Major Resistance Operations & Erasure Of Gaza – Day 647.

GAZA CITY, July 15, 2025 – On the 647th day of Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza, the Palestinian resistance continues to fight fiercely even as entire residential areas are levelled. In a rare admission, the Israeli army confirmed three soldiers dead and one officer seriously injured in northern Gaza engagements, an indication that resistance remains robust.

Meanwhile, central Khan Younis reels under fresh destruction: Israeli bulldozers have razed whole neighbourhoods, claiming to dismantle “terrorist infrastructure,” displacing scores of families already fleeing multiple times since late 2023.

The Human Toll: 100,000 Lives Lost.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israel’s bombardment has claimed over 100,000 lives and wounded approximately 377,000, with women and children making up the majority. These figures, while staggering, likely underreport the true devastation. UN data and peer-reviewed studies suggest civilian casualties may be up to 41% higher due to missing records and bodies still beneath rubble.

A Family Erased: Abu Jarad.

In Gaza City, a funeral of chilling simplicity marked the fate of the Abu Jarad family, six of whose members died instantly when Israeli fire struck their tent near the Palestine Stadium. “We thought the stadium would be safe,” whispered a mourning relative, “Instead, it became their tomb.”

School Bombings As State Policy:

That agony echoes across Gaza’s shattered classrooms. The bombing of the Mustafa Hafez School left at least 16 Palestinians, mostly children, burned alive. “They were unrecognisable…identity by scraps of cloth,” said a first responder. Rescuers described the scene as “apocalyptic.” Witnesses reported children wandering the scorched ruins, clutching memories of homework, toys, or fragments of their former lives.

Israel justified the strike by citing Hamas militants, but multiple UN agencies, local journalists, and survivors refute the claim. “No one with a conscience believes them,” one UN official said.

The attack is grimly familiar. In August 2024, a similar strike gutted the same school, killing a dozen and trapping hundreds of displaced people under rubble.

From 1956 To Today: Erasure As Strategy.

In July 1956, Mossad killed Egyptian officer Mustafa Hafez via a booby-trapped book, an act designed to silence Arab resistance. The naming of the school after him created continuity, now shattered; its rubble is symbolic. A former teacher recalls:

“The murals are covered in blood… laughter replaced by screams. This wasn’t a mistake, it’s policy.”

Education in Gaza has been under siege for decades. Universities shut down in 1987; teachers arrested; schools repeatedly bombed. A UN Commission this March accused Israel of “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated for physical destruction” on Palestinians.

Children as Collateral or Targets?

UNICEF reports an average of 35 children killed daily in Gaza over 14 months, approximately 15,000 young lives shattered. Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, stated simply: “Nothing justifies the killing of children.”

Another UNICEF official added:

“Families’ coping capacity has been smashed… Aid must flow. Hostages must be freed. We need a ceasefire, now.”

The frontline of Gaza is being stripped of its future, from schools and clinics to homes and hospitals. Attack after attack on humanitarian sites, forced displacement into tighter corridors near Rafah, mimic patterns witnessed in Bosnian “death marches.”

West Bank: Repression Spills Beyond Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, UN human rights archivist Thameen al-Kheetan warns:

“Israeli settlers and security forces have intensified their killings, attacks, and harassment of Palestinians”.

This escalation underscores the wider canvas of occupation and suppression reaching far beyond Gaza’s borders.

Conclusion: Gaza’s Erasure Is A Crime With Global Fingerprints.

What is happening in Gaza is not simply war; it is annihilation. Entire neighbourhoods have been erased, families obliterated, and infrastructure systematically reduced to rubble. From the incineration of children inside classrooms to the flattening of hospitals and the starvation of civilians trapped behind siege lines, the pattern is unmistakable and undeniable. This is not collateral damage. This is the planned destruction of a people and their future.

This campaign is a systematic erasure of a people, not only their physical presence, but their institutions, culture, memory, and very ability to survive and think as a nation. It is genocide unfolding in full view of the world.

Genocide scholars have been unequivocal. Over 800 experts in genocide studies, among them leading researchers from the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide. Holocaust and genocide scholar Raz Segal has described the Gaza campaign as “a textbook case of genocide unfolding in real time.” Professor Craig Mokhiber, a senior UN official who resigned in protest, warned: “We are witnessing a genocide supported by Western democracies.”

They are not alone. Holocaust survivors and descendants of Nazi genocide victims have spoken with moral clarity. Jewish Voice for Peace, Survivors Speak Out, and hundreds of Jewish scholars and activists have declared: “Never again means never again for anyone.” Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer once warned: “Israel acts like Nazis. I’m allowed to say it. I am a survivor.” In marches from New York to Berlin, Jewish activists have chanted: “Stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Still, many Israeli supporters in the West continue to invoke the rhetoric of a two-state solution, as though it were a viable or sincere path to peace. But this notion has been rendered meaningless, not by Palestinian resistance, but by Israeli policy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear, in repeated statements, that his administration has no intention of allowing a Palestinian state. “There will be no Palestinian state,” he declared in January 2024. “Not now, not in the future.” In leaked documents and policy briefings, his government outlines plans for permanent Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza, while pushing mass displacement and “voluntary migration” of Palestinians.

This is not negotiation. This is conquest.

Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, backed by religious ultranationalists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, openly promotes annexation, settlement expansion, and population transfer. Smotrich has called Palestinians a “fictitious people” and declared, “the entire land belongs to us.” Their policies are not secret; they are broadcast and celebrated on state media, at settler rallies, and in military briefings.

What we are witnessing in Gaza is the logical outcome of this ideology: the use of overwhelming military force to break a people’s will, destroy their homes and history, and tighten the grip of permanent occupation.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian toll continues to rise. Over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 377,000 have been wounded, and towns like Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis, and Rafah now lie in ruins. UNICEF confirms over 17,000 children are among the dead. The UN World Food Programme has warned that over 1.1 million Gazans are facing catastrophic hunger.

Israel continues to target civilian infrastructure with impunity, bombing schools, hospitals, water plants, and UN shelters, even after directing people to take refuge there. The Mustafa Hafez School in Gaza City, struck twice in under a year, became a furnace of death where displaced families were incinerated. Survivors describe collecting pieces of children using their clothing for identification. A Palestinian teacher, recalling her own history there, said: “They want to destroy not just our homes, but our capacity to think, to remember, to teach. To live.”

This is not a war between equals. It is not a conflict; it is a deliberate campaign of erasure. And history will remember it as such.

It will remember that the most surveilled population on Earth was left to die in a cage, while Western powers shipped more bombs to their jailer. It will remember the mockery of international law, the vetoed ceasefires, and the silence of leaders who once swore “never again.” It will remember the children’s names. The eyewitness accounts. The mutilated schools. The complicity.

And it will remember those who resisted, with their voices, their reports, their testimony, and their courage.

Because in the ruins of Gaza, among the broken blackboards and blood-soaked walls, the Palestinian story is not ending. It is being written with fire and resolve.

Israel may destroy schools, homes, and cities, but it cannot erase a people who refuse to be forgotten. Palestinian rights, memory, and freedom are not for Israel to grant or deny. They are inalienable. They endure.