by Mike Whitney, The Unz Review:
The majority of Palestinians in Rafah live in an area that is roughly the size of Heathrow Airport. The city is cramped and unsanitary. It is surrounded on three sides by Israeli ground forces and on the fourth side by the 20 ft high Egyptian border wall. For all practical purposes, Rafah is a prison, the only difference being that, in a prison, the inmates are fed. In Rafah, no one is fed even though there are nearly 2,000 humanitarian trucks lined up beyond the Rafah Crossing waiting to deliver food to the starving population. The humanitarian convoy is being blocked by Israeli forces that are acting on orders from top military leaders. Ostensibly, Israel is depriving the Palestinians of food to create a strong incentive for them to flee the country when the Egyptian border is breached. When that happens, the western media will characterize the exodus as a “voluntary migration”, a designation that downplays the reality of ethnic cleansing.
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On Thursday, Israel launched a surprise attack on Palestinians who had gathered at food trucks in Gaza City. According to numerous reports, more than 100 people were gunned down while trying to get desperately needed food. Here’s a short recap of what took place:
“At about 4:30 this morning, trucks started to come through. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing at us as if it were a trap,” the man recounted to Quds News Network, as cited by Al Jazeera.
“As the Israeli military opened fire on the aid seekers, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies in the southwestern parts of Gaza City. It is a massacre, on top of the starvation threatening citizens in Gaza,” Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul said.
Over 250 Palestinians were wounded in the attack, the majority of whom have been taken to al-Shifa Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“Some of the others are being rushed to the Ahli and Jordanian hospitals. The [death toll] will rise. Hospitals are no longer able to accommodate the huge number of patients because they lack fuel, let alone medicine. Hospitals have also run out of blood,” al-Goul added….
Following the attack, Jadallah al-Shafei, head of the nurses’ department at al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera the “situation cannot be described in words… It is reminiscent of the dark scenes from the Baptist Hospital four months ago where 500 people were killed in one Israeli air strike,” he said.
“Since the early hours of the morning, the hospital has been flooded with dozens of dead bodies and hundreds of injured. The majority of the victims suffered gunshot wounds and shrapnel in the head and upper parts of their bodies. They were hit by direct artillery shelling, drone missiles, and gunshots. Israeli forces massacre civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, Mondoweiss
The incident is just the latest in an endless series of massacres. Israeli airstrikes account for the killing of 50 or-more people a day. The victims of these attacks are civilians, they are not Hamas and Israel knows they are not Hamas. But the killing goes on regardless. Why? Why is Israel shooting blameless civilians going about their business? What strategic benefit is there to that?
Plenty. The hungrier and more desperate the people are, the more likely they are to storm the border as soon as the wall has been breached. This is the only logical explanation for Israel’s behavior. They want to keep anxiety levels sky-high in order to produce the outcome they seek which is the expulsion of the entire Palestinian population. So, while it’s true that Israel’s attacks on civilians amounts to cold-blooded murder, it is cold-blooded murder with a purpose. And the purpose is the realization of the Zionist ideal of a Jewish-majority homeland from the “River to the Sea”. That majority can only be achieved by driving the Palestinians out of the country and into Egypt.
