Israel Slaughters 90 in al-Mawasi Refugee Camp in Hunt for Hamas Military Head

Israeli Defense Forces launched a major airstrike Saturday in al-Mawasi, located due west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The IDF claims it killed Rafa Salami, the leader of Hamas military forces based in Khan Younis, during the strike. It says the other it also hoped to take down in the airstrike, Mohammed Deif, the head of the Hamas military for all of Gaza, was wounded but escaped.

Al-Mawasi is the supposedly safe zone Israel had designated as a “humanitarian area” where an estimated hundreds of thousands of refugees were ordered by Israeli Defense Forces to evacuate less than two months ago. The Palestinians were ordered out of Rafah and its surroundings, sector by sector, to make way for the intense door-to-door and air-based military cleanout of what at the time Israel said would be the site of their last major military action in Gaza, just before the current phase of the war against the Palestinian people and Hamas would end.

As the Palestinian people learned again this weekend, there are no longer any safe spaces in Gaza, especially in places Israel tells them to run to escape being caught in another battlefield.

As reported by individuals present when the airstrike began, the aerial shelling this time involved strafing and shelling by a mix of Israeli jets and drones. The bombs they carried easily ripped through the flimsy refugee structures which Israeli forces began setting up in May. The explosions which followed caused extensive wreckage to everything nearby, including structures from small buildings to tents. Any Palestinians present, which were there almost in their entirety at the direct instruction of the same IDF forces which launched this unbelievable attack, and which were anywhere near the blast sites, were either killed quickly or badly injured.

Witnesses said at least five “big airplanes” were part of the airstrike. Photographs of where the shelling and rockets hit the ground show multiple large craters, indicating the use of very large explosive charges. As in all previous such strikes conducted by Israeli Defense Forces against Palestinians in Gaza, most of the munitions involved were likely supplied and/or paid for by the U.S. government.

Officials connected with the Gaza health ministry say at least 90 innocent Palestinians were murdered by the IDF forces which struck al-Mawasi. At least 300 others were badly injured. Most of those killed and injured were in or near Nus Street in al-Mawasi, and area where at least 80,000 Palestinians were located.

The death toll is expected to rise rapidly as those still alive but in need of emergency medical care are unable to get adequate help quickly.

“Rescue teams are still recovering dozens of martyrs and wounded until this moment from the site of bombing and targeting,” reported the Gaza government information office Saturday. “This massacre comes in conjunction with the lack of hospitals that can receive this large number of martyrs and wounded, and in conjunction with the occupation’s destruction of the health system in the Gaza Strip.”

As has been the excuse it nearly all previous massacres of this kind, Israeli Defense Forces claim their drones and fighter jets were specifically targeting two senior Hamas officials who they claim were hiding among the Palestinian refugees at al-Mawasi. One of those was Mohammed Deif, also known as Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.

Deif is the head of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade, the name for Hamas’ military forces. Deif is described by the Israelis as the “mastermind” of the October 7, 2023, attack in northern Israel which triggered the current phase of the war by Israeli occupation forces on Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza.

This is the same attack for which evidence is growing showing Israeli Defense Forces may have been responsible for a large percentage of the total deaths which happened there that day. The most recent of these appeared in an article in Haaretz this past week, in which it revealed that the IDF had invoked its dreaded “Hannibal Protocol” once its forces arrived at the music festival where Hamas paratroopers had landed. The Hannibal Protocol authorizes the IDF to use whatever military force they deem necessary, including broad killing of innocent Israeli civilians and even its own troops, if that is what is required to prevent the capture of any of its soldiers as hostages.

After the Haaretz story broke, Israel government officials acknowledged they had made some mistakes during the October 7 attack. It has accepted partial blame for not adequately protecting its people from that invasion, even after the U.S. had warned Israeli officials of intelligence they had gathered from various sources saying Hamas was about to do something like this not long before the actual attack happened. Israel has so far never publicly acknowledged receiving that information.

This is especially relevant since Israel launched the attack on al-Mawasi specifically to kill Deif only days after the news about Israel’s shocking use of deadly force against its own troops and citizens during the October 7 attack.

Deif has for 29 years been on Israel’s official “most wanted” list of individuals who it says are responsible for orchestrating multiple attacks against the nation. He coordinates planning for Hamas’ defense operations against the Israeli Defense Forces’ occupying troops which are continuing their genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

Deif is also one of three senior Hamas officials the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on May 19 “bear criminal responsibility for…war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 7 October 2023”. The other two are Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political operations, and Yahya Sinwar, with the official title as overall leader of Hamas, otherwise known as the Islamic Resistance Movement.

