Israel and Hamas at war | Slight reprieve for desperate civilians

Thousands of desperate civilians continued to flee towards the south of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, taking advantage of a reprieve from the Israeli army which is preparing to launch a major ground offensive. And the humanitarian crisis is growing day after day in the small enclave cut off from the world.

A short reprieve

By car, by cart, on foot: the evacuation by all means of Gazan civilians continued on Saturday under the specter of an escalation of violence.

On Friday, Israel ordered the inhabitants of northern Gaza, 1.1 million people, to reach the south of the enclave within 24 hours.

However, a spokesperson for the Israeli army announced a reprieve to the Palestinians on Saturday evening, ensuring that the ground offensive would not be launched this Sunday, for humanitarian reasons.

The IDF confirmed that its troops were preparing for “a significant ground operation,” as part of an “integrated and coordinated attack from air, sea and land.”

According to three high-ranking officers cited by the New York Timesthe assault should be given “in the coming days”.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited soldiers massed outside the Gaza Strip. “The next step is coming,” he said in a video released by his office.

At least 1,300 Israelis have been killed since the Hamas attack in Israel a week ago today, and 2,200 Palestinians.

Last Saturday, hundreds of Hamas militants bombed and infiltrated Israeli territory, killing hundreds of civilians in the streets and capturing hostages in bloody chaos.

Fleeing civilians killed

Obeying Israeli orders, at least 70 civilians, including children, were killed while fleeing the northern territory, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Saturday.

According to information verified by the Guardiana convoy of vehicles was traveling on one of the two roads designated by the Israeli army for evacuation (the Salah ad-Din road, see map), when it was the target of a deadly airstrike.

Photos of the attack – which Hamas blamed on Israel – show around a dozen bodies, mostly women and children.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, urged residents not to flee, accusing Israel of “war crimes”.

For its part, the Israeli army announced that it had found in the Palestinian enclave “bodies” of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas militants during the October 7 attack.

Humanitarian crisis

Day after day, the humanitarian crisis is increasing in the small enclave cut off from the world. Blocked access to water has become “a matter of life and death,” a UN spokesperson said on Saturday.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced in the space of 12 hours, and nearly a million since the start of the conflict a week ago.

The forced evacuation of thousands of patients from northern Gaza to overwhelmed facilities in the south of the territory could be “the equivalent of a death sentence”, the World Health Organization has warned.

“There are people sleeping on the floor everywhere, even inside the hospital. Promiscuity will lead to an epidemic of infectious diseases,” he told the Guardian the D^r Ghassan Abu-Sittah, surgeon at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The European Union announced on Saturday that it was tripling humanitarian aid intended for the population of the Gaza Strip, to 75 million euros.

However, delivering aid to the millions of trapped Gazan civilians poses a challenge: the only opening not under Israeli control, the Rafah crossing point in Egypt, is currently closed.

United States President Joe Biden spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, urging them to allow humanitarian aid to flow to the region.

“The humanitarian crisis” in Gaza is “a priority,” declared Mr. Biden, while several NGOs called for the opening of humanitarian corridors.

A second American aircraft carrier

The United States will send a second aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean “to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts to expand this war following the Hamas attack.”

The A.S.S. Dwight. Eisenhower and its escort ships will join a first aircraft carrier – the USS Gerald R. Ford – deployed in the region after the bloody Hamas attack.

This deployment shows “Washington’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and our determination to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war,” said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Strikes in Syria

Tension is also high in northern Israel. The Hezbollah armed movement said on Saturday that one of its fighters had been killed in southern Lebanon by the IDF.

Southern Lebanon has been the scene of shootings between Lebanese Hezbollah and the Israeli army since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

An Israeli airstrike also targeted the airport of Aleppo, a city in northern Syria, on Saturday, wounding five people.

The Syrian Defense Ministry confirmed the strikes overnight from Saturday to Sunday, accusing Israel of “crimes against the Palestinian people” in reference to its response against the Hamas attack.

Israeli raids had already targeted the airports of the Syrian capital, Damascus, and Aleppo on Thursday.

Domino effect

Could the conflict between Israel and Hamas spread to other regions of the Middle East? According to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, this is a possibility.

He shared this scenario on Friday during a meeting with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which took place in front of journalists, in Lebanon.

On Saturday, Amirabdollahian also met with Hamas’s top politician, Ismaël Haniyeh, whose organization receives financial and political support from Iran.

With Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, the Guardian and the New York Times