Palestinians flee northern Gaza before expected
Israeli ground invasion
Thousands pack into cars and trucks or leave on foot
after Israel told them to go, as violence flares in East Jerusalem and West
Bank
Bethan
McKernan in Jerusalem
Sat 14 Oct
2023 05.02 BST
Thousands
of people have been fleeing to the southern half of Gaza before an expected
ground invasion of the blockaded strip as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
descends into its bloodiest period in decades.
The UN says
it estimates “tens of thousands” of people have fled their homes and moved
south, adding that more than 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza were already
internally displaced before Israel’s military issued an order to evacuate.
Hamas said
70 people had been killed when warplanes struck cars fleeing south on Friday,
while Israel’s military said that its troops backed by tanks had conducted the
first raids inside Gaza since the crisis began. Israeli media reported that a
number of bodies of missing Israelis were retrieved in Friday’s raids.
Amid growing
fears of escalating violence on several fronts after last weekend’s massacre of
Israeli civilians by the militant group Hamas, almost half of Gaza’s 2.3
million trapped civilians faced the decision of whether to leave home, possibly
never to return, after the Israeli army issued mass evacuation orders in the
early hours of Friday.
Messages
from Hamas broadcast by mosques around the strip called on residents to stay
put on Friday after the order from Israel for the population to move south of
the Gaza River, just south of Gaza City. Hamas called it “Israeli propaganda”
and urged residents to “hold on to your homes and land”.
Joe Biden
said it was a priority to “urgently address the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians
had nothing to do with Hamas and Hamas’s appalling attacks, and they’re
suffering as a result as well,” he said.
The UN
warned that the order to flee en masse would be calamitous, and urged Israel to
reverse its order. The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said the
situation in Gaza had reached “a dangerous new low” and called for immediate
humanitarian access. “Even wars have rules,” he said.
But
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the bombardment of Gaza was
“just the beginning” of his country’s response. “Our enemies have only just
begun to pay the price,” he said late on Friday.
For most of
the day there were no signs of mass movement. But as the afternoon wore on, it
appeared many people had decided that if they were going to move, it had to be
before nightfall. The strip, where Israel has cut off electricity, would be
plunged into a sixth night of total darkness amid continued airstrikes and
shelling.
By about
3pm, thousands of people from the northern town of Beit Hanoun and the
sprawling Gaza City had begun making their way south by any means possible.
Some packed into cars and trucks, but with fuel supplies low because of the
tightening of Israel’s siege on the Mediterranean enclave, many were walking
distances of more than 12 miles (20km).
Israel’s
order to get out came six days after an audacious attack by Hamas gunmen early
on Saturday, on a Jewish holiday. At least 1,200 militants burst through dozens
of points on the heavily militarised boundary around the Gaza Strip before
fanning out to rampage through 22 Israeli towns and kibbutzim and 10 army
bases.
The Rafah
crossing into Egypt is still closed to fleeing civilians in Gaza. And for those
who are severely ill or have been injured by airstrikes that have pounded the
26-mile by 7-mile strip for the last six days, the World Health Organization
has said the ultimatum is as good as “a death sentence”. Aid agencies have
described the evacuation order under such circumstances, and so quickly, as
“logistically impossible”.
For many
Palestinians, the week’s events are comparable to the Nakba, the Arabic term
for the forcible expulsion of about 750,000 Palestinians from what was
previously British mandate-controlled Palestine during the creation of Israel
in 1948.
Yusuf Abu Rish,
the head of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, said: “It’s really a new Nakba and
it’s even worse than the first one. No one can imagine what is going on the
ground, it’s horrible. Even if there is a decision to evacuate, it’s not
applicable at all … they [patients] will die.”
In the
besieged territory, the evacuation notice issued in the early hours of Friday
sent panic through the civilian population and civil defence teams, who were
already struggling under intense Israeli airstrikes that have killed 1,900
people so far, levelling entire neighbourhoods. The Israeli directive charged
that Hamas militants were hiding in tunnels under Gaza City.
Israel is
not allowing food, fuel or medical supplies into the strip in a tightening of
its blockade, a move that the UN considers a war crime.
An Israel
Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson admitted in a briefing on Friday morning that
it would take time for Palestinians to follow the orders to evacuate. In
response to questions from the Guardian, the army’s media desk refused to
clarify what time the order was sent, and whether it included a 24-hour
deadline, as the UN reported.
Saturday
morning marked one week since more than 1,300 people were killed on what has
been described as Israel’s 9/11 – more Israeli deaths than in the entirety of
the five-year intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of the 2000s.
As
reporters have gained access to affected towns and kibbutzim this week, the
scale of the carnage has become clearer. IDF officials said they entered homes
strewn with bodies, finding women who had been raped and killed, and children
who had been shot and burned.
In
response, Israel has already mounted the heaviest airstrikes on Gaza ever,
mobilised an unparalleled 360,000 reservists, and amassed convoys of tanks near
the border before what is almost certain to be a major ground offensive lasting
months.
Scores of
Israeli and foreign hostages were taken back to Gaza after Saturday’s attack;
the IDF confirmed on Saturday that more than 120 people were being held by
Hamas. The militant group claimed on Friday that 13 captives had been killed in
Israeli strikes over the last 24 hours.
Human
Rights Watch accused Israel on Thursday of using white phosphorus munitions in
operations in Gaza and Lebanon, allegations the army has denied.
The
expected incursion would be a pivotal moment in Israel’s war with Hamas – the
fifth during the 16 years since the group seized control of Gaza, leading
Israel and Egypt to impose a blockade.
It could
also inflame fighting elsewhere: fierce clashes between Palestinians and
Israeli settlers and army personnel broke out around occupied East Jerusalem
and the West Bank on Friday, killing at least 16, while to the north, a Reuters
journalist was killed and six others from AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera were
wounded when they were caught in cross-border shelling across the boundary with
Lebanon.
Israeli
forces said early on Saturday that they had “struck a Hezbollah terror target
in southern Lebanon” in response to a drone crossing the Blue Line between the
countries.
Hezbollah,
the Iran-backed militant group, has conveyed via mediators that it will be
drawn into the fray if Israel launches a ground assault in Gaza.
On Friday,
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said: “If these organised
war crimes that are committed by the Zionist entity don’t stop immediately,
then we can imagine any possibility”.
There is
still no safe place for Gaza’s civilians to go. Cairo, a frequent mediator
between Israel and the Palestinians, has discussed plans with the US to provide
humanitarian aid but has rejected moves to set up safe corridors for refugees.
Mahmoud
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president in control of parts of the West
Bank, told the visiting US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in emergency
talks in the Jordanian capital, Amman, that he “rejects the forced
displacement” of Palestinians in Gaza. Across the world, rallies and protests
in support of the Palestinian people were held on Friday: tens of thousands of
people gathered in Tahrir Square in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, waving
Palestinian flags and burning the Israeli flag while chanting anti-US and
anti-Israeli slogans.
Jewish
communities also held rallies in solidarity with Israel.
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