Popcorn, cotton-candy and massages. Inside Israel’s new army ‘resort’ in northern Gaza
A new report by Israeli news outlet Ynet reveals a disturbing picture: as Palestinians in north Gaza face starvation and extermination, a nearby 'resort' has been established for Israeli soldiers to relax and unwind in between their deployment.
December 25, 2024
MONDOWEISS
Standing next to a popcorn machine, Israeli soldiers make cotton candy inside an army ‘resort’ for soldiers in north Gaza. (Via Ynet News)
As human rights organizations amass reports on Israel committing genocide in Gaza, Israeli society is producing a wall of denial, separating itself from the catastrophic reality in Gaza. Nothing is more evident of that than a new report of a seawater desalination plant doubling as an Israeli army ‘resort’ in Gaza.
On Monday, Israeli news website Ynet published a piece in Hebrew by their military correspondent Yoav Zeitoun, titled “Desalination facility and holiday resort with café; Documentation: This is how IDF [Israeli military] is preparing for prolonged stay in Gaza”.
Zeitoun, who was embedded with the military, visited the resort, which is located near the beach in the western part of north Gaza. Though the exact location of the ‘resort’ is not revealed, Zeitoun does mention Jabalia – the area in north Gaza where Israel has launched a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign in recent months – as being nearby.
Photos and videos reveal the inside of this new ‘resort’ for soldiers: popcorn machines next to a cotton-candy machine, PlayStation video games, a lounge with a “hotel” breakfast, and meat on the grill. Elsewhere, a physiotherapist even gives massages.
Reality check
The whole piece is a big celebration. But here is where we should start making some reality checks, out from this Israeli bubble.
First, the desalination facility is huge. It produces 60,000 liters of water per day, enough for the soldiers to have clean drinking water and take showers.
This stands in start contrast to the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israel’s “extermination and acts of genocide”, which focused mostly on water. The report noted how, while Israelis consume about 250 liters of water per day (about 66 Gallons), Gazans today are forced to consume about 2 to 9 liters per day.
Because of the genocide, Palestinains in Gaza are forced to literally drink the sea, and dehydrated mothers feed their infants baby-formula with poisonous water. “When we cannot get drinking water, taking a shower is a dream”, said a woman cited in the report.
But why should the soldiers in the resort care at all? The desalination facility can produce fresh water which can suffice over 240 Israelis who each consume about 50 times more water than the average starved, dehydrated Gazans.
Imagine if the Israelis invested in such facilities for the Gazans, rather than blowing up their water reservoirs. But they don’t care about that, despite it being their obligation to suffice the basic needs of the occupied population.
A bubble in a concentration camp
In the report, the journalist Zeitoun laments that the soldiers cannot go down to the beach.
“The murmur of the waves is well heard in the nearby beach, but IDF does not permit the soldiers to go down to it, and a pyramid of mounds separates between the unusual compound and the Gazan beach strip,” he writes.
Admittedly, though not critically, he notes that the soldiers are living in a bubble:
“Nonetheless, the scenery of the sea and the calm atmosphere do theirs, completing the bubble-like sense”, Zeitoun writes.
The resort provides military companies (usually around two hundred soldiers) a resort day every ten days, in circulation. A military logistics officer describes it to Zeitoun:
“As each company finishes this refreshment day, which they get every 10 days on average, they return in the night to rest in their combat area in Jabalia, and continue refreshed in their combat missions… As the company completes its day of fun in this compound, we clean it and set it up anew in the night, preparing it for the company that will arrive the next day, and so forth. Just like a conveyor belt”.
It’s about making people forget they’re in Gaza. The officer continues:
“You remember that you are in Gaza, yes? We give a feeling of home, with ice-coffee, espresso, protein drinks, toast and Shakshukas in various flavors for breakfast, and of course also fruit and ice cream when the weather is warm. We make dreams come true for the soldiers”.
While the soldiers’ dreams are coming true, having cappuccinos and grilling meat, Palestinians in Gaza are living in famine-like conditions.
Two days ago, I talked with my friend Ditte, just before the demonstration against the Israeli genocide, in Copenhagen. She updated me about her beloved Fadi in Deir al-Balah, she said he managed to get some meat to eat just the other day – it was the first time in 4 months, and he was ecstatic about it. He never complains, she says, despite living in a tent and now freezing in the night.
‘Zone of Interest‘
But it is not merely the soldiers who need to dream – it is the Israeli population at large. When Orly Noy, chair of B’tselem and journalist, shared a post about this horrendous piece on her Facebook page yesterday, several commentators were drawn to associations with the film Zone of Interest, a film from last year which focused on a family of Nazis living right against the walls of Auschwitz, in their own bubble of normalcy.
