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by Eli Gerzon,
“They woke up in the morning and they saw the yellow block at their doorstep. So they grabbed what they could and they ran away,” said Maha Hussaini, head of media and public engagement for Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor,
Hussaini explained that Euro-Med has documented multiple cases in which people went to sleep in areas of Gaza deemed safe, only to wake up inside what Israel designates a shoot-to-kill zone, where residents are killed and homes destroyed.
The “yellow line” marks the boundary within Gaza between the purportedly safe area and territory controlled by Israel.
Various maps show differing locations for the yellow line. It is “vague and invisible,” Hussaini said, and Israel shifts it by placing yellow blocks, often in the middle of residential neighborhoods.
Many residents are relieved to return to their homes in Gaza, even when they are damaged.
But then the yellow line shifts. Homes that “survived through two years of genocide” are now “getting demolished through or during the ceasefire,” Hussaini explained.
One horrifying incident near the yellow line occurred on 10 December.
Israeli forces shot 16-year-old Zaher Nasser Shamia, from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, as he approached a yellow block after being told there were no Israeli soldiers nearby.
After he was shot, Shamia was still moving his head. Israeli soldiers then arrived and dismembered his body with a bulldozer while was still alive.
Euro-Med has documented numerous cases indicating “a clear and repeated pattern of deliberately using heavy military machinery to kill civilians.” According to Hussaini, this pattern includes children, the elderly, and the wounded – among the most vulnerable populations.
Hussaini also shared testimony from Palestinians in Gaza who worry that people around the world have forgotten them after the so-called ceasefire was declared.
“The genocide has not ended – so far. So people outside of Gaza need to know that it is still ongoing,” said Hussaini.
One person Hussaini interviewed in Shujaiya said that, when people around the world began calling it a genocide, “that actually made us a little comfortable,” believing such recognition might help bring an end to what was happening.
“People outside of Gaza need to continue their advocacy, their rallies” Hussaini urged, until the genocide ends in reality, not merely on paper.
“Every day felt like my last”
Co-host Nora Barrows-Friedman said she has relied on Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s reports nearly every week during her news segment.
She asked Hussaini how she and her colleagues persist in their work amid so much suffering and constant danger.
“This is a question that I’ve been asked repeatedly,” Maha replied. “I never know how to answer it, but there is something that pushes you through.”
Hussaini is an award-winning journalist who has been in Gaza throughout the genocide – documenting it as she, her family and her community struggled to survive unbearable horrors and loss.
“It reached the point where I was thinking that if we cannot find anything to eat, can we eat the tree leaves?” Maha said. “You are consumed psychologically by thoughts of how to survive.”
“Every time I heard that a colleague journalist or a colleague human rights worker was killed, detained or targeted,” Maha told us, “I was surprised that it pushed me to keep going and even to be more furious in my work.”
“Every day felt like my last,” she recalled. “We were actually running against time to document stories – and every time I got a story out, I felt a little triumph, a little victory.”
Buildings collapse on Gaza families
Barrows-Friedman also reported on Israel’s continued destruction and violence east of the yellow line. Almost 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israel or died of previous injuries and nearly 1,100 have been injured since the 10 October alleged ceasefire, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.
At least 16 more Palestinians in Gaza, including three children, have died in recent days as severe winter storms and heavy winds ravage fragile tents and partially destroyed buildings.
Watch Barrows-Friedman’s full news report on YouTube and read it here.
Qassam commander assassinated
Contributing editor Jon Elmer showed maps of Gaza depicting how the yellow line falls in different places depending on various sources.
Commenting on collaborator militias in Gaza backed by Israel, Elmer said that they lack the capacity to challenge Qassam forces or overthrow the Hamas-led authorities.
“They’re just there to cause chaos and destruction,” he explained.
However collaborators were able to cross to the west of the yellow line and assassinate a top Qassam leader, Raed Saad, according to Elmer.
Israel has “been attempting to assassinate Raed Saad for about 30 years. He’s a key commander. His life really mirrors the growth of the Qassam Brigades from the first intifada when they were founded as a group of operatives,” Elmer said.
In 2005, Israel withdrew its occupation forces and settlers from the interior of Gaza – the so-called “disengagement” that actually turned into a prolonged siege. That is when Saad became a key figure.
He focused on weapons development and military organization to turn a “group of operatives into, effectively, a national army,” according to Elmer.
The Qassam Brigades released a statement saying: “Our great commander departed after a long and impressive journey of sacrifice and resistance, crowned by his leadership of the Qassam manufacturing system – which formed one of the most important pillars of the creativity of our resistance on 7 October [2023].”
The group added that since that date, Saad’s contributions helped in “inflicting heavy losses on the occupation army and confronting its aggression against our people during the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood in Gaza.”
Qassam condemned Saad’s assassination as a major ceasefire violation.
Another faction of Gaza’s armed resistance expressed mourning and appreciation for Saad.
The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades is the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular and historically Marxist-Leninst faction. The PFLP is the second-largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – after Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and collaborates with Israel.
The PFLP recently marked its 58th anniversary. Elmer noted that the left-wing group regularly cooperates with and expresses support for the Qassam Brigades.
“The joint operations room and the ability of these factions to work together has been one of the real testaments to the battle that we have been witnessing over the last two years,” Elmer said.
Arrested for saying “intifada”
Co-host Asa Winstanley reported on the arrest of two people in London for the alleged offense of chanting “globalize the intifada.”
Winstanley described this as a moral panic in the UK and compared it to the controversy over the phrase “from the river to the sea” – used by supporters of Palestinian rights and demonized by Zionist groups.
Winstanley shared the definition and context for the term intifada.
“I’m sure as most of our viewers will know, it simply is the Arabic word for uprising. And in the context of the Palestinians and global solidarity with the Palestinians, it means supporting that uprising, supporting an uprising against occupation.”
Co-host Ali Abunimah warned people not to cater to these moral panics.
“Somehow calling for Palestine to be free is calling for a genocide of the Jewish people? They’re such liars – it’s all in bad faith and no one should pander to it.”
Source: https://electronicintifada.net
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