Nearly 60,000 Palestinians were displaced in 72 hours, the UN reportedly said, accusing Israel of striking the displaced people as Israeli tanks advanced along two gateways to the centre of Gaza City.
Israel has escalated its ground operations in Gaza’s main city, forcing more than a quarter of a million Palestinians to flee the enclave to escape the bombardments.
Israeli forces control Gaza City’s eastern suburbs and, in recent days, have been pounding the Sheikh Radwan and Tel Al-Hawa areas, from where they would be positioned to advance on central and western areas where most of the population is sheltering.
The UN Human Rights Council this week concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, issuing a report that called on the international community to end it and take steps to punish those responsible for it.
The international community and global organisations have called on the Israeli military to abandon its plans to seize the city, warning that such an assault could further worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.
Despite the findings, which were rejected by Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s forces continued military strikes on the famine-hit enclave in what UN officials described as the new waves of mass displacement, adding that 60,000 Palestinians have fled in 72 hours, according to The Guardian.
The UN claimed the Israeli military was striking internally displaced Palestinians as they tried to leave the besieged city to take shelter in hospitals. “The Israeli strikes on internally displaced persons, including as they try to leave Gaza city or seek shelter near hospitals, show the Israeli military’s blatant disregard for the fundamental principle of distinction,” the UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory said in a post on X.
“Israel has demanded that Palestinian civilians leave Gaza city, they must take constant care to spare civilians from attack, whether they leave or stay. The Israeli military must comply with the IHL [International Humanitarian Law] requirement to distinguish between civilians and combatants.”
The UN estimated in late August that about one million Palestinians lived in and around Gaza City. Effie Defrin, an Israeli military spokesperson, said an estimated 450,000 people from Gaza City had moved southward.
But authorities in Gaza suggest the number could be lower, given the difficulties in upending entire families from their homes and leaving the city in just hours.
“We are scared, but what can we do?” said Bassam Al-Qanou, a displaced man sheltering with around 30 family members in one of countless ragged improvised tent camps along the city’s beach. He said the family had no way to get out, and nowhere to go.
At least 85 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes or gunfire across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, most in Gaza City, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Strip.
The Palestinian Telecommunications Company said in a statement that its services had been cut off “due to the ongoing aggression and the targeting of the main network routes”.
By nightfall, it said it had reactivated fixed internet and landline services. Several Palestinians said internet and phone services began to come back in Gaza City.
“The disconnection of internet and phone services is a bad omen. It has always been a bad signal something very brutal is going to happen,” said Ismail, who only gave one name. He was using an e-SIM to connect his phone, a dangerous method as it requires seeking higher ground to receive a signal.
The military has been dropping leaflets urging residents to flee towards a designated “humanitarian zone” in the south of the territory, but aid agencies say conditions there are dire, with insufficient food, medicine, shelter and basic hygiene.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, on Wednesday referred to Gaza as a “real-estate bonanza”, according to local media.
A total of 48 hostages remain in Gaza since their capture in a Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Israeli officials say around 20 are still alive.
Hamas warned on Thursday that Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza City means no hostages, dead or alive, would be returned to Israel. The militants added that the hostages were moved to different neighbourhoods of Gaza City. “We will not be concerned for their lives as long as Netanyahu has decided to kill them,” a statement from the al-Qassam Brigades said, as reported by CNN.
“The commencement of this criminal operation and its expansion means that you will not receive any prisoner, neither alive nor dead…”
Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, responded to the warning, saying: “If Hamas does not release the hostages and disarm, Gaza will be destroyed and turned into a monument to the rapists and murderers of Hamas.”
Meanwhile, the US once again vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Thursday that had demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages.
The 14 other members of the UN’s most powerful body voted in favour of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “catastrophic” and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.
“US opposition to this resolution will come as no surprise,” Morgan Ortagus, a senior U. policy adviser, said before the vote. “It fails to condemn Hamas or recognise Israel’s right to defend itself, and it wrongly legitimises the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council.”
She added that other council members “ignored” US warnings about the “unacceptable” language and instead adopted “performative action designed to draw a veto.”
Last week, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state.
The total Palestinian death toll from the two-year war surpassed 65,000 on Wednesday, according to the health authorities in the Strip.