In response to the Ynet piece, Noy published a piece in the Local Call publication , titled “Sweet cotton-candy at the heart of the valley of killings.” She writes:
“Thus, soldiers sit in the valley of killings, grilling meat in stands that work non-stop, and do not know where the smell of burnt meat that fills their nostrils originates from – whether it is from the carcasses of the animals that were brought there for them, or from bodies of the people in whose beach they may not wade.”
But this is arguably even worse than “Zone of Interest”, because the soldiers are not outside of the concentration camp – but inside it. That Gaza is a concentration camp has been said for decades. Now, with Israel’s systematic extermination, it is indeed an extermination camp. The bubble is surrounded with death from all sides.
The Ynet piece is reminiscent of another report from February this year, published by Haaretz. The piece was a feel-good story about how soldiers make food from goods that they steal from Palestinian private kitchens, in homes that they stole.
In that wretched and crass piece, the authors sought futilely to provoke moral righteousness, noting that while they occupied and looted the homes of the Gazans they displaced, the soldiers nonetheless cooked “with mixed feelings”.
But it would appear that Zeitoun and Ynet’s piece goes even beyond that. There is no attempt to assuage any guilt that the soldiers may have. There are no mixed feelings.
There are in fact, no feelings at all for the Palestinians, who just next to the resort, are starving and drinking dirty water. The Palestinians simply do not exist in the entirety of the piece, not even as a reflection.
The total absence of Palestinians from the narrative, who are undergoing a genocide committed by the soldiers at this resort, reveals the reality of where Israeli society now exists. This is the conceptual preparation for the Israelis who are now at the next stage of their colonization of Palestine.
It is the conceptualization that Gazans do not exist. It is a land without a people, for the Israelis who always need more land.
Permanent presence in Gaza
Towards the end of his piece, Zeitoun is pushing the idea that the resort also serves the purpose of normalizing a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza, as is also indicated in the title.
“It does not seem as if the forces will move out of [Jabalia], and it’s already clear that we are not speaking of a mere raid, which is a short-term military operation that includes entry and exit from enemy territory,” he writes.
“In the gigantic separation corridor of Netzarim [Wadi Gaza, about 2.5 miles wide cutting Northern Gaza off from east to west] as well as the Philadelphi route [in the south, separating Gaza and Egypt], the IDF has already built similar refreshment facilities, which include also pedicure stations to treat soldiers’ feet, but not at such scope and level as in this new “holiday resort”.”
MONDOWEISS
Standing next to a popcorn machine, Israeli soldiers make cotton candy inside an army ‘resort’ for soldiers in north Gaza. (Via Ynet News)As human rights organizations amass reports on Israel committing genocide in Gaza, Israeli society is producing a wall of denial, separating itself from the catastrophic reality in Gaza. Nothing is more evident of that than a new report of a seawater desalination plant doubling as an Israeli army ‘resort’ in Gaza.
On Monday, Israeli news website Ynet published a piece in Hebrew by their military correspondent Yoav Zeitoun, titled “Desalination facility and holiday resort with café; Documentation: This is how IDF [Israeli military] is preparing for prolonged stay in Gaza”.
Zeitoun, who was embedded with the military, visited the resort, which is located near the beach in the western part of north Gaza. Though the exact location of the ‘resort’ is not revealed, Zeitoun does mention Jabalia – the area in north Gaza where Israel has launched a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign in recent months – as being nearby.
Photos and videos reveal the inside of this new ‘resort’ for soldiers: popcorn machines next to a cotton-candy machine, PlayStation video games, a lounge with a “hotel” breakfast, and meat on the grill. Elsewhere, a physiotherapist even gives massages.
Reality check
The whole piece is a big celebration. But here is where we should start making some reality checks, out from this Israeli bubble.
First, the desalination facility is huge. It produces 60,000 liters of water per day, enough for the soldiers to have clean drinking water and take showers.
This stands in start contrast to the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israel’s “extermination and acts of genocide”, which focused mostly on water. The report noted how, while Israelis consume about 250 liters of water per day (about 66 Gallons), Gazans today are forced to consume about 2 to 9 liters per day.
Because of the genocide, Palestinains in Gaza are forced to literally drink the sea, and dehydrated mothers feed their infants baby-formula with poisonous water. “When we cannot get drinking water, taking a shower is a dream”, said a woman cited in the report.
But why should the soldiers in the resort care at all? The desalination facility can produce fresh water which can suffice over 240 Israelis who each consume about 50 times more water than the average starved, dehydrated Gazans.
