AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Health workers in northern Gaza have been forced to postpone the latest phase of the polio vaccination program as Israel continues to carry out a deadly campaign of forced expulsion and starvation in northern Gaza. Earlier today, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned Israel’s actions, saying, quote, “People suffering under the ongoing Israeli siege in North Gaza are rapidly exhausting all available means for their survival.” Doctors in northern Gaza have described horrific conditions as hospitals are overwhelmed and remaining medical staff are unable to treat the injured. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital.

DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] We are talking on the 18th day of an imposed complete siege on the medical establishment in the north Gaza Strip. We appealed yesterday, the day before yesterday, and today we call on the world. The Kamal Adwan medical supply storage is at zero. We have no blood bags that we can offer to the wounded, no medical supplies or urgently needed medicine. …

Some members of our medical staff are either martyred, killed or injured. A little while ago, we received one of our colleagues who was martyred, Dr. Mohammed Ghanim. He was offering humanitarian services at one of the medical checkpoints in a shelter. The situation is catastrophic. …

We will be facing a humanitarian catastrophe if there’s no solution to this situation in the next few coming hours. The hospital will turn into a mass grave. There is a huge number of wounded people, and approximately every hour we lose one of them as a martyr. The wounded turn into martyrs due to the absence of needed medical supplies, tools and medical staff, who are either detained, wounded or martyred. …

Our medical staff and ambulances cannot get the wounded out of the street of Beit Lahia. We are talking about the wounded who manage to come to the hospital. They arrive, and we give them our services. Those who cannot come to us stay in the streets and are martyred. This is what is happening in the north of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. And this is Lina Issam Abu Nada, a Palestinian who recently fled Beit Lahia.

LINA ISSAM ABU NADA: [translated] I fled the intense bombardment in Beit Lahia. Martyrs and remains were all scattered on the ground. We do not know where to go. Truly, we don’t know what state we have reached. I swear, by God, what we are going through is the hardest situation in days. Even the occupation, Israel, took my brother as they put all the men on one side and let us leave. The tank moved and covered us with dust.

On top of everything, no is standing for us. We ask you, with all the mercy you have, to stand beside us. What’s happening to us is unfair. We cannot take it anymore. We are being exterminated in Gaza. We are dying, and no one is standing beside us, nor is anyone able to solve our issue. We are innocent. We have nothing to do with everything that has happened. We are lost between a war and an extermination. We can’t take it anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: A Palestinian woman who recently fled Beit Lahia.

Earlier this week, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem accused Israel of committing ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza.

We go now to Tel Aviv, Israel, where we’re joined by B’Tselem’s international advocacy lead, Sarit Michaeli.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Sarit. Explain what you mean by ethnic cleansing and what exactly you understand is happening in northern Gaza, and how much Israelis understand what is happening right nearby.

SARIT MICHAELI: So, thank you, Amy, very much for the opportunity to be with you today.

I think B’Tselem decided to make this statement as really an act of desperation. It’s impossible for us to continue to watch, to observe the very little information we are getting from northern Gaza, the very fragmented information, and not conclude that what is going on there is the deliberate pressuring by the Israeli army of the civilian population of the area to move out of this area in order to empty it of Palestinians. This is ethnic cleansing. The definition that we would argue is the Israeli current actions on the ground.

And I think it’s important to remember that this is happening within a context. The context is not only increasing and ongoing reports that this is the Israeli policy, that this notion of the so-called island plan or the Generals’ Plan, that called on Israel to essentially starve the population of northern Gaza in order to get it to move out of the way, right? So, that’s one element of the picture. And then, the second element is that there is a growing debate, there is a growing kind of level of activism within the Israeli far right to demand the settling of northern Gaza. Now, this is the context of what we are seeing on the ground at the moment.

I think it’s important also to mention that the Israeli army itself has admitted, in a response to a high court petition submitted by several Israeli human rights organizations, that for the first two weeks of this month, no humanitarian aid was allowed into north Gaza. That was deliberate. That was knowingly. That wasn’t — isn’t something that the Israeli authorities deny. In addition, in the response submitted yesterday to the high court, Israel also states that this is continuing when it comes to Jabaliya. And we know that yesterday the Israeli army issued some drone footage showing throngs of civilians walking out from the Jabaliya refugee camp towards the south, and also saying that Israel managed to break the so-called Hamas siege on Jabaliya, and said that about 20,000 civilians have already left.

From our perspective, all this indicates one clear goal, which is to remove the people from northern Gaza, to empty that area. I also think — and we can maybe discuss it a bit in more length later on — there are also quite open admissions within the Israeli media that some of this is happening, certainly not in the framing of an international crime, but commentators have accepted, on some levels, that this is what Israel is doing now in north Gaza.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let me just read, Sarit Michaeli, what the media has said. This is on Israel’s Channel 12, the chief political analyst saying, quote, “We can keep denying that what’s happening is an implementation of the Generals’ Plan — emptying of the strip, starving the terrorists, eliminating them, capturing them. That’s in my opinion what’s happening here.” So, you know, in effect, would you say that the Generals’ Plan itself constitutes ethnic cleansing? And then, to what extent do people in Israel believe that that’s what’s occurring? If it’s being said in the media, is there some consensus around it? Although I will note that what he said was “starving the terrorists, eliminating them,” not the general population there.

