A UN official in charge of relief efforts has said that ‘humanity is failing’ in regards to the violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“Civilians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory are suffering from a week of utter anguish and devastation,” Martin Griffiths, humanitarian affairs undersecretary general and emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement.
“I fear that the worst is yet to come”, he added.
1300 Israelis were killed in Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7. An estimated 150 people, including children, were captured by Hamas and taken as hostages into Gaza. Gaza is home to around 2 million people ― roughly half of which are children.
In response to the attack, Israel has carried out airstrikes on Gaza, saying it wants to crush Hamas. The Israeli Defence Forces said that it had already dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza.
Earlier today, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that at least 2,750 Palestinians have been killed and 9,700 wounded in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.
In response to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s latest comments on the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas, Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:
“It is right that Rishi Sunak has expressed horror at the cruel and brutal crimes against Israeli civilians committed by Hamas a week ago, which showed a chilling disregard for life and included war crimes.
“But for the Prime Minister not to mention the Palestinian civilians killed due to Israeli airstrikes or include any call for all parties to the conflict to uphold international humanitarian law, is deeply troubling.
“Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Gaza has already killed at least 1,900 people and injured more than 8,000. The collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population through restricting water, fuel, food and electricity is a war crime, and the Israeli army’s order to people in northern Gaza to ‘evacuate’ amounts to forced displacement.
“Now more than ever, world leaders should urgently pressure all parties to uphold international humanitarian law consistently and without double standards. The protection of all civilians – Israeli and Palestinian – must be prioritised.”
We should condemn the targeting of all civilian life, no matter who does it. That this is apparently controversial is testament to the depravity of a media and political class that shuts down, distorts and denounces calls for peace. The heinous attacks on civilians in Israel by Hamas were utterly deplorable.
This cannot justify the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians, who are paying a price for a crime they did not commit. All human life is equal. Why is it so difficult for our politicians to be consistent in this basic moral principle?
This is the question that many people in this country are asking when they express solidarity with the Palestinian people. They are not expressing support for Hamas. To deliberately conflate the two is a disgusting, cynical and chilling attempt to further erode our democratic rights, and wilfully ignores a very basic demand: to stop the killing of innocent people.
The global community has a responsibility to de-escalate this catastrophic situation. That means calling for an immediate ceasefire. That means the release of Israeli hostages. That means ending the siege of Gaza. And that means recognising the underlying roots of this tragic cycle of violence: the enduring occupation of the Palestinian people.
Palestinians walk through debris along a street in the aftermath of Israeli bombardment in al-Karama district in Gaza City on October 11, 2023. (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“The mass expulsion of over 1 million people in a day is ethnic cleansing,” said U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar. “We must use all diplomatic tools to stop this.”
Progressive members of the U.S. Congress joined humanitarian groups and the United Nations on Friday in condemning Israel’s 24-hour evacuation order for the entire population of the northern Gaza Strip, a directive that will be impossible for many in the region to meet—particularly the thousands wounded by Israeli airstrikes.
“Any person can see that ordering 1+ million people to move in under 24 hours is not possible. It is unacceptable,” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media. “Humanity is at stake. Nearly half are children. We must halt this.”
More than 400,000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel began its latest bombing campaign in Gaza following a deadly Hamas attack on October 7.
In the wake of Israel’s order—which came hours before the nation launched ground raids in Gaza—many panicked residents fled their homes in the northern part of the enclave, with some fearing another permanent displacement on the scale of the 1948 Nakba.
“As I am packing my things I am wondering, is this really another Nakba?” 56-year-old Arwa El-Rayes, an internal medicine doctor, told The New York Times shortly before fleeing her home in Gaza City. “I am taking my house key and thinking, will I ever return to my home, will I ever see my home again?”
Reuters reported that “several thousand residents could be seen on roads heading out of the northern part of the Gaza Strip, but it was impossible to tell their numbers. Many others said they would not go.”
A 33-year-old woman in Gaza City toldThe Washington Post that she’s staying along with dozens of family members, including her elderly parents.
“There are no cars to take us anywhere,” she said. “There is no gas in cars. Cab companies don’t have cars anymore. The streets are so, so, so, so crowded, it’s like it’s the Day of Judgement.”
