On Tuesday, at least eight Palestinian police officers were killed in an Israeli attack on their vehicle in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza. [Getty]
On Wednesday, a senior Palestinian official said that the Israeli army is deliberately killing the policemen in the besieged coastal enclave to spread chaos among the population in the war-torn territory.
Salam Maarouf, the head of the Palestinian government media office in Gaza, told The New Arab, “Since the beginning of the Israel’s war eight months ago, the occupation’s army has deliberately killed Palestinian policemen and other officials to end the security authority in the Gaza Strip and spread chaos among the local population who are suffering from the scourge of the war of extermination that Israel is conducting.”
On Tuesday, at least eight Palestinian police officers were killed in an Israeli attack on their vehicle in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.
“The bodies were transferred to the hospital of Al-Aqsa by donkey-drawn carts as a result of the shortage of fuel that would operate the ambulance vehicles in the territory,” the ministry added in a press statement.
The Israeli attack also wounded about 20 other people, mostly displaced civilians who were in the vicinity, the ministry noted.
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Speaking to TNA, Hussam al-Dajani, a Gaza-based political analyst, noted that Israel has “a clear plan to end the security presence in the Gaza Strip and spread chaos, killing and theft among the local population by targeting police officers who are mostly civilian.”
According to international law, al-Dajani added, “the civilian police force are responsible for enforcing the law and security among the people. They are not classified as military or involved in military tasks in times of war (…) but Israel is violating all international laws and continues to commit massacres against everything Palestinian in the Gaza Strip.”
“Over eight months, Israel killed thousands of police officers, disrupting public order in Gaza and allowing outlaws to commit legal violations in the Strip, starting with theft and ending with the murders we have heard about recently,” he stressed.
He warned that if the international community does not intervene to pressure Israel and stop the war of extermination, “the Gazans will bear the burdens of security chaos in addition to the woes of war they suffer from the continuous Israeli strikes.”
Since 7 October, Israel has been launching a large-scale war on the Gaza Strip after Hamas led a military attack on Israeli military bases and civilian settlements within and around the Gaza envelop, killing about 1,190 people and capturing about 240 according to Israeli authorities.
Israeli indiscriminate attacks on the coastal enclave killed more than 36,500 Palestinians and wounded about 83,000, mostly women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Egypt, Qatar, and the US continue their intensive mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement. Still, none of their efforts have succeeded since last November, which witnessed humanitarian truces for only one week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still vowing to destroy Hamas in Gaza, saying that he will never stop the war unless achieving his main goal of ending the existence of Hamas.
“Even if Israel kills most of the policemen in Gaza, it will never end the existence of Hamas in Gaza as it carries an ideology of resisting the Israeli occupation (…) the Palestinian people have the right defence themselves and resist the Israeli occupation,” Mohammed al-Nabahine, a Gaza-based Palestinian man, said to TNA.
“Neither Israel nor any other international party will succeed in ending the Palestinian people, including Hamas or any other Palestinian faction, as we all believe that we have to liberate our lands of the criminal occupation,” added the 42-year-old father of three.