SARIT MICHAELI: Well, first of all, I want to be clear that Israel, we suspect — and as we also announced, together with colleagues in other human rights organizations last week, we suspect that Israel is implementing the spirit, I would say, maybe not necessarily every single aspect of the so-called Generals’ Plan, but that it is quietly implementing this.

And this is why we also called last week on the international community to really take responsibility for what is going on in Gaza. And we stated openly that it’s not just Israeli policymakers who should be held accountable and face consequences for these crimes, but also that the international community cannot but be considered complicit if Israel goes ahead and empties north Gaza of its inhabitants.

I think that when we look at this plan, this absolutely horrific plan, it includes provisions that are absolutely and clearly war crimes and could probably also be viewed as crimes against humanity. The idea is actually to basically starve the population out in order to leave the area, and then, according to this plan — and certainly, I don’t agree with any aspect of the logic — the only people remaining will be terrorists, and then they can just be killed off. This is the — again, I don’t want to simplify too much, but this is the essential logic of this plan.

But it is absolutely in contradiction with many of the known facts we know about the situation in Gaza and in north Gaza, the fact that many of the civilians there cannot leave or don’t want to leave. Some of them cannot leave because it’s impossible for them to move around, because they just have no other place to go, or they don’t want to leave these areas, because they know that the same sort of fate of being bombarded and exposed to Israeli attacks can, you know, wait for them in the many internally displaced camps throughout Gaza, where people are not safe in any way. So, there are many reasons why Palestinians would not want to leave north Gaza. So, that’s the first issue. The second issue — and certainly, the idea that you can somehow force them out permanently — right? — not for their own security, is absolutely illegal.

The second issue that is very clearly part of the illegality and the shocking lack of morals, I would say also, moral failure of this plan, is that the idea that you can somehow decide that after a certain moment, where you say you told all civilians to leave a certain area, that means that everyone left in there is a combatant, a terrorist, and you can just kill them, that is also not true. That’s simply not the way international humanitarian law goes. Civilians don’t lose their protected status if you gave them an illegal and probably also impossible-to-implement evacuation order. The idea that somehow a person should be considered a legitimate military target, regardless of what they’re actually doing, because they happen to be in a certain place that the Israeli army decided is no longer acceptable, that is not legal. That is clearly a war crime.

And I have to also say that this isn’t just things we are saying here at B’Tselem. In recent days, there have been several much more mainstream Israelis, including the former deputy leader of the Israeli National Security Council, who also said that these kinds of orders would be, you know, orders that are black flags flying over. These would be orders to commit war crimes, and that soldiers have to refuse to obey these kinds of orders. This is — as I said, this is a former Israeli security official.

I think it’s really important to remember also, though, that the current situation on the ground, unfortunately, isn’t — and again, I say it with a great deal of pain — isn’t really influenced by statements by human rights organizations like B’Tselem, by actions by Israeli wonderful and just very courageous Israeli human rights organizations that are now petitioning the high court, because we just simply don’t have the capacity to influence the reality on the ground at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Sarit, we just —

SARIT MICHAELI: And therefore, that is why that is the essential source of our call —

AMY GOODMAN: So, Sarit Michaeli, we just have a minute.

SARIT MICHAELI: — call to the international community.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute. I want to go to that issue of the call of the international community, and particularly the U.S. Blinken has just left Israel, his 11th trip there, saying he’s pushing for a ceasefire, yet at the same time the Biden administration continuing to arm Netanyahu. In this last 30 seconds, your thoughts on that kind of approach, saying he should push for a ceasefire, but we’ll continue to arm you?

SARIT MICHAELI: It’s absolutely clear that we must have a ceasefire. We need a ceasefire, and we need a hostage deal now. But this isn’t going to happen unless Prime Minister Netanyahu is placed in a situation where he has to accept this. And we do not see this happening at the moment. I think the thought that somehow the U.S. administration can ask Netanyahu, can urge Netanyahu for a ceasefire, and this will actually happen, is simply unrealistic. There needs to be intense pressure to get Israel to currently accept a ceasefire, to stop what it’s doing in northern Gaza. And it has to come from action by the United States and the international community. Otherwise, they will also be complicit in what we’re seeing now.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarit Michaeli, we want to thank you for being with us, international advocacy lead for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which has accused the Israeli military of committing ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza.

Next up, we look at Israel’s intensifying war on journalists in Gaza, two critically wounded journalists not able to get out of Gaza, and Israel saying that six journalists are members of Hamas or Palestinian Jihad, what that means. We’ll speak with the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “I Won’t Crumble with You If You Fall,” covered by Bernice Johnson Reagon, produced by Barbara Dane and released on the Paredon Records label she co-founded. Barbara Dane died this week at the age of 97.