The same ICC ruling also charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant with “criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023”.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants for the arrest of all five individuals. It is doing so under the jurisdiction the Court was granted by the 118 nations which signed the 2002 Rome Statute which authorized its creation. The International Criminal Court is based in The Hague, Netherlands.

The other Hamas senior official Israeli Defense Forces claim they were after when they carried out Saturday’s raid on al-Mawasi was Rafa Salama. He was the commander of Hamas’ military brigade based in Khan Younis, the second-largest city in Gaza. Israel considered him such an important individual in Hamas’ leadership, that in December of last year it offered a U.S. $200,00 bounty for information leading to his capture or arrest. That same month Israeli Defense Forces ordered an air strike on Salama’s home in Gaza; the home was destroyed, but Salama and his family escaped without serious injury or capture.

The Israeli Defense Forces claims Salama was killed in the al-Mawasi airstrike this weekend. It said his death “significantly impedes Hamas’ military capabilities”.

Hamas officials as of now deny either Salama died in the mass killings or Deif was injured in the airstrikes. They also insist any claims that Deif and Salama were hiding in the camp are “false”.

Hamas officials also condemned the mass killings on July 13 as “horrific”.

“The al-Mawasi massacre in Khan Younis has been committed against an area that is crowded with more than 80,000 displaced people,” the Hamas organization said in an official communique released on July 13. “This is an obvious and clear confirmation from the Zionist government that it will continuing its war of extermination against our Palestinian people, through repeatedly and systematically targeting the defenseless displaced civilians in tents, shelters and residential neighborhoods.”

Senior Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri added to that in a brief interview with reporters not long after the bombings occurred.

“All the martyrs are civilians and what happened was a grave escalation of the war of genocide, backed by the American support and world silence,” he said.

Soon after news of the IDF airstrikes at al-Mawasi began to spread, the Israeli Defense Forces and Shin Bet Intelligence Agency issued a joint statement about the tragedy.

“The air force and the southern command attacked, based on accurate intelligence information, in the area where the two top targets of the Hamas terrorist organization and other terrorists were hiding among civilians,” the statement read. “The area that was attacked is an open and wooded area, with several buildings and sheds.”

A senior official with the Israeli Defense Forces admitted this was supposed to be a protected shelter area for Palestinian refugees but explained their action as proper “because we knew it was a Hamas compound”.

Leaders around the world reacted swiftly to Israel’s deadly attack on al-Mawasi with anger and disbelief.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the Israeli raids on the al-Mawasi area,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said.

The government of Qatar, which has been deeply involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a proposed new ceasefire arrangement, took the rare step of calling out the Israeli action as unwarranted and unlawful. It described the widespread killings at al-Mawasi as a “shocking and brutal massacre” which represent “a new chapter in the ongoing series of crimes” waged by Israel against the Palestinian people.

From Iran, Nasser Kanaani, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said, in a post on the social media platform X, that the mass murder was sadly just the “latest crime in the series of crimes committed by the child-killing Zionist regime”.

“The Zionists have once again brutally shown that in order to compensate for the defeats suffered on the battlefield with the resistance, they do not recognize any humane and moral red line towards the defenseless residents of the Gaza Strip, but they must know that insisting on this path is nothing but a wider global hatred,” he continued.

Saudi Arabia reacted quickly as well.

“The Foreign Ministry condemns in strongest terms the continuation of genocidal massacres against the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli war machine, the latest of which was the targeting (of) displaced people’s camps in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip,” its government said in its own official statement.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry said it would demand “activating international accountability mechanisms” against what Israel had done this time.

From Colombia, President Gustavo Petro, who has since near the beginning of the current phase of Israel’s war against the Palestinians criticized its brutality and criminal nature, wrote on the social media platform X called the massacre “the greatest injustice”.

“I am even more outraged because this destruction of international human law is a prelude to the barbarism they want to unleash on all the oppressed people of the earth,” he wrote.

Hamas officials initially announced late July 14 they would be withdrawing from the ceasefire negotiations ongoing in Qatar with Israeli representatives. They said at the time the bombing of the al-Mawasi refugee camp, after continued escalation of the war in Gaza which included another deadly airstrike on a UNRWA school in Nuseirat yesterday, is proof Israel is not serious about the negotiations.

On July 15 Hamas reversed that decision and have agreed to return to the bargaining table.