An extraordinary warning call to a Palestinian dentist starts the panicked evacuation of a Gazan neighbourhood.

By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem

The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.

It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.

He’d been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.

He’d heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. “You need to escape,” somebody in the street shouted, “because they will bomb the towers”.

    • be_excellent_to_each_other
      16•1 year ago

      How can the IDF pull back and not get another surprise attack in three weeks?

      Now that they have killed so many civilians, it’s gonna be tough. They aren’t making it better as they continue destroying homes, hospitals, and refugee camps though. The time to try treating them like humans was before the recent attack.

      Here’s what I can tell you for sure:

      • You don’t reduce the number of terrorists by making it crystal clear that you give zero shits about civilian deaths
      • Whatever actions would lead to a reduction in terrorism from Gaza are going to start with humanitarian outreach, not bombs
      • And let’s not forget those illegal settlements which are a constant provocation.
      • Whatever the correct actions look like - they are going to need to account for the fact that they’ve just created shitloads more ill will than even was there previously.

      Do my bullet points solve the problem? Hell no. But my (or your) inability to come up with a solution doesn’t mean there isn’t a better one than what they are currently doing, and doesn’t support the idea that their only other option is to do nothing. Neither of us (presumably) are world leaders with experience in this area. But when shit comes out of my sink faucets, I don’t need to be a plumber to know that mine has fucked up.