Israeli checkpoint.
Witnesses describe tear-streaked children covered in dust running panicked in the streets as warplanes and drones roared overhead. Some pleaded for water but Israeli soldiers refused to give them anything and instead poured water on the ground in front of them to taunt them, according to witnesses. At the checkpoint, Israeli troops separated the men and detained them as their families screamed in desperation. Witnesses described children clinging to Israeli tanks in a desperate attempt to stay with their fathers.
After the checkpoint, families were forced to walk for hours more, through the day, making their way a harrowing 10 kilometers south to Gaza City. Some of the wounded fell on the road with no hope of getting treatment. "I was walking with my sister in the street,” said Rahaf, 16. She and her sister were the sole survivors in their family of an earlier airstrike that killed 70 people. “Suddenly my sister fell due to the bombing. I saw blood pouring from her, but I couldn't do anything. I left her in the street, and no one pulled her out. I was screaming, but no one heard me."
When those who made it finally arrived, they collapsed in the streets exhausted. Children cried from hunger and thirst, and mothers shivered from the bitter cold, with no shelter or safe place to go. “We don't know what to do. We left our homes, and here we are living in the open, and no one is helping us. We are dying slowly here,” said Umm Mohamed, who lost two family members in an airstrike at the beginning of the military campaign two months ago and two family members detained at the checkpoint last night.
Wednesday’s mass expulsion campaign from Beit Lahia comes two months into a brutal extermination campaign conducted by the Israeli military in North Gaza since October 6. Over 3,700 people have been reported killed or missing, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. Civil Defense teams have come under repeated attack and been prevented from operating in the area, leaving what officials estimate are thousands of people trapped under the rubble and bodies strewn in the streets.
The Israeli military has imposed a near total blockade on humanitarian aid for the past two months, leaving tens of thousands without access to food, water, electricity, or basic healthcare, according to the UN. Two weeks ago, the UN estimated that between 100,000 and 131,000 people had been displaced from the North Gaza governorate to Gaza City since October 6. As of November 18, between 65,000 and 75,000 people were estimated to remain in North Gaza, according to the UN, accounting for less than 20% of the population there before Israel’s military campaign there began.
Translated from Arabic by Sharif Abdel Kouddous
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This is beyond tragic..thank you for your courage in continuing to report these most horrific circumstances to the world..we must not be allowed to look away or forget even for one minute
There is not enough soap in the universe to wash America clean. The blood on the hands of western leaders will forever place a stain on the human species.