The Israeli occupation has committed yet another massacre in the Gaza Strip, after targeting on Friday evening a civilian vehicle carrying eleven members of the same family, on the pretext that it had crossed what is known as the “yellow line”: a boundary imposed by the occupation following the most recent ceasefire agreement, which came into effect on 10 October.
The spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence, Mahmoud Basal, said the strike targeted a vehicle belonging to the Shaaban family in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, east of Gaza City. Among the victims were seven children and two women. The attack came without any prior warning, Basal confirmed, describing it as “an expression of the occupation’s ongoing bloodlust against innocent civilians.”
Basal added that the occupation “could have warned the family or dealt with the situation through non-lethal means,” but that its decision to carry out a direct strike “demonstrates a deliberate intent to kill and terrorise.”
The so-called “yellow line” is one of the new concepts introduced by the occupation following its partial withdrawal from certain areas of the Gaza Strip. It refers to an imaginary boundary separating zones of Israeli military deployment from populated civilian areas.
The imposition of this “yellow line” marks a new phase of spatial control and forced segregation, reminiscent of the so-called “free-fire zones” adopted in previous wars, which is a shift from direct military warfare to a punitive system of field-based retribution against the civilian population.
This attack constitutes a war crime under Article (8) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which criminalises “the wilful killing of civilians” and “the targeting of civilian objects” during armed conflicts. Targeting individuals on the basis of crossing an “imaginary boundary” has no legal foundation and amounts to collective punishment, explicitly prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
The massacre comes within the broader context of the ongoing genocide that the occupation has waged since 8 October 2023. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, it has so far resulted in the killing of around 68,000 Palestinians and the wounding of over 170,000 others, the vast majority of them women and children, in addition to the destruction of nearly 90% of the enclave’s civilian infrastructure.
These actions stand in direct violation of the ceasefire agreement, which stipulated an end to hostilities, the gradual withdrawal of occupation forces, a reciprocal release of detainees, and the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Yet, the repeated attacks, the continuation of the blockade, and the restriction of movement reveal that the occupation treats the agreement as a cover for redeployment and the reorganisation of its killing operations, rather than as a binding legal or humanitarian commitment.
The persistence of these crimes underscores that the occupation continues to regard Palestinians as legitimate targets, disregarding all humanitarian and legal boundaries, at a time when the international justice system itself appears to be eroding in the face of daily massacres committed in cold blood.
