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This happened was during today's "4 hour humanitarian cease fire." According to witnesses and reports from the scene, shortly after 12:00n local time, as residents (survivors?) of Gaza were attempting to get necessary supplies at a market section adjoining the Shujayea neighborhood, several mortar or tank shells landed among the shoppers, killing between 17 and 20 (a figure likely to increase significantly) and wounding hundreds.
This is what Israel does: it declares a "cease fire" then waits for people to gather in response, then the IDF kills them. It kills them in hospitals. It kills them in refugee centers and schools. Wherever Gazans are gathered in large numbers for protection or under the banner of a "ceasefire," Israel aims its missiles and shells and kills them by the score, wounding many more.
It is apparently an identity thing to the Israelis.
Lull and lure the Arabs into believing their safety is assured. Then kill them.
This is how the UNRWA Representative in Gaza Christopher Gunness responded to the latest school shelling in which dozens were killed -- as they slept -- and hundreds were wounded:
The UNWRA statement is unusually blunt and harsh.
Statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl
Jerusalem
Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.
We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts. It is too early to give a confirmed official death toll. But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries including of women and children and the UNRWA guard who was trying to protect the site. These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army.
The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection; the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling.
I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces.
This is the sixth time that one of our schools has been struck. Our staff, the very people leading the humanitarian response are being killed. Our shelters are overflowing. Tens of thousands may soon be stranded in the streets of Gaza, without food, water and shelter if attacks on these areas continue.
We have moved beyond the realm of humanitarian action alone. We are in the realm of accountability. I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage.
As many have pointed out during this latest round of Israeli rampaging in Gaza, Israelis are losing their humanity.
Indeed. But there are so many places where just that loss of humanity has become routinized. This Blood Summer still is only half over, too.
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