How can I forget the scene of the dog that was carrying a person’s hand between its fangs and running with it?” said one Palestinian survivor. [Getty]
Even in his nightmares, Emad Abu Ras, a Palestinian man based in Beit Lahia, never imagined he would see stray animals and pets eating from the bodies of Palestinians.
“I was frozen in my place and did not realise what should I do […] If I tried to pull the bodies away from the stray animals, the Israeli drones [quadcopter] would attack me and kill me,” the 42-year-old father of four remarked to The New Arab.
Abu Ras was among hundreds of Palestinians who refused to leave their homes in the town of Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza, despite a wide and indiscriminate Israeli military attack on northern Gaza since 5 October. The Israeli army claims that its military operation in the north of Gaza seeks to eliminate Hamas’s militants and prevent them from rebuilding their capabilities.
But, Palestinians, like Abu Ras, mainly residents of the north of Gaza, have pointed out that the Israeli army is deliberately committing crimes against them. He believes that there is no safe place in Gaza, even in the so-called “safe zones” announced by the Israeli army.
“We were subjected to the various Israeli attacks in our area. Sometimes, we are very close to death, and we do not know if somebody will find our bodies and bury us or not,” he said.
Many Palestinians on the ground argue that the Israeli army is implementing the controversial so-called “Generals’ Plan” that was presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “magic recipe” for “absolute victory” in his genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave.
Hundreds of stray animals roam the alleys
Fourteen months ago, Beit Lahia was considered one of the most beautiful areas in the coastal enclave. It was an agricultural territory that produced dozens of tons of strawberries and vegetables for locals.
Today, the town has become barren and wrecked, empty of most of its residents, after the Israeli army’s brutal attacks and forced most of the Palestinian residents to flee.
Beit Lahia’s streets are empty of life, and blocked by the rubble of thousands of homes destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
Because of the ongoing Israeli military operation in the north of Gaza, the services of medical and civil defence have been stopped. As a result, most of the dead remain lying in the streets, and there is no one to take them to the hospital or bury them, according to residents of the area.
At the same time, hundreds of stray animals roam the alleys to search for food, resorting to eating from the corpses of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks and who no one could retrieve.
“It seems as if it was a ghost town. Everything here has become terrible, with no life and people. The only thing we have here is death and suffering,” Mohammed Ali, another Palestinian man in Beit Lahia, told TNA.
“I was shocked as I moved between the streets and jumped from the rubble of one house to another with a group of dogs dragging the body of a Palestinian lying on the ground, and each dog has a part of the body as if it was a piece of cake being divided among them,” he said.
“At first, I froze in place as if my legs were no longer able to carry me or walk a single step […] but then the Israeli army opened fire at us, so I tried to escape with the displaced people to another place,” he added.
After about an hour of walking, Ali finally reached an alley far from the sounds of fighting. But the sight of stray animals, including dogs and cats, running towards the bodies of men and women lying in the streets terrified him.
“We live in terror all the time, and death surrounds us everywhere. If we do not die from the bombing, we will die from the fear that haunts us without any rest […] How can I forget the scene of the dog that was carrying a person’s hand between its fangs and running with it, or the dog that was biting the head of a small child lying on the ground?”
At least 4,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in the north of Gaza for two months, according to Ismail Thawabta, the head of the Hamas-run government media office.
“Out of the victims, about 650 bodies have been lying in the streets,” he told TNA, warning that “such a big number of the bodies in the streets would cause a disaster in Gaza.”
He added that this has caused stray dogs to “gnaw at the bodies” of the victims, which have turned into scattered bones with unknown names on the streets and roads.
Mariam Ghayada, a Gaza-based environmental expert, told TNA that the accumulation of bodies on the streets will likely lead to a health and ecological disaster.
She added that body decomposition produces toxic gases and chemicals that spread into the air and cause serious diseases to humans and other living organisms.
Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 45,338 Palestinians and wounded 107,764 since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
