Israel on Friday ordered the evacuation of “all civilians” from Gaza City to the south within 24 hours, on the seventh day of its war against Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist movement that the Israeli prime minister had vowed to “dismantle.”
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Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel since hostilities began, sparked by a bloody Hamas attack on October 7. According to local authorities, the massive Israeli attacks carried out in response in the Gaza Strip resulted in 1,417 deaths, many of them civilians.
The Israeli army “is ordering the evacuation of all civilians in Gaza City from their homes in the south for their own safety and protection,” it said in a statement at dawn on Friday.
Civilians must “go to the area south of Wadi Gaza,” a stream south of Gaza City, she added. “They will not be allowed to return to Gaza City until a further announcement is made allowing this,” the statement said.
In New York, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric confirmed that the Israeli army had informed the organization of this evacuation order, which he said affected around 1.1 million residents from the north of the Gaza Strip.
“Devastating consequences”
He warned that an evacuation of this magnitude was “impossible without having devastating humanitarian consequences.”
In these circumstances, “the United Nations strongly calls for the lifting of this order (…) to prevent what is already a tragedy from turning into a catastrophic situation,” he stressed.
Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan reacted violently.
“The UN’s response to Israel’s previous warning to the residents of Gaza is shameful,” he wrote in a message sent to AFP by his services, accusing the UN of “turning a blind eye to Hamas.”
A few hours earlier, after an interview with American Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to destroy Hamas, which has been in power in the Palestinian enclave since 2007.
“Just as ISIS was dismantled, Hamas will also be dismantled,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Islamic State group.
Statements suggesting a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
At dawn on October 7, the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, hundreds of Hamas militants entered Israel in vehicles by air and sea, killing more than a thousand civilians on the streets, at home or in the middle of a music festival , which sows terror under a barrage of missiles. Hamas also took dozens of hostages to Gaza.
This extremely violent attack shocked the country and traumatized the survivors and the people who came to help the victims.
Breaking point
In the town of Sderot, near the Gaza border, Yossi Landau, a volunteer with the Israeli aid group Zaka, almost reached the breaking point while recovering the victims’ bodies and said he witnessed violence he had never seen before.
As fighting raged between Hamas and Israeli forces, “a route that should have taken 15 minutes took us 11 hours because we picked everyone up and put them in sacks,” this man said. 55 years old.
“I felt like I was going to collapse, not just me but my entire team,” he recalls of the sickening scenes.
After the attack, the army claimed to have recovered the bodies of 1,500 infiltrated Hamas fighters.
The Islamist movement has also kidnapped several dozen Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals. Israel has 150 hostages while hundreds of people are still missing and bodies are being identified.
Israel responded by declaring war to destroy Hamas. The Israeli army announced on Thursday that it had dropped around 6,000 bombs in the Gaza Strip since Saturday, a total of 4,000 tonnes of explosives.
More than 423,000 displaced people
In the Palestinian enclave, the noise of explosions, drones and other explosions is incessant day and night.
“For what? We didn’t do anything!” shouts a man as he watches stretcher bearers carry away the lifeless body of a loved one, straight from the rubble in a bombed neighborhood.
More than 423,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been displaced in recent days to flee bombings, according to the United Nations. The United Nations has launched an emergency appeal for $294 million in donations to meet the “urgent needs” of the Palestinian territories.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) accepts around 64% of these displaced people in 102 of its facilities.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday urged the people of Gaza to be “steadfast” and “stay on their land” amid growing calls for Egypt to allow safe passage for Gaza civilians.
Egypt, which favors a diplomatic solution and calls for restraint on both sides, rejects the idea of allowing Palestinians fleeing war into its territory.
Drink sea water
“The only power plant in the Gaza Strip ran out of fuel and ceased operations, disrupting the only source of electricity in the enclave, whose residents largely no longer have access to electricity and drinking water,” the UN Office for Coordination reported Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a statement.
According to this organization, a water reservoir and a desalination plant were hit by airstrikes.
“UNICEF stated that some began drinking seawater, which is very salty and contaminated by 120,000 m3 of untreated wastewater every day,” the text continued.
The Gaza Strip, a poor and cramped enclave of 2.4 million people that has suffered under a land, air and sea blockade since 2006, is now under a state of siege, without water, electricity or food supplies, cut off from Israel.
In addition to the bombings, the Israeli army has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers in the Gaza Strip and on the border with Lebanon, a country from which the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, regularly fires rockets against Israel.
Flashing in Jordan
During his whirlwind visit to Israel, Antony Blinken said he discussed “ways to address the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza to protect them while Israel conducts its legitimate security operations to defend itself against terrorism and seek to “That this never happens again.”
“We will always be at your side,” the head of American diplomacy assured Mr. Netanyahu.
In Jordan, where he arrived overnight from Thursday to Friday, the foreign minister will meet with King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He is then expected in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Friday to address the situation in the Gaza Strip. A first meeting of the council on October 8 did not produce unanimous condemnation of the Hamas attack.