What is behind Israel’s targeting of prominent buildings in Gaza?
Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s civilian buildings are an attempt to demoralise Palestinians and weaken their resolve.
Rami Aldraimli watched in disbelief as the building he had worked in for more than 20 years came crashing down. Following a missile “warning”, Israeli fighter jets late on Tuesday afternoon bombed alAwqaf building, the latest structure to be targeted by Israel during its relentless 10-day offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip.. The five-storey building in western Gaza City housed a number of offices, including of Mashareq, one of Gaza’s oldest and most prominent media production firms.
“It wasn’t just a company,” Aldraimli, Mashareq’s 43-year-old executive director, said. “It’s a dream I’ve been working on, building it up until we had 60 employees.” Established in 1999, the company grew to offer advertising and photography services, as well as film production and sound engineering.
“Popular singer Mohammed Assaf, before he became famous, recorded in our studios many times,” Aldraimli recalled, proudly. “The place was a dream for many people to work with us,” he said. “We were like a family.”
The impact of the building’s destruction, he added, extended beyond the material losses, which are nonetheless significant given the expensive equipment inside the office. “It’s not about the money,” Aldraimli said. “It was a place to work, hang out at and build memories. It was about the space we created for ourselves. Money can be compensated, but decades of our work as well as our personal memories lost in the rubble cannot be.”
Translation: In the blink of an eye, Israel destroyed my place of work, my income, the income of dozens of families. They destroyed Mashareq, the oldest and biggest production and advertising company in Gaza. Scale of targeting civilian areas According to Gaza’s ministry of government information, six high-rise buildings – all iconic city landmarks – have been flattened by Israeli fighter jets since the bombardment began on May 10. They are part of the more than 150 residential and commercial properties that have been destroyed, including buildings that housed 33 media institutions. On Saturday, an Israeli air raid demolished al-Jalaa tower, which hosted many residential apartments and offices, including the bureaus of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press. As in other cases, Israel justified the bombing of the building by claiming it housed military assets of Hamas, the group running the Strip. It has failed, however, to provide any evidence to back up its claim, while press freedom advocates have denounced the attack as a brazen attempt to “silence” journalists covering Israel’s deadly bombardment on the besieged enclave. At least 227 Palestinians, including 64 children, have been killed and more than 1,500 others wounded, in what observers say has been Israel’s harshest targeting of civilian areas in the enclave to date. At least 72,000 people have been displaced, the United Nations said, with the majority seeking protection in 58 UNRWA schools across Gaza. At least 12 people have died in Israel in rocket fire from Gaza. Furthermore, the Israeli targeting of vital infrastructure has affected water, sanitation and hygiene services for hundreds of thousands of people.
Palestinians stand near the damage following an Israeli air raid on a house in Gaza City on May 19, 2021 [Mohammed Salem/ Reuters]
Mohsen Abu Ramadan, a political and economic analyst, said the Israeli strategy of bombing civilian areas and infrastructure is not new.
“We’ve seen it in previous offensives, but the scale of targeting civilians this time in the Gaza Strip is much higher,” he told Al Jazeera, arguing that the support of the United States and the European Union and the “incompetence” of Arab leaders enabled Israel to implement such a tactic.
In the deadliest single attack yet, Israeli air raids on Sunday killed 42 people, including 10 children and 16 women – all families buried under the rubble of their flattened homes in al-Wehda Street, an upscale, lively area in the heart of Gaza City.
“In most cases, civilians are not even warned to evacuate their h homes h and d workplaces, kl so this Israeli propaganda of sending a warning as a humanitarian gesture before it gets targeted is nonsense,” said Abu Ramadan. The Israeli army has acknowledged its bombardment has resulted in “unfortunate unintended civilian casualties” but Abu Ramadan said the objective behind attacks such on al-Wehda Street was to create discontent and to turn people against the actions of the armed groups in Gaza.
“These targets, which have directly affected civilians immeasurably, are aimed to damage the reputation of the armed groups by creating a gap between them in terms of support,” Abu Ramadan said. “Driving Palestinians to demand these groups to stop firing rockets at Israel means a loss of popular support, and that is what Israel is banking on.”