‘OPERATION AL-AQSA FLOOD’ DAY 237: INVASION OF RAFAH AND NORTHERN GAZA

Girl walks past a destroyed building in Gaza City with graffiti on the ruins saying, “We promise to rebuild,” May 29, 2024. Khaled Daoud/APA Image

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for launching a “defensive war” on the West Bank in the same way that Israel has done in Gaza.

Casualties

• 36,224 + killed* and at least 81,777 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
• 520+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
• Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
• 636 Israeli soldiers have been announced killed since October 7, and at least 3,568 have been announced as wounded.***

*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on May 26, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.

** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on May 26, this is the latest figure.

*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded, according to Israeli media reports, exceeds 6,800 as of April 1.

Key Developments

• Israel kills 240 Palestinians, wounds 1,134 since Monday, May 27, across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 36,240 and the number of wounded to 81,777, according to the Gaza health ministry.
• Israeli strikes target Palestinians trying to return to their homes in Jabalia.
• Israeli forces partially withdraw from Jabalia.
• CNN investigation shows that Israeli bombs used in the Rafah tent-city massacre last Sunday, May 26, were U.S.-made Boeing bombs.
• UNRWA chief says Israel has made targeting international missions look legitimate.
• Israeli forces raid Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, Tubas, northern Hebron, and Qalqilya in the West Bank, arresting 20 in the past 24 hours.
• Israeli forces cause large fire in main vegetable market in Ramallah.
• Two Israeli soldiers reported killed in car-ramming attack north of Nablus.
• Israel uses drone strikes during raid on Nablus last night.
• Israel’s finance minister Smotrich calls for “defensive war” in the West Bank.
• PLO says Israeli actions in northern West Bank refugee camps “same as in Gaza.”

Israel Kills 240 Across Gaza Since Monday

The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced that the remaining hospitals in the Gaza Strip received 240 slain Palestinians in Israeli airstrikes since Monday, May 27, while 1134 others arrived wounded.

Meanwhile, local media sources reported that in the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes killed seven Palestinians in strikes on a shelter for displaced families in Gaza City. Reports also indicated that Israeli troops detonated several houses in the Sheikh Zayed neighborhood in the city.

Israeli forces also targeted the areas of Beit Lahia, Zeitoun, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia with drone strikes and shelling. Israeli ground troops partially withdrew from Jabalia after a several-week-long invasion.

Residents found large destruction to infrastructure in Jabalia following the partial Israeli withdrawal. Other families who had fled the area at the beginning of the Israeli invasion in mid-May attempted to return to their homes in Jabalia, but Israeli troops opened fire at them, according to reports.

In the central Gaza Strip, heavy combat was reported between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance fighters in the east of the central governorate. Meanwhile, Israeli forces opened machine gun fire on residents’ homes in the Bureij refugee camp. Israeli fire also targeted houses in the Wadi Gaza area and in the Mighraqa village, north of Deir al-Balah.

In the Nuseirat refugee camp, Israeli forces fired flares last night, while four Palestinians were killed in an air strike on a family house in the camp.

In the southern Gaza Strip, three Palestinians were reported killed in an Israeli strike on a family house in the Tel al-Sultan area in Rafah on Wednesday. In the west of Rafah, two Palestinian rescue workers were killed in an Israeli drone strike while on a rescue mission.

According to the same reports, Israeli troops also detonated a number of houses in the Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah.

Smotrich Calls For ‘War’ In West Bank As Israel Ramps Up Raids

Since Wednesday night, Israeli forces raided the cities of Tulkarem, Nablus, Ramallah, Tubas, and the Arroub refugee camp north of Hebron, arresting at least 20 Palestinians according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.

Last week, an Israeli raid on Jenin killed 12 Palestinians, while largely destroying the camp’s infrastructure. The current raid pattern has been increasing in frequency and violence, especially in the northern West Bank refugee camps — notably in Tulkarem, Jenin, and Nablus.

On Wednesday, the Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who handles the administrative powers over the occupied West Bank, called upon the Israeli army to conduct a “defensive war”  in the West Bank, similar to the one in Gaza. Smotrich has called in the past to wipe out Palestinian towns, arguing that it should be the Israeli army, not the settlers, to carry out such actions.

Also on Wednesday, the member of the PLO’s department for refugee camps responsible for the northern West Bank, Nancy Thouqan, told the Palestine News Network that what Israel is doing in the northern West Bank is already similar to what it is doing in Gaza.

Thouqan pointed out that the northern camps house the largest number of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, and have been the center of Palestinian activism in recent years. According to Thouqan, Israel aims at depopulating these camps, similarly to its attempts to depopulate the Gaza Strip, and to undermine the work of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

On Wednesday, UNRWA’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel’s smearing of the agency led some to believe that UN missions are legitimate targets. Lazzarini added that the size of Israeli attacks on UNRWA staff in the current war “deserve an investigation.” Since October, Israeli forces have killed 188 UNRWA employees, according to the agency’s own data as of May 7.