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) argued that “the mass expulsion of over 1 million people in a day is ethnic cleansing.”
“We have to stop ignoring the thousands of Palestinian lives lost and millions at stake!” Omar added. “We must use all diplomatic tools to stop this.”
Echoing aid groups, the Minnesota lawmaker emphasized that many in northern Gaza—including people with disabilities and those wounded by Israeli bombs—”can’t simply pick up and leave” in compliance with Israel’s evacuation directive, which the U.N. said is untenable and should be rescinded.
“With communications and electricity shut down by Israel, the order cannot be communicated,” Omar wrote. “Roads are bombed and many cars are out of fuel, making fleeing impossible for many. Plus there has been no announcement of a pause in hostilities to allow for safe civilian evacuation, so people are afraid to leave and risk bombardment. Even if it were successful, there is no infrastructure in southern Gaza to receive an additional 1.1 million people.”
The Palestine Red Crescent Society underscored those warnings in a statement Friday, saying it doesn’t have “the means to evacuate the sick and the wounded in our hospitals, or the elderly and the disabled.”
“There are no safe areas in the whole of the Gaza Strip,” the group said. “The world must intervene to stop this catastrophe.”
Israeli forces have already been accused of targeting Gazans attempting to flee to the south with airstrikes.
Israel bombed a truck full of Palestinians trying to evacuate, killing at least 40.
Palestinians are being massacred by Israel – while trying to follow Israel’s impossible order to “evacuate” over 1 million Palestinians from north Gaza within 24 hours.
Despite urgent appeals from lawmakers and aid organizations, officials in the U.S.—Israel’s top ally and leading supplier of weaponry—have provided no public indication that they will pressure Israel to reverse course.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told people in Gaza City on Friday to “evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families” as it amasses tanks and troops for an apparently imminent full-scale ground invasion. Hamas has reportedly told Gazans to defy the IDF’s instructions.
Asked about Israel’s evacuation order during a CNN appearance on Friday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said he doesn’t want to get involved in “armchair quarterbacking” the situation, adding, “We understand what they’re trying to do.”
“Now it’s a tall order,” Kirby admitted. “It’s a million people, and it’s a very urban, dense environment. It’s already a combat zone. So I don’t think anybody’s underestimating the challenge here of effecting that evacuation.”
The White House’s soft-pedaling of Israel’s directive contrasts sharply with the assessments of human rights organizations, which argued the order amounts to a war crime that will worsen an already calamitous situation.
“The instructions issued by the Israeli authorities for the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with the complete siege explicitly denying them food, water, and electricity, are not compatible with international humanitarian law,” the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Friday. “When military powers order people to leave their homes, all possible measures must be taken to ensure the population has access to basic necessities like food and water and that members of the same family are not separated.”
“Gaza is a closed area of limited size and resources,” the ICRC added. “People have nowhere safe to go and many, including the disabled, elderly, and sick, will not be able to leave their homes. International humanitarian law protects all civilians, including those who remain. Today, it is impossible for Gazans to know which areas will next face attack.”
“There are no extra beds in any hospitals anywhere for people to move to. Most of the wounded are unstable, they’ll die en route.
Gaza’s health ministry toldThe Independent that it would be “impossible” to move the wounded in its care to southern Gaza, given that the entire territory’s healthcare system is overwhelmed and teetering on the brink of total collapse due to the rapid influx of airstrike victims and Israel’s blockade, which has cut off the enclave’s supply of electricity, fuel, and critical supplies.
More than 6,600 people in Gaza have been injured by Israel’s relentless aerial campaign, which dropped roughly 6,000 bombs on the occupied enclave over just a six-day period, leveling entire neighborhoods and damaging medical facilities, schools, and other civilian infrastructure.
“There are no extra beds in any hospitals anywhere for people to move to,” Gaza’s health ministry said. “Most of the wounded are unstable, they’ll die en route. All hospitals in Gaza, even after they’ve been expanded, are full.”
Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, noted that “there are severely ill people whose injuries mean their only chances of survival is being on life support, such as mechanical ventilators.”
“So moving those people is a death sentence,” said Jasarevic. “Asking health workers to do so is beyond cruel.”
