The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said its shelters in Gaza “are not safe anymore”, calling it “unprecedented” as it warns water running out for besieged enclave’s residents.
“Wars have rules. Civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics & UN premises cannot be a target,” UNWRA said in a statement.
UN aid Chief Martin Griffiths, in his latest statement on the conflict, reflected on a “dreadful week” in which “humanity is failing”.
“I fear the worst is yet come,” he said, adding in Gaza, there is “no power, no water and no fuel”, food supplies were running low, hospitals are “running our medicine”, and “morgues are overflowing”.
Gaza health officials demanded the urgent opening of corridors to evacuate the wounded abroad due to the “catastrophic” situation inside the besieged enclave.
More than 320 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, including many women and children killed in Israeli air raids on convoys fleeing Gaza City, according to health officials.
The rising toll comes as Israel continues bombing Gaza a day after telling 1.1 million residents to head south ahead of a looming ground offensive following Hamas’s resistance campaign inside Israel last week.
At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed and 8,714 wounded in Israeli air attacks on Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the past week has topped 50. More than 1,000 have been wounded and hundreds arrested.
In a televised address, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
“Our enemy is doing this with the US administration and some European countries. The people of Gaza are staying in their land. They will never leave Gaza or flee [to Egypt],” he said.
Israel ground offensive looms
Any incursion into the densely populated territory would be a pivotal moment in Israel’s war with Hamas.
Israel has already mounted the heaviest air strikes on Gaza ever and has mobilized 300,000 reservists and amassed tanks near the border in response to the Hamas campaign.
In Gaza, the threats of a ground invasion conjured up images of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel’s occupation that led to their mass dispossession.
Gaza analyst Talal Okal described the Israeli relocation order as an “attempt to push the Palestinian people of Gaza into Nakba”.
“Like they did in 1948 when they pushed people out of historical Palestine by dropping barrels of explosives on their heads, today Israel is repeating this before the eyes of the world and live cameras,” Okal told Reuters.
The Israeli military told the civilians of Gaza City to “evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields.”
In Gaza, mosques broadcast the message: “Hold on to your homes. Hold on to your land.”
‘We will not leave’
In Gaza’s Shifa hospital, a man arrived to check on dozens of relatives and friends who had been brought from the site of a residential building Israel bombed in Beach refugee camp.
“I survived. I don’t know why I survived. It is so that I tell the enemy, America, Europe, and the world that this Palestinian people will not be defeated,” the man cried toward reporters.
“They think there will be another displacement or that we may go Egypt. Nonsense,” he said before going into the morgue to try and identify dead relatives.
Well-known Gaza Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zard was also killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza, Hamas said. His son was killed a few weeks ago during border protests along the fence.
Gaza, a tiny coastal strip of land wedged between Israel in the north and east and Egypt in the southwest, is home to some 2.3 million people living under a blockade since Hamas came to power in 2007.
Even if its residents wanted to flee the enclave altogether, they have nowhere to go as the most obvious exit would be through Egypt, something Cairo rejects.
Egypt has discussed plans with the United States and others to provide humanitarian aid through its border, but rejects any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing the enclave, Egyptian security sources said.
Cairo, a frequent mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, always insists the two sides resolve conflicts within their borders, saying this is the only way Palestinians can secure their right to statehood.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at a military academy that: “This is the cause of all causes, the cause of all Arabs. It is important that the (Palestinian) people remain steadfast and present on their land. We will expend all efforts to alleviate (the burden) on them.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman that he “rejects the forced displacement” of Palestinians in Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
He said such an event would constitute a “second Nakba”.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency on Friday described the Israeli military call for mass movement as “horrendous” and said the enclave was rapidly becoming a “hell hole”.
The agency said it was moving staff south to keep up its work. Thirteen-year-old Azmi Diab, who was getting ready to move with his mother, a UN staffer, said he was also bringing his pet bird.
“I raised him, so I brought him to hide him from the bombardment, so he doesn’t die. It was small and we grew up together,” Diab told AFP.