Israel Orders Palestinians To Leave Gaza City
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has ordered the remaining residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, towards Deir al-Balah, as the military intensifies its operations in the area.
This comes after Israeli forces raided a UN refugee agency compound, alleging it was being used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters, RT reports.
The IDF has issued several evacuation warnings in recent days, with estimates suggesting around 200,000 Palestinians remain in the northern part of the enclave.
Leaflets dropped by Israeli planes have urged residents to leave, designating two “safe routes” for evacuation and instructing them to head south, as the area is expected to become a dangerous combat zone.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) warned that the latest set of Israeli evacuation orders will exacerbate the already dire situation in Gaza, where the vast majority of the population has been displaced since the start of the war in October.
The directive “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced again and again,” the agency said.
It warned that the repeated displacement of Palestinians makes the work of relief groups more difficult because they are forced to “reset their aid operations over and over again.”
“Aid workers are responding but what they can deliver falls far short of the needs,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Muhannad Hadi wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday after a trip to Gaza.
During the early stages of the invasion of Gaza, Israel told Palestinians to evacuate from the northern part of the enclave. As the IDF expanded its raids, the army instructed people to leave certain southern areas as well, including eastern Khan Younis and Rafah, a city near the Egyptian border that has become a giant refugee camp.
The IDF said it is continuing a “targeted, intelligence-based operational activity” in Rafah and elsewhere. The army has repeatedly stated that it will fulfill its mission to neutralise Hamas and aligned Islamist groups in Gaza and free remaining Israeli hostagesl
Under an intense new Israeli assault on Gaza City on Thursday, residents were trapped in their homes and bodies lay uncollected in the streets.
This comes as Washington pushes for a peace deal in Egypt and Qatar.
Hamas militants warn that a heavy Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could derail efforts to finally end the war, just as negotiations are nearing their conclusion.
Reuters reports that Gaza City, which housed more than a quarter of Gaza’s population prior to the war, was destroyed during the first weeks of fighting last year, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to their homes in the ruins. The Israeli military has once again ordered them out.
The Gaza health ministry said it had received reports of people being trapped and killed inside their homes in Gaza City’s Tel Al Hawa and Sabra districts, where rescuers were unable to reach them.
The Civil Emergency Service estimated that at least 30 people had been killed in Tel Al-Hawa and Rimal, but it was unable to recover bodies from the streets.
Despite the army’s instructions to Gaza City residents on Wednesday to take two “safe routes” south, many refused to comply. Some people used social media to share the hashtag “We are not leaving.”
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