Human Rights and Democracy Media Center- SHAMS, affirms that targeting the shelters in the Gaza Strip, where displaced Palestinians are gathered, reveals the level of savagery tendency to bloodshed, and the willingness to kill the maximum possible number of civilians, which characterize the behavior of the Israeli occupation. The Center added that there is another objective behind such practices, which is to flee Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip. Such a policy has been always seen in the thought and the practices of the Israeli occupation, since the establishment of the occupation state in the year 1948, up to date. Since the beginning, the idea of uprooting Palestinians and ethnic cleansing, which is rooted in the thought of the Zionism Movement, was always seen within the practices of the Israeli political, security, and military institutions of the occupation’s state. The occupation state tried to make use of the available local, regional, and international circumstances to implement such a policy. Currently, it seems that the occupation state is convinced that the existing circumstances represent a good opportunity to evacuate Palestinians and push them to flee the Gaza Strip. For that, the Israeli authorities are utilizing all available means in order to apply the given policy. Sometimes the speech is about voluntary evacuation while at other times, it is about forcible displacing. To achieve such a goal, the Israeli authorities are proceeding with the genocide war against Palestinians to make them feel that there is no safe place for them and that they have no choice, but to flee the Gaza Strip and rush to any place in the world with the exception of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
SHAMS Center warns that the policy of targeting the shelters through shelling, destruction, and killing civilians, whether in the tents or the UNRWA and Governmental Schools, is a political message delivered by the occupation to Palestinians. The content of such a message is that there is no possibility for Palestinians to remain in their land and they should evacuate the Gaza Strip immediately. The Israeli government started applying such a strategy following the failure of the other means that have been applied since October 7, 2023. Since the beginning of the aggression, Palestinians refused to flee their land and they insisted on staying even if they might be killed in their houses and residential places. The Center added that targeting the houses and residential localities (known as the burnt land policy), which the occupation has been applying in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression, is to deliver a message to people that returning to their houses is impossible.
SHAMS Center deplores the statements released by the leaders of the occupation about how to deal with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In particular, SHAMS Center denounces the statement of the Minister named Amihai Eliyahu, Minister of Heritage in the current Israeli government, who called for using nuclear bombs against the Gaza Strip. Such a statement is a clear incitement and call for killing and genocide. In the same regard, the Israeli War (Defense) Prisoner, Yoav Gallant, said (We are fighting Human Animals) in a clear message to legalize killing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The various leaders of the Israeli government keep repeating the same statements and they insist to evacuate Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip and rebuild the Israeli settlements on the ruins of Palestinians. The Israeli settlement Conference, which took place in Occupied Jerusalem City on 30/1/2024, under the title: “Back to settlements in the Gaza Strip and voluntarily evacuation of Palestinians”, affirmed the necessity to continue building the settlements in the various parts of historical Palestine motivated by Torah Instructions. The mentioned conference was attended by 26 ministers and Knesset members, which indicates the policy and the tendency of the current Israeli government to uproot Palestinians from their land and evacuate them.
SHAMS Center confirms that targeting the shelters and killing Palestinians (women, children, and elderly people) and committing genocide crimes in the shelters and UNRWA premises, is not a new act within the policy of the occupation and its alliances. During the previous aggressions against the Gaza Strip since 2008, there have been always crimes of mass killing and genocide committed against Palestinians. Before that, there was the Qana Massacre committed against a shelter in South Lebanon on 18/4/1996 during the so-called (Operation Grapes of Wrath) where the Israeli army attacked the headquarter of the UNIFEL as many civilians were gathered there to rescue their lives from the heavy shelling. In the mentioned attack (106) Lebanese civilians were killed alongside hundreds of wounded persons. It is also similar to the massacre committed by the so-called American- British Alliances Forces, which attacked Amiriyah Shelter, in Baghdad, using smart Bombs leading to the killing of more than 400 Iraqi civilians in that terrible crime.
SHAMS Center affirms that targeting the shelters and killing civilians in these places (including women, children, and elderly people) is a profound violation of the International Law and the international human rights law. In particular, the Israeli practices violate Article 14 of the Geneva Fourth Convention, which stipulates: “In time of peace, the High Contracting Parties and, after the outbreak of hostilities, the Parties thereto, may establish in their own territory and, if the need arises, in occupied areas, hospital and safety zones and localities so organized as to protect from the effects of war, wounded, sick and aged persons, children under fifteen, expectant mothers and mothers of children under seven”. Article 17 of the same Convention states: “The Parties to the conflict shall endeavor to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, children and maternity cases, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas”.
SHAMS Center calls on the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, governmental and non-governmental institutions, and the states signatory to the Geneva Conventions, to urgently act and compel the Israeli occupation government to cease targeting shelters and displacement centers in the Gaza Strip, refrain from attacking them, and halt organized killing operations against civilians displaced therein. Also, to stop the barbaric aggression against the Gaza Strip