‘Everything is gone’: how Israeli forces destroyed Jabaliya refugee camp

A chronicle of Jabaliya’s destruction, using eyewitness accounts, satellite imagery and video footage.

On the morning of 9 October 2023, the Trans area of the open market in Jabaliya refugee camp was bustling. Two days into the Gaza war triggered by Hamas’s surprise attack in Israel, it had yet to be hit by Israeli jets. The camp, just north of the city of the same name, was established in 1948. Though technically still a refugee camp, in the ensuing decades it had become largely indistinguishable from the rest of northern Gaza’s urban sprawl – densely populated, vibrant and busy. As well as the large open market at its centre, there were restaurants and schools, two football teams, bakeries and clinics.

Between 10.30am and 11.30am on 9 October last year, five Israeli airstrikes tore through the market, killing dozens of people. They were the opening salvoes of a devastating Israeli campaign, conducted in three waves, that has left the camp an unrecognisable wasteland of rubble. “This year is one of the worst I have experienced,” said 33-year-old Ahlam al-Tlouli, who comes from the Tal al-Zaatar area of the camp. “We have lived through destruction, killing, starvation, displacement, fear, terror and siege. Every minute that passes feels like a year.”

Over the course of the Israeli invasion, settlements across the Gaza Strip have suffered damage.

Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. Israel Defence Forces

A document circulated to Israeli combat soldiers in recent weeks, revealed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, talks of “exposing large areas” – a euphemism, the paper says, for destroying buildings and infrastructure in such a way that Hamas fighters cannot hide in them but no one can live in them either.

Nadia Hardman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said HRW had identified a pattern in Jabaliya and across the north of Israeli forces clearing territory for buffer zones and security corridors. “People can argue whether the campaign of bombing is reckless destruction or part of the hostilities, but taking control of an area and intentionally destroying it looks far more systematic,” Hardman said.

In a statement, the IDF said: “The IDF is currently operating in northern Gaza against terrorist targets due to Hamas’s efforts to restore its operational capabilities in the area … The IDF targets only military objectives. Strikes aimed at military objectives are subject to the relevant international law, including taking all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians.” Even close Israeli observers are struggling to understand the intensity of the focus on Jabaliya. “It’s a mystery I have been trying to understand myself,” said Michael Milstein, of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. “We all understand this operation doesn’t defeat Hamas, which obviously still exists, even in Jabaliya.”

For Mohammed Nasser, 48, from Tal al-Zahar, who used to work as a television camera operator, it is hard to see what more could be destroyed. “The previous wars did not cause destruction like this,” he said. “Homes, streets, health and educational facilities – everything is gone.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/18/jabaliya-refugee-camp-gaza-destruction-idf