The crater that appeared on Wednesday, November 1, in the few images that emerged from Gaza, was deep. As if in a maelstrom, it seems to have literally swallowed up the surrounding area – buildings, living things and everything that was there – in the middle of the Jabalia refugee camp, in the north of the enclave where the Israeli army's ground operation against Hamas began on October 27.
On Wednesday, everything in Jabalia was drowned in grey, the grey of destroyed buildings in which lives were pulverized by the powerful bombardment of the previous day. A second bombardment hit the camp a few hours later. In the chaos of dust and debris, men and women searched the rubble for corpses. No more survivors were found. On Thursday morning, Hamas announced the death of 195 people, a figure impossible to verify with independent sources. This was not an error, a misguided shot of Dantean proportions, but the product of a decision taken by the Israeli army, which will in all likelihood remain one of the images of the ongoing conflict and is already shocking opinion around the world.
"Given the high number of civilian casualties and the scale of destruction following Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp, we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes," wrote UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on X (ex-Twitter). On Wednesday, Jordan, Colombia and Chile recalled their ambassadors to Israel. Bolivia cut off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, accusing it of "crimes against humanity."
The Israeli army claims that its bombs – probably bunker busters, which penetrate deep into the ground to destroy underground targets – were aimed at a military target lying beneath the crater caused by the explosion. The target was a Hamas commander, Ibrahim Bieri, head of the Jabalia Brigade, who, according to the Israeli army, was one of the key players in his movement's operation on Israeli territory on October 7, which led to the deaths of 1,400 people
At a press briefing on Wednesday evening, the Israeli army asserted that since the start of the Israeli ground offensive on Gaza, Bieri had been entrenched in the network of underground tunnels where his headquarters were located, along with a significant number of his fighters. "We knew that Bieri was in a system of tunnels under the camp," said Israeli Admiral Daniel Hagari, adding that Hamas men could come out of the tunnels to shoot rockets at Israeli troops.
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