Meinie Nicolai, general director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement Friday that the Israeli military’s evacuation order is “outrageous.” The group said Israel has given Al Awda Hospital—where Doctors Without Borders staff are treating patients—just two hours to evacuate.
“This represents an attack on medical care and on humanity. We are talking about more than a million human beings,” said Nicolai. “‘Unprecedented’ doesn’t even cover the medical humanitarian impact of this. Gaza is being flattened, thousands of people are dying. This must stop now. We condemn Israel’s demand in the strongest possible terms.”
People in Gaza City begin moving to the south following an Israeli military evacuation order on October 13, 2023. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Israeli military on Friday ordered the entire population of northern Gaza—roughly 1.1 million people—to evacuate to the southern half of the occupied territory within 24 hours, prompting fears of an even worse humanitarian catastrophe as Israel readies a ground invasion and continues its disastrous bombing campaign.
The order, initially issued to the United Nations, impacts nearly half of Gaza’s population and comes after hundreds of thousands of the enclave’s residents were already displaced by Israeli airstrikes, which have killed more than 1,500 people.
U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement that the organization “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Dujarric added that the order must be “rescinded” to avert “a calamitous situation.”
News of Israel’s directive sparked alarm and confusion on the ground in northern Gaza, which includes densely populated Gaza City—home to the territory’s primary hospital.
Al Jazeera reported that one of its journalists in Gaza City “saw residents packing up whatever belongings they could as they began evacuating towards the south in cars, vans, and any other vehicle that was available.”
“In northern Gaza, residents early in the morning of Friday said the streets were empty as people stayed inside their homes trying to decide what to do next following Israel’s evacuation orders,” the outlet noted. “There were no cars on the road except for ambulances. Because of the internet outages and collapse of phone networks, Palestinians said information was scant and most still had not heard direct orders from the army to evacuate.”
“We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted.”
Aid groups and human rights organizations expressed horror in response to the Israeli military’s evacuation order, which observers warned is a prelude to “mass atrocities.”
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said that without “any guarantees of safety or return,” the order “would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer.”
“The collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly, in retaliation for acts of horrible terror undertaken by armed men is illegal under international law,” said Egeland. “My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire.”
“We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted,” Egeland continued. “The United States, the U.K., the European Union, and other Western and Arab nations who have influence over the Israeli political and military leadership must demand that the illegal and impossible order to relocate is immediately rescinded.”
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said in response to the order that “a million people in northern Gaza are not guilty.”
“They have nowhere else to go,” the group added. “This is not what fighting Hamas looks like. This is revenge. And innocent people are being hurt.”
That's obviously impossible. Israel is preparing for mass atrocities. https://t.co/QKVpiuOQjA
The order was delivered amid warnings that Gaza’s healthcare system is on the verge of total collapse, overwhelmed by the influx of thousands of airstrike victims and hampered by Israel’s total blockade, which has cut off the enclave’s supply of electricity, food, fuel, and other necessary supplies.
Gaza’s lone power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel, forcing already-strained hospitals to operate on generators. The International Planned Parenthood Federation said Friday that “over 37,000 pregnant women will be forced to give birth with no electricity or medical supplies in Gaza in the coming months, risking life-threatening complications without access to delivery and emergency obstetric care services.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that “time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe if fuel and lifesaving health and humanitarian supplies cannot be urgently delivered to the Gaza Strip amidst the complete blockade.”
“Hospitals have only a few hours of electricity each day as they are forced to ration depleting fuel reserves and rely on generators to sustain the most critical functions,” the WHO said. “Even these functions will have to cease in a few days, when fuel stocks are due to run out. The impact would be devastating for the most vulnerable patients, including the injured who need lifesaving surgery, patients in intensive care units, and newborns depending on care in incubators.”
Despite such dire warnings, the U.S.—Israel’s largest supplier of weaponry and military aid—has thus far not called for a cease-fire or an end to the siege.
As The Associated Press reported Friday, “A visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with shipments of U.S. weapons, offered a powerful green light to Israel to drive ahead with its retaliation in Gaza after Hamas’ deadly attack on civilians and soldiers, even as international aid groups warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis.”
