Above photo: Palestinian residents and Civil Defense teams search for survivors following an Israeli attack on the al-Rimal Clinic in Gaza City, October 10, 2024. Hadi Daoud/APA Images.
In Apparent Implementation Of The ‘Generals’ Plan.’
Israeli strikes target the last functioning bakery in northern Gaza while Israeli troops continue to besiege and invade Jabalia for the sixth day in a row. Meanwhile, Israeli forces encounter heavy resistance in southern Lebanon.
Casualties
- 42,065 + killed* and at least 97,886 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
- 749+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
- 2,141 Lebanese killed and more than 10,096 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
- The Israeli army recognizes the death of 720 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on October 10, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of October 9, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 9, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Key Developments
- Gaza branch of Palestinian Health Ministry says death toll surpasses 42,065, with 97,886 wounded since October 7, comprising 33% children, 18.4% women, and 8.6% elderly; at least 115 Palestinian children born and killed by Israeli forces since October 7.
- Palestinian Health Ministry says the death toll by the Israeli army or settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem has reached 749 since October 7, 2023.
- Lebanese Ministry of Health says 2,141 Lebanese people killed, over 10,099 wounded in hundreds of Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon, especially in the south and the Beqaa Valley as of the beginning of escalating hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel in September 2024.
- Israel continues to besiege and invade Jabalia in northern Gaza for the sixth day.
- Israel bombs northern Gaza’s last bakery while Palestinian Civil Defense says Israeli forces are preventing aid from reaching the north.
- Israel kills 30 Palestinians in bombing on a clinic in Gaza and 28 in a bombing on a school in Deir al-Balah, both sheltering civilians.
- Israel continues to bomb Lebanese towns in the south and the Beqaa Valley and kills 13 on Thursday alone.
- Hezbollah intensifies rocket fire on Haifa and central Galile; Israel announces two Israelis killed and 12 wounded.
- Israeli army announces one officer killed on Thursday in southern Lebanon and one soldier wounded while Hezbollah announces destroying an Israeli tank and shelling Israeli military concentrations across the border.
- Israel’s Mossad chief informs the U.S. that Israel’s new additional condition for a ceasefire in Lebanon is the release of Israeli captives in Gaza.
Is The Jabalia Invasion The Start Of The ‘Generals’ Plan’?
Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 184 Palestinians since last Tuesday, October 8, according to the Gaza branch of the Palestinian Health Ministry. On Thursday alone, 54 Palestinians were killed in multiple strikes, according to the Ministry’s daily report.
Israel’s siege of parts of northern Gaza entered its sixth day on Thursday, sealing off Beit Lahia and Jabalia as the Israeli army launched a military invasion of the area, which houses an estimated 200,000 people.
Analysts have considered Israel’s current operations in northern Gaza to be the first step in implementing the vision laid out by retired Israeli general Giora Eiland in an article he published in the early months of the war. Eiland’s article received the endorsement of several Israeli military officials and generals earlier in September and has since come to be called the “Generals’ plan” in the media. The plan aims at sealing off northern Gaza and rendering it uninhabitable, forcing the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in it to flee to the south and turn the entire north into a depopulated military area.
Due to this proposal, Eiland was specifically included in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which ruled that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza. In late September, Netanyahu reportedly told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan”, two weeks before Israeli forces began their new invasion of Jabalia, which resulted in sealing off the refugee camp last Sunday and the start of a military siege.
In the early weeks of its assault on Gaza after October 7, Israel forced around a million Palestinians to leave their homes in the north, ordering them into crowded areas in the governorates of Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, which it also attacked and continues to bombard.
Israel continues to refuse the return of displaced Palestinians to the north, a major point of contention in stalled ceasefire talks, as Israeli forces have established a military zone along the south of Gaza City, known as the Netzarim corridor, which effectively cuts off the north of the strip from the center and the south.
Eyewitnesses from Jabalia who spoke to Mondoweiss earlier in the week reported soldiers and quadcopter attack drones shooting civilians carrying pieces of white cloth attempting to evacuate, using Jabalia residents as human shields, and indiscriminate bombardment and artillery shelling.
