Israel forces Gaza population to evacuate to Wastelands

The United Nations said, on Tuesday, that an order by Israel for Palestinians to evacuate areas of Khan Yunis and Rafah was the largest such edict in the Gaza Strip since 1.1 million people were told to leave the north of the enclave in October, 2023.

People are left with the impossible choice of having to relocate, some most likely for the second or third time, to areas that have barely any spaces or services, or staying in areas where they know heavy fighting will take place.

Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, said yesterday that the United Nations will not be party to any forced displacement of Palestinians currently living in Rafah, noting that there was nowhere safe in Gaza for them to go.

In response to a question about the possibility of the UN participating in the evacuation operation, Dujarric stressed the need to ensure that anything that happens is done in full respect of international law, in the full respect of the protection of civilians.

We will not be party to forced displacement of people. As it is, there is no place that is currently safe in Gaza!

You can’t send people back to areas that are littered with unexploded ordnance, not to mention a lack of shelter,” referring to the northern and central areas of the Gaza Strip, which witnessed massive destruction as a result of Israel’s bombing campaign.

On Sunday night, flouting the provisional ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel launched an air campaign on Rafah, killing more than 65 Palestinians.

The city had been declared a safe zone by occupation forces and over a million Palestinians had taken shelter there after being forced out of their homes in the northern areas of the Strip since 7 October, 2023.

The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas burst into southern Israel on 7 October, killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages, including civilians and soldiers, back into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Middle East Monitor / ABC Flash Point News 2024.