Israel has isolated northern Gaza for more than a week, preventing any aid from entering, while carrying out major ground and air strikes and killing dozens of people in recent days.
Here's everything you need to know about what's happening there right now:
What did Israel do?
The Israeli army launched an assault on Jabalia and has laid siege to northern Gaza since last week, trapping tens of thousands of people without access to food and water.
The Israeli army is separating northern Gaza from Gaza City using military vehicles, drones and enviornment barriers.
Why does he do that?
Israel says its actions in Jabalia are aimed at “preventing Hamas from regrouping.”
He also says that he intends to completely eradicate Palestinian armed resistance in the north.
What is happening to the people in northern Gaza?
Reports from people in northern Gaza say this is one of the most difficult times in what has been a horrible year.
“Many of the victims are children and women, and they arrive at the hospital in pieces or soaked in blood,” Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud reported from central Gaza.
According to an Al Jazeera and Doctors Without Borders correspondent, Israeli snipers have been killing people trying to flee, despite issuing evacuation orders.
Some residents have decided to stay, not trusting the “humanitarian safe zones” designated by Israel that attacked anyway.
Israel's strikes have killed at least 200 people over the past week in the north, according to Mounir al-Bursh, head of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.
Tens of thousands of families remain besieged inside Jabalia camp, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says some 400,000 people are trapped in the north.
Medical teams and ambulances have also reportedly been hit.
What does Israel want? Occupy Gaza?
Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli government's goal appears to be to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by expelling all Palestinians.
“Israel itself declared that, basically, Hamas as a military force is totally defeated. So why does it continue? “It continues because Israel would like to see the northern part of Gaza empty of all its Palestinian inhabitants,” he added.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but has kept it under a land, air and sea blockade since 2007.
In the past year of war in the besieged enclave, Israel has repeatedly said it does not want to reoccupy Gaza.
However, some Israeli officials have pushed for settlements to be built in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested a setup similar to the occupied West Bank: Israeli military control over Gaza while the Palestinian Authority or a local non-Hamas entity handles civil affairs.
Israel's true objective remains obscure, but the timing of its siege of the north is interesting, according to Levy.
“[U]under the pretext of the war in Lebanon… when the whole world looks at Lebanon and [the possible strike by Israel] about Iran… Israel is taking advantage of it and doing those things in Gaza without having any military objective there,” he said.
Would it be legal for Israel to occupy Gaza?
Due to the current siege of Gaza, the UN, Amnesty International and other aid organizations still refer to Gaza as “occupied territory.”
An Israeli attempt to occupy Gaza militarily or physically would violate international law.
The violation would be even more aggravated if it took the same direction as in the occupied West Bank.
There, illegal Israeli settlements are springing up everywhere, Palestinians are deprived of access to their lands, the Israeli army attacks and kills with impunity – as do Israeli settlers – among other violations.
More than 750,000 Israeli settlers live on Palestinian lands taken by force.
International law stipulates that an occupying power must introduce as few changes as possible and not alter the establishment of the territory. Nor should an occupying power move its own people into the territory it is occupying.
Additionally, the occupier is required to comply with regulations such as protecting the properties of occupied villages and allowing the flow of humanitarian aid, which Israel is not doing at the moment in northern Gaza.
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