The Palestinian Civil Defense reported that many bodies continue to lie in the streets and that its crews are unable to retrieve them due to Israeli fire. The Israeli army ordered inhabitants in several parts of Jabalia to evacuate earlier in the week, and many have already fled their homes. Evacuation orders also included the Kamal Adwan, al-Awda, and Indonesian hospitals.
Israel began the current ground invasion of Jabalia last Sunday, the third such major invasion since October 7 of last year, while tightening its siege on the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel Targets Last Functioning Bakery In Northern Gaza
On Thursday, Israeli warplanes bombed displaced families taking shelter in the al-Rimal clinic in Gaza City, killing at least 25 people and wounding 100, eyewitnesses told media crews. Video footage by Palestinian media showed medical staff gathering dismembered bodies in an ambulance.
In Deir al-Balah, Israeli warplanes struck the Rafida school, where civilians were taking shelter, killing 28 people and wounding 50. One female middle-aged survivor told Mondoweiss that “there were no armed people here, no Hamas, most of the people here are women and girls, this is a school directors’ office that was used for vaccinations and pregnant women.”
“Why do they do this to us?” exclaimed the survivor. “They targeted us in tents. In homes. In the streets and in schools. Where shall we go? Can no one in the entire world stop Israel?”
Meanwhile, Israel bombed the last remaining bakery in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. The Palestinian Civil Defense reported that the Israeli army has been preventing the entry of humanitarian aid to the north for several days, bringing back the risk of starvation that devastated the north of the Strip earlier this year, where some 400,000 Palestinians continue to live.
Israel Continues To Bomb Lebanon As Hezbollah Increases Rocket Fire, Fierce Fighting At The Border
The Israeli army announced that it had bombed 110 targets belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon, including rocket arsenals and other military facilities. Lebanese sources reported that Israeli strikes targeted the towns of Suhmor and Sahl Bawadi in the Beqaa Valley, and Arzoun, al-Kyam, Qana, Naqoura, Teir Harfa, Maifadoun, and the city of Tyre in the south. On Thursday alone, the Lebanese Health Ministry announced the death of 13 Lebanese across the country, including children, in nine Israeli airstrikes.
In a televised speech on Tuesday, October 8, marking a year since the beginning of Hezbollah’s cross-border operations against Israeli forces in support of Gaza, the Deputy Secretary General of the Lebanese resistance group, Naim Qassem, said that Hezbollah’s hierarchy and command and control “hasn’t been affected by the assassinations” of its top military commanders and Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah. Qassem added that “there is no vacant position in Hezbollah’s leadership,” as the organization has replaced all its assassinated leaders.
Qassem also denied, for the second time, Israel’s claims of having destroyed its weapons arsenal, affirming that the movement’s “military capabilities are fine,” and that it is fighting the war with Israel “in an escalatory manner according to military plans.”
For the tenth day, Israeli forces have been conducting ground operations in the south of Lebanon, facing heavy resistance from Hezbollah fighters. As of the time of writing, Israeli forces have only entered a few hundred meters into Lebanese territory several times over before withdrawing. On Thursday, the Israeli army announced the killing of an officer and the wounding of a soldier in south Lebanon, raising the number of its admitted soldier deaths in Lebanon since the beginning of its ground operations to 16 soldiers and officers, in addition to hundreds of wounded.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah intensified its rocket fire on the city of Haifa and its surrounding area. Israeli authorities announced that 12 Israelis were wounded in the city and that two others were killed by rocket fire in Kiryat Shmona in the upper Galilee. Video footage circulated online showing the damage caused to houses and buildings in Haifa by rocket fire.
Meanwhile, the Times of Israel reported that the chief of the Israeli Mossad informed the U.S. of a new Israeli condition for a ceasefire in Lebanon, namely the release of Israeli captives in Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister had declared two weeks ago in a meeting with his cabinet that Israel’s goal in Lebanon was to force Hezbollah to dissociate itself from the war in Gaza, as the Lebanese movement has maintained that it will only stop its operations if Israel ends its war on the beleaguered coastal enclave.