‘The next stage is coming’: Israel issues warning
as residents flee Gaza assault
US urges restraint amid bombing of civilian evacuation
convoy that left a reported 70 people dead, including women and children
Emma
Graham-Harrison, Bethan McKernan, Ruth Michaelson and Quique Kierszenbaum in
Jerusalem
Sat 14 Oct
2023 15.15 EDT
Desperate
Gaza City residents fled south in cars and lorries, carts and on foot on
Saturday, risking death by airstrikes on the road to escape the even greater
threat of an imminent Israeli ground attack on the north of the besieged
enclave.
Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told troops massed in southern Israel that
“the next stage is coming”, in a video shared by his office. The Israeli
military announced on Saturday evening that it was preparing “significant
ground operations”.
Antony
Blinken, the US secretary of state, who was visiting Saudi Arabia, urged
restraint, calling for the protection of civilians in both the Gaza Strip and
Israel.
For Gaza’s
2.3 million residents, there are limited options. They are already running out
of food, water, fuel and medical supplies, and face a terrifying escalation of
bloodshed and misery if the fighting intensifies.
Others fear
they will be killed on the road. One civilian evacuation convoy was bombed on
Friday afternoon, killing a reported 70 people, including women and children,
whose bodies appear in images of the aftermath. They were on Salah-al-Din Road,
a main thoroughfare Israel would declare safe less than an hour later.
Forensic
Architecture, a London-based research agency, and its partner unit at the
Palestinian human rights organisation al-Haq used aerial photos and social
media posts to geolocate the site of the strike, sharing its findings with the
Observer.
The BBC’s
Verify unit came to the same conclusion. The victims were part of an
unprecedented toll from airstrikes, which by Saturday evening reached more than
2,200. That included 724 children and 458 women, the Gaza health ministry said.
There is no
way for people to get out or humanitarian relief to get in. Israel has sealed
all crossings into its territory and Egypt reinforced its border crossing,
saying it would not allow refugees to enter.
Foreign
citizens were briefly offered hope they might be allowed to leave under a deal
agreed by Egypt, Israel and the US. But the crossing to Egypt had not opened to
anyone by Saturday night.
Israel has
vowed to obliterate Hamas after its fighters broke through the hi-tech fence
surrounding the strip and went on a murderous rampage, killing at least 1,300
people, mainly Israeli civilians and seizing dozens of hostages last weekend.
Before its
campaign, the Israeli military warned more than 1 million civilians to leave
the north, originally by a Saturday morning deadline that was later extended to
the evening. UN secretary general António Guterres said the mass movement of so
many people across an active war zone “is extremely dangerous – and in some
cases, simply not possible”.
Medics are
struggling to cope already, in hospitals crammed with patients and people
seeking shelter from bombs and missiles. “There are people sleeping on the
floors everywhere, even inside the hospital. The crowding is going to lead to
an infectious disease outbreak,” said Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon at Shifa
hospital in Gaza City.“The doctors have brought their families into the
hospital for safety – I slept on an operating room table last night. One of our
plastic surgery trainees at Shifa was killed last night with 30 members of his
direct family.”
There were
also mounting fears of a communications blackout as Palestinians across Gaza
found themselves increasingly without power or access to phone networks.
Israel’s
military has said it is preparing for a long campaign in Gaza, where Hamas has
been preparing defences, including networks of tunnels, for years. About
360,000 reservists have been mobilised, the largest number in Israel’s history,
while convoys of tanks have gathered near the border, and some troops made
initial ground operations in Gaza on Friday.
Tank-backed
forces had mounted raids to hit Palestinian rocket crews and gather information
on the location of hostages, a military spokesman said. The Israel Defence
Forces (IDF) also claimed to have killed the head of Hamas’s air operations,
Murad Abu Murad.
But Israel
has not detailed its objectives in the operation, beyond the destruction of
Hamas. Asked on Saturday what an Israeli military victory might look like, an
IDF spokesperson, Lt Col Richard Hecht, said: “That is a big question. I don’t
think I have the capability right now to answer that.”
Palestinians
and some regional officials have said they fear Israel’s ultimate aim is not
only to destroy Hamas, but to push Palestinian people out of Gaza. This would
mirror 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.
King
Abdullah of Jordan, which is next to the occupied West Bank, has warned
“against any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians from all Palestinian
territories or cause their internal displacement”. The head of the 22-member
Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, urgently appealed to Guterres to condemn “this
insane Israeli effort to transfer the population”.
Hamas has
called Israel’s evacuation order propaganda, and mosques in Gaza City blared
messages urging residents to stay, Reuters reported. “Hold on to your homes.
Hold on to your land,” said one broadcast, as tens of thousands headed south.
Israel’s
ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said the evacuation warning was
“to temporarily move [people] south … to mitigate civilian harm”, adding that
the UN should be “praising Israel for these precautionary actions”.Mahmoud
Shalabi, who is coordinating an emergency medical response with the group
Medical Aid for Palestinians is among those who have decided to stay in a city
closing down under heavy bombardment.
“All the
bakeries are now closed, but even with the ones that are closed there are
plenty of people waiting outside them, as though there’s a tiny sliver of hope
that they’ll reopen,” he said. “I went to try and go to the bank to get cash,
and found it was partially destroyed by a bombardment that happened just in
front of it.”“I’m lucky that I have a generator and I can pump water from my
water tanks.”
Israel’s
faith in its army and intelligence services has been shaken by the attack, and
although there is popular support for some form of military action against
Hamas, there is also a great deal of anger with the government. Idit Silman, a
Likud politician and member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, was recently chased out of
a hospital after healthcare workers and members of the public shouted: “You
ruined this country … get out of here.” On Saturday
protesters
gathered in central Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the government’s handling
of the crisis and the lack of information on the dead and the dozens of
missing, who are believed to be held hostage in Gaza. They chanted “Bibi to
jail”, using a nickname for Netanyahu.
“I want my
daughter back and I am not going to move from here …until they bring her back,”
said Shira Albag, 52, whose daughter Liri Albag was in an army base attacked by
Hamas. She appeared in a hostage video in her pajamas, Shira said.With the
focus on Gaza, there are also fears that the war could draw in other regional
players. Hostilities have been spreading, including to Israel’s northern border
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 border.
In
mid-afternoon, Hezbollah said it had launched “precise and direct hits,” using
missiles and mortar rounds on the disputed Shebaa farms area, a slim strip of
territory in the occupied Golan Heights claimed by both Lebanon and Israel that
the group has frequently selected as a target.
The Reuters
journalist Issam Abdallah was killed on Friday while working in southern
Lebanon, after missiles were fired from the direction of Israel, according to
another Reuters videographer on the scene. Six other journalists were injured.
The
Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, and a Hezbollah lawmaker blamed the
incident on Israel. Israel’s UN envoy said it would investigate what had
happened in the area after the journalist’s death.
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