The four-week siege of the Jabaliya, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun areas in northern Gaza has at least the appearance of the dreaded “General’s Plan” of forcing the evacuation of civilians from an area and then starving anyone left behind, who is treated as a combatant. With no aid workers, medical staff, or international reporters on the ground, there are no witnesses to the ethnic cleansing of the area. These areas of siege are considered the deadliest areas of Gaza.
However, from Jabaliya, a weak, but defiant video signal transmitted by social media has been documenting the atrocities. With power blackouts and the Israeli jamming of phone and internet networks across Gaza, this video signal is sporadic at best. A journalist for Al Jazeera, Anas Al-Sharif, lives in the al-Hawaja neighborhood and has used his social media accounts to tell the world what has been happening.
There were airstrikes on homes on the same street where Al-Sharif lives, and last week, reporting from a quiet, dark street amid all the rubble, he gave his report. He estimated that there were 150 people killed or trapped under the rubble in this latest strike on his street, but he says that there is no official count and nobody knows for sure. Civil Defense services were suspended last week when units came under Israeli fire.
