Five Palestinians were also injured when this four-story building collapsed. It had been bombed by Israel during the two years of the war of extermination.
The Civil Defense said in a statement that its crews recovered the bodies of Ibrahim Muhammad Al-Shana (29 years old) and his child son Muhammad (8 years old) from under the rubble, noting that the collapse of the building also caused the collapse of a small facility next to it.
During the past period, the Israeli occupation army intensified its bombing and demolition operations in the eastern areas of the Gaza Strip, which it controls under the ceasefire agreement, which Hamas considered an "expansion of violations."
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement on Sunday that the Israeli occupation army "has significantly escalated its house-demolition operations in the eastern half of the Gaza Strip, continuing its urban annihilation operations and achieving a complete ethnic cleansing."
During December, dozens of residential buildings damaged by previous Israeli bombing collapsed due to the impact of the storms that hit the sector, accompanied by strong winds and heavy rain, causing the death and injury of Palestinians.
Palestinians are forced to live in cracked and dilapidated buildings due to the lack of options amid Israel’s destruction of most buildings in the sector and its prevention of the entry of mobile homes and building and reconstruction materials, reneging on its obligations stipulated in the ceasefire agreement.
The agreement ended a war of extermination that Israel began on October 8, 2023, with American support, and which lasted for two years, leaving more than 71,000 Palestinian martyrs, more than 171,000 wounded, and massive destruction that affected 90 percent of the civilian infrastructure, with reconstruction costs estimated by the United Nations at about $70 billion.
Martyr in the Negev
In a related context, thousands of Palestinians from inside Israel, on Monday, mourned the death of the young man Muhammad Hussein al-Tarabin, who was killed by the Israeli police in the Bedouin village of al-Tarabin in the Negev, on Saturday night/Sunday morning.
On Saturday night/Sunday morning, Tarabin (35 years old) was killed during a security operation carried out by police and border guards, with the aim of arresting him, on the grounds that he was involved in burning vehicles and damaging property in nearby Israeli settlements in recent days, according to data from Yediot Aharonot newspaper and the Hebrew Broadcasting Authority.
Al-Tarabin is a Palestinian Bedouin village not recognized by the Tel Aviv authorities, located in the Negev desert in southern Israel.
A week ago, Israeli police and National Guard forces began an operation in the village of Tarabin with the participation of hundreds of their members, where they surrounded the village and carried out house searches and arrests of citizens.
settler attacks
In this context, on Sunday evening, Israeli settlers seized a residential building in the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood of Silwan, one of the areas of Jerusalem most targeted by settlement activity.
This comes in the wake of what the Israeli organization Ir Amim (left-wing), which monitors Jerusalem affairs, announced on January 2, regarding the imminent threat of eviction facing more than 130 Palestinians from 26 families in the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood, after the Israeli Supreme Court rejected their final appeals.
Zuhair Al-Rajabi, head of the Batn Al-Hawa neighborhood defense committee, told Anadolu Agency: “Settlers stormed the building owned by the Basbous family and forced its members to leave during the evening hours, knowing that today (Monday) is the last date set by the Supreme Court for the family to evacuate their home.” He pointed out that the Basbous family, consisting of 13 people, was living in two residential apartments before being forced to evacuate.
In a related context, Al-Rajabi said that the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision also included the evacuation of “the Al-Rajabi family from 3 buildings containing 11 residential apartments,” noting that “about 20 families” are threatened with evacuation, and added: “We do not know when the evacuation will happen, but it could happen at any moment.”
Last week, the Israeli left-wing settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a statement: "The eviction lawsuits (in Batn al-Hawa) are part of a larger operation aimed at forcibly transferring an entire community of about 700 (Palestinian) residents from the neighborhood in East Jerusalem and establishing a settlement in its place."
She noted that "the basis of all the lawsuits is the Law of Legal and Administrative Arrangements, which was passed by the Knesset in 1970, and stipulated that Jews who claim ownership of properties in East Jerusalem, and who lost their assets in 1948, could recover them from the Israeli Custodian General, even though they had received alternative properties since that year."
She stated that this law "applies only to East Jerusalem, and only to Jews, and not to Palestinians who lost their property in the same war and in similar circumstances."
According to a statement issued by the Ir Amim organization on January 2, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected appeals from 20 families, including the Zuhair Rajabi family, over the past three days, suggesting that final eviction orders could be issued at any time, with the possibility of evictions being carried out within weeks.
She pointed out at the time that eviction orders had been issued against the Khalil Basbous family, expecting at the time that they would be implemented at the beginning of January.
The organization quoted its international advocacy director, Amy Cohen, as saying that "the evictions are not individual property disputes, but rather part of a systematic policy aimed at displacing Palestinians from East Jerusalem through discriminatory, state-backed laws."
The Palestinians say that East Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state, but Israel says that Jerusalem, in its entirety (both East and West), is its capital.
