The murdered families were those that had been expelled from the northern zone

If you were wondering what would be the fate of those residents of northern Gaza Strip who, according to the plan approved following a visit from Condi last March, were to be forcibly evacuated from their homes to create a cordon sanitaire within rocket-firing distance of the northern border with Israel, you might want to consider this as a reference point: Forty-two of them were killed yesterday by Israeli tank fire at the school in Jabaliya camp, in the north, where they had taken refuge.

Pan-Arab AlHayat, owned by a branch of the Saudi royal family and editorially friendly to the United States, heads its main story this morning (Wednesday Jan 7): "Day of Butchery in Gaza"

The Israeli killing machine escalated its crimes against civilians in Gaza yesterday, martyring more than a hundred of them, for the biggest harvest since the beginning of the invasion. The butchery was not limited to [or the butcher was not satisfied with] mobile hospitals, houses, medical offices, and even schools that were occupied by hundreds of residents of northern Gaza Strip after being expelled from their homes by the occupation forces. Heavy mortar fire hit three schools belonging to the United Nations which stood by helpless to aid the civilians of Gaza--42 of them were martyred at one school, mostly women and children, and another 60 wounded, in the largest-scale group killing since the start of the invasion.

And since Monday night the occupation has been widening the range of targeted homes of civilians, in order to raise the number of martyrs to the highest possible limit, in order to maximize pressure on Hamas to make concessions.

The journalist says there were mass killings in other areas too, in Gaza city and in Khan Yunis in the south, talking in general about "targeted areas", not just the northern strip. His historical reference point for this is 1948. He writes:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians in the targeted areas are currently living in a state of terror, awaiting death either from the skies or from the ground or from the sea, after eleven days of war that is the most violent since the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.