Israel tells over 1m Palestinians to leave Gaza City ahead of expected ground invasion
Israel’s military on Friday called for all civilians of Gaza City, more than one million people, to relocate south within 24 hours, as it amassed tanks near the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion.
“Now is a time for war,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday as Israeli warplanes continued pounding Gaza in retaliation for the deadliest attack by Hamas fighters in its history.
The Israeli military said it would operate “significantly” in Gaza City in the coming days and civilians would only be able to return when another announcement was made.
“Civilians of Gaza City, evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the military said in a statement.
“Hamas terrorists are hiding in Gaza City inside tunnels underneath houses and inside buildings populated with innocent Gazan civilians.”
The United Nations said it considered it impossible for such a movement to take place “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
US Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said on X that the Israeli demand was unacceptable and must be halted.
“Any person can see that ordering 1+ million people to move in under 24 hours is not possible. It is unacceptable. The UN has already deemed the order ‘impossible’ without ‘devastating humanitarian consequences’. Humanity is at stake. Nearly half are children. We must halt this,” she said.
The challenge of moving half of the enclave’s population in such a short amount of time was highlighted by an Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, who said: “You are talking about more than one million Palestinians who will leave their houses and move to the south of the Gaza Strip, an area that isn’t really [big] enough to host this massive number of displaced people.
“It would be hard for them to move in this great number. The space in the Gaza Strip only contains around 365 square kilometres. You’re talking about half of the population [who] will move to live in half of the space they used to live in.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan described the UN’s response to Israel’s early warning to the residents of Gaza as “shameful”.
“This is chaos, no one understands what to do,” said Inas Hamdan, an officer at the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza City, while she grabbed whatever she could throw into her bags as the panicked shouts of her relatives could be heard around her, Associated Press reported.
Hamdan said all the UN staff in Gaza City and northern Gaza had been told to evacuate south to Rafah.
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, said there was no way more than one million people could be safely moved that fast, the report added.
“Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if … you’re going to live,” Farsakh said, breaking into heaving sobs. “What will happen to our patients?” she asked. “We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals.”
Farsakh said many of the medics were refusing to evacuate hospitals and abandon patients. Instead, she said, they called their colleagues to say goodbye, AP reported.
A Hamas official said the Gaza relation warning was “fake propaganda” and urged citizens not to fall for it.
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas which led the offensive on Saturday, but a ground invasion of Gaza poses serious risk with Hamas holding scores of hostages kidnapped in the assault. Public broadcaster Kan said the Israeli death toll had risen to more than 1,300.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Friday that it struck “750 military targets” in northern Gaza overnight, including what it claimed were Hamas tunnels, military compounds, residences of senior operatives and weapons storage warehouses.
Gaza authorities said more than 1,500 Palestinians had been killed.
Israel has put Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, under siege.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said fuel powering emergency generators at hospitals in Gaza could run out within hours and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned food and fresh water were running dangerously low.
“The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent, and I implore the sides to reduce the suffering of civilians,” ICRC regional director Fabrizio Carboni said.
In Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis, where cemeteries were already full, dead were being buried in empty lots, like the Samour family, killed on Wednesday night in a strike that hit their house.
Palestinian rescue worker Ibrahim Hamdan drove from one bomb site to another as his team tried to pull survivors from houses destroyed by the Israeli air strikes.
“This war is harsh beyond imagining,” said Hamdan, who has worked through repeated wars since becoming a rescuer in 2007. “They knock down high-rise buildings on top of their residents.”
Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, saying the use of such weapons puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injury.
Israel’s military said it was “currently not aware of the use of weapons containing white phosphorus in Gaza.”
Gazans, mainly descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled from homes in Israel at its founding in 1948, have suffered economic collapse and repeated Israeli bombardment under a blockade since Hamas seized power there 16 years ago.
Palestinian anger has mounted in recent months, with Israel carrying out the deadliest crackdown for years in the West Bank and its right-wing government talking of seizing more land. A peace process meant to create a Palestinian state collapsed a decade ago, which Palestinian leaders say left the population with no hope, strengthening extremists.
Over 400,000 people displaced in Gaza
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said early on Friday that more than 400,000 people had fled their homes in the Gaza Strip and 23 aid workers had been killed since the start of Israeli retaliatory strikes in response to a deadly Hamas incursion.
The agency launched an appeal for nearly $294 million to help some 1.3 million people in Gaza and the West Bank, of which nearly half was programmed for food aid as supplies run out.
“Mass displacement continues. In the Gaza Strip, the cumulative number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) increased by 25 per cent over the past 24 hours, now exceeding 423,000, of whom over two thirds are taking shelter in UNRWA schools,” OCHA said, referring to the UN Palestinian refugee agency.
It said 23 aid workers had so far been killed since the weekend, including 11 health workers and 12 UNRWA employees.
‘Riddled with bullets’
Seeking to build support for its response, Israel’s government showed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Nato defence ministers graphic images of children and civilians they said Hamas had killed in a weekend rampage in Israel.
Blinken said they showed a baby “riddled with bullets,” soldiers beheaded and young people burned in their cars. “It’s simply depravity in the worst imaginable way,” he said. “It’s really beyond anything that we can comprehend.”
Like others across the globe, Blinken urged Israel to show restraint, but he also reiterated America’s support, saying: “We will always be there by your side.”
On Friday, he was due to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah and Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as part of a Middle East tour aimed at stopping spillover from the war.
Blinken also planned to visit key US allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said lessons would be drawn from the security failures around Gaza that enabled the attack. “We will learn, investigate, but now is the time for war,” he said.
The US military is placing no conditions on its security assistance to Israel, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said, adding Washington expected Israel’s military to “do the right things” in prosecuting its war against Hamas.
Austin was due in Israel on Friday and planned to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hamas called on Palestinians to rise up on Friday in protest at Israel’s bombardment of the enclave, urging Palestinians to march to East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and clash with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s parliament approved Netanyahu’s emergency unity government late on Thursday, including a number of centrist opposition lawmakers, to display the country’s united determination to fight Hamas.
North Korea denied on Friday its weapons were used by Hamas in the attack against Israel, saying the claim made in some media reports was a bid by Washington to divert the blame for the conflict from itself to a third country.
Safety concerns prompt security measures
The US State Department will begin offering charter flights to Europe to help Americans leave Israel if they want starting Friday, the White House said.
Japan has arranged for a charter flight to depart Tel Aviv on Saturday for its citizens wishing to leave Israel, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters on Friday.
The conflict spurred some civil unrest in Europe, with police in Paris using tear gas and water cannon to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people. Some Jewish schools in Amsterdam and London were set to close temporarily due to safety concerns.
US law enforcement officials in New York and Los Angeles said they had a stepped up police presence for Friday, especially around synagogues and Jewish community centres, but some officials sought to play down the threat.
The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, an Arab advocacy group, said on Thursday that FBI agents had visited mosques in different states and individual US residents with Palestinian roots, calling it a “troubling trend.“In Jerusalem, scores of Israelis gathered at the Mount Herzl military cemetery on Thursday to bury their dead.
“When you didn’t take my call, I knew you were fighting with all your power. When I realised you were missing, I could not imagine this is how it would end,” one mourner said.