The Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed in a report that at least 75% of the victims of the large-scale Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip last Tuesday night were civilians, in stark contradiction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims regarding the low percentage of civilian casualties among those killed in the Israeli aggression.
According to the newspaper, citing the Israeli army and the Gaza Ministry of Health, the airstrikes resulted in the deaths of 104 Palestinians, including 46 children and 20 women. The Israeli army, however, stated that only 26 of the dead were militants belonging to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Islamic Jihad Movement.
The Occupation’s Denial
Israeli military sources stated that the attack was in response to the killing of reserve soldier Yona Ephraim Feldbaum, after Palestinian militants opened fire on a combat engineering unit in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. The occupation considered this a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
The army claimed the airstrikes targeted dozens of key fighters, weapons production sites, observation posts, tunnels, and rocket launching sites. However, Haaretz reports that the list of targets included civilian homes and densely populated areas, resulting in the deaths of entire families.
Among the most prominent of these attacks was the bombing of two homes belonging to the Abu Dalal family in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, where 18 people were killed, including five women and several children. The army stated that the target was Yahya Abu Dalal, whom it described as the deputy commander of the Islamic Jihad’s Central Gaza Camps Brigade. However, the family reported that most of the victims were civilians, including Amin Abu Dalal, a humanitarian worker, his wife and twin children, as well as his parents and siblings.
In Deir al-Balah, the bombing of a tent near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital killed five people, including three children, while another attack killed a 41-day-old infant. Haaretz also reported that among those targeted was Muhammad Manrawi, whom the army described as being in charge of “anti-tank forces” in northern Gaza, while Palestinian sources stated he was a journalist working for a local newspaper and was killed along with his wife inside their tent.
Despite the Israeli army’s attempts to justify the attacks as targeting “terrorist centers,” the official figures reveal a stark disparity between the number of combatants and civilians killed. According to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, approximately three out of every four people killed in the latest offensive were civilians.