Imagine if the Israelis invested in such facilities for the Gazans, rather than blowing up their water reservoirs. But they don’t care about that, despite it being their obligation to suffice the basic needs of the occupied population.
A bubble in a concentration camp
In the report, the journalist Zeitoun laments that the soldiers cannot go down to the beach.
“The murmur of the waves is well heard in the nearby beach, but IDF does not permit the soldiers to go down to it, and a pyramid of mounds separates between the unusual compound and the Gazan beach strip,” he writes.
Admittedly, though not critically, he notes that the soldiers are living in a bubble:
“Nonetheless, the scenery of the sea and the calm atmosphere do theirs, completing the bubble-like sense”, Zeitoun writes.
The resort provides military companies (usually around two hundred soldiers) a resort day every ten days, in circulation. A military logistics officer describes it to Zeitoun:
“As each company finishes this refreshment day, which they get every 10 days on average, they return in the night to rest in their combat area in Jabalia, and continue refreshed in their combat missions… As the company completes its day of fun in this compound, we clean it and set it up anew in the night, preparing it for the company that will arrive the next day, and so forth. Just like a conveyor belt”.
It’s about making people forget they’re in Gaza. The officer continues:
“You remember that you are in Gaza, yes? We give a feeling of home, with ice-coffee, espresso, protein drinks, toast and Shakshukas in various flavors for breakfast, and of course also fruit and ice cream when the weather is warm. We make dreams come true for the soldiers”.
While the soldiers’ dreams are coming true, having cappuccinos and grilling meat, Palestinians in Gaza are living in famine-like conditions.
Two days ago, I talked with my friend Ditte, just before the demonstration against the Israeli genocide, in Copenhagen. She updated me about her beloved Fadi in Deir al-Balah, she said he managed to get some meat to eat just the other day – it was the first time in 4 months, and he was ecstatic about it. He never complains, she says, despite living in a tent and now freezing in the night.
‘Zone of Interest‘
But it is not merely the soldiers who need to dream – it is the Israeli population at large. When Orly Noy, chair of B’tselem and journalist, shared a post about this horrendous piece on her Facebook page yesterday, several commentators were drawn to associations with the film Zone of Interest, a film from last year which focused on a family of Nazis living right against the walls of Auschwitz, in their own bubble of normalcy.
In response to the Ynet piece, Noy published a piece in the Local Call publication , titled “Sweet cotton-candy at the heart of the valley of killings.” She writes:
“Thus, soldiers sit in the valley of killings, grilling meat in stands that work non-stop, and do not know where the smell of burnt meat that fills their nostrils originates from – whether it is from the carcasses of the animals that were brought there for them, or from bodies of the people in whose beach they may not wade.”
But this is arguably even worse than “Zone of Interest”, because the soldiers are not outside of the concentration camp – but inside it. That Gaza is a concentration camp has been said for decades. Now, with Israel’s systematic extermination, it is indeed an extermination camp. The bubble is surrounded with death from all sides.
The Ynet piece is reminiscent of another report from February this year, published by Haaretz. The piece was a feel-good story about how soldiers make food from goods that they steal from Palestinian private kitchens, in homes that they stole.
In that wretched and crass piece, the authors sought futilely to provoke moral righteousness, noting that while they occupied and looted the homes of the Gazans they displaced, the soldiers nonetheless cooked “with mixed feelings”.
But it would appear that Zeitoun and Ynet’s piece goes even beyond that. There is no attempt to assuage any guilt that the soldiers may have. There are no mixed feelings.
There are in fact, no feelings at all for the Palestinians, who just next to the resort, are starving and drinking dirty water. The Palestinians simply do not exist in the entirety of the piece, not even as a reflection.
The total absence of Palestinians from the narrative, who are undergoing a genocide committed by the soldiers at this resort, reveals the reality of where Israeli society now exists. This is the conceptual preparation for the Israelis who are now at the next stage of their colonization of Palestine.
It is the conceptualization that Gazans do not exist. It is a land without a people, for the Israelis who always need more land.
Permanent presence in Gaza
Towards the end of his piece, Zeitoun is pushing the idea that the resort also serves the purpose of normalizing a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza, as is also indicated in the title.
“It does not seem as if the forces will move out of [Jabalia], and it’s already clear that we are not speaking of a mere raid, which is a short-term military operation that includes entry and exit from enemy territory,” he writes.
“In the gigantic separation corridor of Netzarim [Wadi Gaza, about 2.5 miles wide cutting Northern Gaza off from east to west] as well as the Philadelphi route [in the south, separating Gaza and Egypt], the IDF has already built similar refreshment facilities, which include also pedicure stations to treat soldiers’ feet, but not at such scope and level as in this new “holiday resort”.”
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