The northern Gaza governorate – which includes Beit Lahya, Beit Hanoun further east and Jabaliya, which housed the enclave’s largest refugee camp, to the south – was also the first to be invaded by the Israeli army at the start of its ground offensive, at the end of October 2023. But the attack that this area has suffered since October 6 is nevertheless of unequaled brutality.
Several hundred people were killed in a month in the far north of Gaza; Palestinian civil defense puts a total of 1,300 dead. Many bodies are under the rubble. On October 19, according to the health ministry of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, 87 people died after several buildings were targeted in Beit Lahya. On October 29, Palestinian civil defense recorded 93 deaths after an attack on a building, still in Beit Lahya.
Since October 6, according to the UN, some 100,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee the governorate, with the Israeli army suggesting they would not be allowed to return. There are only around 75,000 people left in the Beit Hanoun-Beit Lahya-Jabaliya triangle.
To learn more about the mechanics of “ethnic cleansing” which takes place in the north of the Gaza Strip, you can read this article by our journalist Clothilde Mraffko.
