The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance

by Rashid I. Khalidi

On July 19–20, 2014, elements of the elite Golani, Givati, and paratrooper brigades launched an assault along three axes into the Shuja‘iyya district of Gaza City. The Golani brigade in particular met fierce and unexpected resistance that resulted in the death of thirteen Israeli soldiers and perhaps one hundred wounded. According to American military sources, eleven Israeli artillery battalions, employing at least 258 of these 155mm and 175mm guns, fired over 7,000 shells into this single neighborhood over a period of twenty-four hours. This included 4,800 shells during one seven-hour period. A senior Pentagon officer “with access to the daily briefings” called the scale of firepower “massive” and “deadly,” noting that the US army would normally use so “huge” an amount of shellfire in support of two entire divisions comprising 40,000 troops (perhaps ten times the size of the Israeli force engaged in Shuja‘iyya). Another, a former American artillery commander, estimated that the US military would employ that number of guns only in support of an army corps of several divisions. A retired American general described the Israeli bombardment—used to pound one Gaza neighborhood for over twenty-four hours, along with tank fire and attacks from the air—as “absolutely disproportionate.”32 The artillery pieces that were used in this assault are designed for lethal area fire over a wide radius against fortifications, armored vehicles, and dug-in troops protected by body armor and hel...