An Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinians in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood on Saturday, while the Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams treated three people wounded in the strike on the car, two of them in serious condition. The machinery of war kept moving. People in the street paid the price.
Haaretz said the latest casualties brought Saturday’s total in the enclave to six killed, including a 10-year-old girl. In the same live update, the paper said the girl was shot dead by troops in central Gaza and that the son of Dr. Munir al-Bursh, director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, was killed in a strike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia. The numbers arrive like a ledger from a system that treats civilian life as a running balance sheet.
The State Monopoly on Violence
The separate Gaza report added another layer to the same pattern. Haaretz said a 15-year-old Palestinian, Mohammad Abdul Zinati, was killed earlier this week in Gaza City after approaching a wounded paramedic who had been targeted moments earlier. According to a Guardian investigation based on verified footage and witness accounts, the boy was killed in an Israeli strike. The IDF said the paramedic was a Hamas Nukhba operative and that the incident is under review. That is the language of armed authority: one side names a target, the other side names a category, and the people on the ground absorb the blast radius.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams provided medical care to the wounded in Sheikh Radwan, including two people in serious condition. Even that small detail cuts through the official fog. Emergency crews arrive after the strike, not before it. They work inside the wreckage left by institutions that claim control over territory, movement, and life itself.
Bodies Under Command
Haaretz also reported that the IDF said it struck Hezbollah observation posts and infrastructure in southern Lebanon after a Hezbollah explosive device lightly wounded two soldiers operating an engineering vehicle. The statement sits beside the Gaza deaths in the same live update, a reminder that armed hierarchies on every side keep civilians and conscripts inside the same machinery of command. The state speaks in operations, targets, and reviews. The people speak in casualties.
The report on Mohammad Abdul Zinati is especially stark because it places a teenager in the path of a wounded paramedic already hit moments earlier. The Guardian investigation cited verified footage and witness accounts. The IDF’s response was to classify the paramedic as a Hamas Nukhba operative and say the incident is under review. That gap between what witnesses saw and what the armed institution says happened is where accountability usually goes to die.
The day’s toll, as Haaretz reported it, included the 10-year-old girl, the three killed in Sheikh Radwan, the son of Gaza’s Health Ministry director general, and Mohammad Abdul Zinati. Six dead in one day in the enclave, according to the live update. No grand theory is needed to read the pattern. The state monopoly on violence keeps writing itself into civilian bodies, then filing the aftermath under review.
Who Gets the Bill
The Palestinian Red Crescent’s role in the Sheikh Radwan strike shows the other side of the same arrangement: emergency workers patching up the wounded after the fact, trying to keep pace with a system that produces casualties faster than care can reach them. Two of the wounded were in serious condition. The report gives no sign of relief, only the routine of response.
Haaretz’s live update and separate report together show how the conflict is administered from above and endured below. Israeli strikes, troop fire, and official statements on one side. Wounded paramedics, dead children, and emergency crews on the other. The institutions keep their language polished. The bodies don’t get that luxury.
The IDF said the incident involving Mohammad Abdul Zinati is under review. That phrase has a familiar ring. It means the apparatus will examine itself, on its own terms, after the fact. Meanwhile, the dead stay dead, the wounded stay wounded, and the people of Gaza keep living inside a system where armed power decides the terms of survival.