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Photos. Published by Haaretz
Palestinians in the Mawasi humanitarian zone, December. Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB

Palestinians mourning relatives who were killed in an Israeli strike on Mawasi, Sunday. Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Re

The site of an Israeli strike on Mawasi, December. Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB

A tent city in Mawasi in October. Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on Mawasi, December. Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB
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The Israeli army classified Mawasi as a humanitarian zone and directed Gaza's civilian population there. But despite its humanitarian classification, the IDF has never refrained from striking it – and the UN says attacks there have intensified recently

by Nir Hasson for Haaretz
Dec 17, 2024

Two weeks ago, on December 4, Air Force jets bombed the huge encampment in Mawasi in southwest Gaza. The explosion and secondary explosions destroyed 21 tents and killed 23 people, including four children and two women, one of whom was pregnant.

The Israel Defense Forces told the UN Human Rights Council, which issued a report on the strike, that it was targeting senior Hamas operatives at the site and that the secondary explosion indicated that there were munitions in the strike zone. The UN report rejected the latter claim, determining, "According to information available to the UN Human Rights office, the secondary explosions were caused by hitting cooking gas balloons."

The strike was one of several strikes on Mawasi – an area the IDF has classified as a humanitarian zone to which it directs Gaza's civilian population. Despite its humanitarian classification, the IDF has never refrained from striking it, and scores of people are estimated to have been killed there to date. The UN says the strikes in the zone have intensified recently.

The Forensic Architecture website, which has systematically been documenting strikes in Gaza, says that there were five strikes on Mawasi from late May through September 10. No strikes were recorded in the second half of October. Data collected by Dr. Lee Mordechai of Hebrew University, who is tracking developments in Gaza, says that the strikes on Mawasi resumed on November 9, and that in less than a month Israeli struck the area at least eight times, killing scores of people.

The best remembered strike killed Hamas' military chief Mohammed Deif on July 13. The IDF reportedly used several large bombs designed to ensure that Deif was killed. Palestinian and foreign sources said that at least 90 people were killed in that strike.

Mawasi is a strip of sand dunes covering about 14 square kilometers near the beach in southern Gaza. Since the outbreak of the war, the IDF has instructed Gaza's uprooted population to go to the area, which is classified as a humanitarian zone on countless maps and in SMS, phone messages and leaflets. Under the cover of the war, Mawasi, which was mostly farmland or sand dunes, has become a vast encampment crowded with hundreds of thousands of people living in the harshest conditions.

The UN estimates that around 30,000 people per square kilometer live there. The dispossessed suffer from shortages of clean water and food, sanitary problems and a lack of proper shelter. An estimated 1,000 tents and thousands of mattresses, blankets and other critical supplies were swept out to sea in the first winter storm two weeks ago.

The strikes in Mawasi are different in character from the bombings in urban areas. Rather than destroying buildings – from which dust-covered, panicked wounded are pulled – strikes on Mawasi involve huge bombs that leave giant craters in the dunes. There are some reports of people completely disappearing due to the intensity of the explosion and the lack of shelter that could protect against the bombings.

"It looks like Nagasaki," said Georgios Petropoulos, head of the Gazan branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "They counted the bodies, but there are people who simply vaporized. Ten or twenty people who were known to be in the tents have simply vanished," he said. "I was at the hospital after the bombing, it looked like a slaughterhouse, blood everywhere." It was reported that a family was buried in sand that covered their tent from the same bombing.

A New York Times investigation on the kinds of weapons that the Israel Air Force uses in Mawasi indicated that it sometimes uses one-ton bombs. The explosions cause huge damage and create 15-meter-diameter craters. The U.S. administration has delayed deliveries of these bombs to Israel in recent months, due to allegations that they cause extensive environmental damage and kill civilians.

Three days before a strike that killed 23 people, two children were killed. Two weeks before that, eight people were killed, all from the Abu Taha family. Another attack was reported that same day which targeted a rocket launcher that Hamas had apparently situated there, and killed a child. In November, the IDF hit the zone at least five times. Palestinians reported that 52 people were killed in November. OCHA found that 34 people, including 10 children, were killed in five strikes in the two weeks before December 5. A mother and her two daughters were killed in one of them.

On November 30, Doctors Without Borders staff who run a clinic in Mawasi learned that the IDF was about to strike the area. It announced that it had not received an official announcement from the IDF and learned about the strike from residents. "We had only minutes to flee," said an employee. "The explosion was huge and afterwards we found the facility with destroyed equipment." The Abu Taha family was reportedly killed in the same strike.
"The use of heavy weapons in areas which the Israeli authorities have declared to be safe is further proof of the gross disregard for Palestinian lives and humanitarian law," the organization stated. "They told us to go to Mawasi, so we came to Mawasi and settled here," one of the dispossessed told AFP about Israel's intentions, adding, "The area was bombed without prior warning."

The IDF says that the humanitarian zones are "the safest of the zones where the army operates against terrorist organizations." Indeed, despite the increase in strikes, the number of dead in built-up areas is far higher than in the humanitarian zones. Nonetheless, aid organizations say that bombings in the humanitarian zones cause many Gazans to stay in their homes in northern Gaza, despite the risk. Gazans post on social media saying that if they are doomed to die anyway, they prefer to die with honor in their homes rather than be refugees in tents.

Senior UN officials continue to warn against the loss of public order in Gaza, which prevents them from distributing food and humanitarian aid to the residents. On Saturday, Muhannad Hadi, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced that last week a World Food Program 70-truck food convoy was again looted after leaving Kerem Shalom crossing and most of its contents were stolen.

Around the same time as that attack, another World Food Program convoy was ambushed after leaving Kissufim. Four of the five trucks were looted. These attacks occurred despite announcements in recent days of an initiative by Gaza's largest clans that they would act against the looting of aid.

The IDF said, "Hamas is systematically exploiting the humanitarian zones. The zones to which the population was evacuated following IDF warnings are safer than the areas where the IDF operates against terrorist organizations. They do not grant immunity to terrorists and the IDF will continue to operate against terrorist organizations wherever they are found, while complying with rules of international law and reducing harm to [civilians]. The cases specified by the letter are under examination and will be referred to the relevant examination and investigative mechanisms if necessary."