Gaza (QNN) - An Israeli drone strike on a cafe in the port area west of Gaza City killed at least sixPalestinians, including a child, and wounded more than a dozen others on Tuesday, in a fresh massacre that further exposed the emptiness of the ceasefire and the recent US claims of restraining Israel's killing.
A source at al-Shifa Hospital said the death toll had risen to six, among them a child, with a number of people wounded in the strike on the port area of Gaza City. The intensity of the blast threw several of the dead and injured into the sea, and recovery efforts were still under way as rescue teams searched the water. Most of the wounded, including those in critical condition, were transferred to al-Shifa Hospital in the city.
The strike hit a crowded civilian area along the Gaza City seafront, where displaced and exhausted Palestinians gather at what remains of the port's cafes, one of the few places left to seek any respite from nearly three years of genocide. The targeting of such a place, packed with civilians, underscores the indiscriminate nature of an assault that has never distinguished between fighter and family.
In the aftermath, the Israeli occupation army issued a statement claiming it had struck to eliminate a 'threat to its forces' in Gaza. The claim collapses on contact with the facts. The strike took place on the seafront west of Gaza City, an area where no Israeli forces are deployed and nowhere near any Israeli position in occupied areas in the strip, making the assertion that those killed posed an imminent threat to Israeli occupation soldiers impossible to sustain. There were no Israeli soldiers for the victims to threaten.
The timing makes the claim more striking still. For the past two days, US officials have publicly pressed Israel to justify its strikes by pointing to specific, imminent threats and to minimize the killing of Palestinians in Gaza. US envoy Jared Kushner said only this week that Washington would not restrict Israel's right to defend itself against what it deems imminent threats. Israel appears to have simply adopted that language, labeling a strike on a seaside cafe full of civilians as the elimination of a threat, in what looks like an attempt to fit its continued killing into the formula its American backers have handed it.
The result is a killing that lays bare the hollowness of both the ceasefire and the US posture. Only hours after Kushner emerged from meetings with Netanyahu to signal American support for Israel to continue the attacks in Gaza, Israel has bombed a civilian cafe by the sea and reached for the very "imminent threat" justification Washington provided. The strike is one of many that have continued unbroken since the ceasefire took effect, killing more than 1,270 Palestinians in violation of a truce that exists only on paper.
