Israel on Friday ordered the evacuation within 24 hours to the south of “all civilians” from Gaza City, on the seventh day of its war against Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist movement that the Israeli Prime Minister promised to “crush” .
Since the start of hostilities, triggered on October 7 by a bloody Hamas attack, around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel. In the Gaza Strip, massive Israeli strikes launched in response left 1,417 dead, including many civilians, according to local authorities.
The Israeli army “is ordering the evacuation of all civilians in Gaza City from their homes to the south, for their own safety and protection,” it announced in a statement at dawn Friday.
Civilians will have to “go to the area south of Wadi Gaza”, a stream located south of Gaza City, she added. “You will only be allowed to return to Gaza City when another announcement allowing this is made,” the statement said.
In New York, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, confirmed that the Israeli army had informed the organization of this evacuation order, which according to him concerns around 1.1 million inhabitants. from the north of the Gaza Strip.
“Devastating consequences”
He warned that an evacuation of such a scale was “impossible without causing devastating humanitarian consequences”.
In these circumstances, “the United Nations strongly calls for this order […] be canceled to prevent what is already a tragedy from becoming a calamitous situation,” he insisted.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, reacted strongly.
“The UN response to Israel’s prior warning to the inhabitants of Gaza is shameful,” he wrote in a message sent to AFP by his services, accusing the UN of having “ turned a blind eye to Hamas.
A few hours earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised, following an interview in Tel Aviv with American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to annihilate Hamas, in power in the Palestinian enclave since 2007.
“Just as ISIS was crushed, Hamas will be crushed,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Islamic State group.
Statements that suggest a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
At dawn on October 7, the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles, by air and sea, to kill more than a thousand civilians in the streets. , at home or in the middle of a music festival, sowing terror under a deluge of rockets. Hamas also took dozens of hostages to Gaza.
This extremely violent attack stunned the country and traumatized the survivors and the people who came to help the victims.
Breaking point
In the town of Sderot, near the Gaza border, Yossi Landau, a volunteer with the Israeli relief organization Zaka, almost reached the breaking point while recovering the bodies of the victims, and said he witnessed violence that he had never seen before.
As fighting raged between Hamas and Israeli forces, “a stretch of road that should have taken 15 minutes took us 11 hours because we went to pick everyone up and put them in bags,” said this man. 55 year old man.
“I felt like I was collapsing, not just me, but my entire team,” he remembers, describing the abominable scenes.
After the attack, the army claimed to have recovered the bodies of 1,500 infiltrated Hamas fighters.
The Islamist movement has also kidnapped several dozen Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals. Israel has 150 hostages, while hundreds of people are still missing and bodies are being identified.
Israel responded by declaring war to destroy Hamas. The Israeli army announced Thursday that it had dropped around 6,000 bombs on the Gaza Strip for a total of 4,000 tons of explosives since Saturday.
More than 423,000 displaced
In the Palestinian enclave, the din of explosions, drones and other explosions is incessant, day and night.
” For what ? We didn ‘t do anything ! “, shouts a man as he watches stretcher bearers carry away the lifeless body of a loved one, just out of the rubble in a bombed neighborhood.
More than 423,000 Palestinians have been displaced in recent days in the Gaza Strip to flee bombings, according to the UN, which has launched an emergency appeal for donations worth $294 million to meet “urgent needs.” Palestinian territories.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) welcomes around 64% of these displaced people in 102 of its establishments.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi on Thursday urged Gazans to be “unwavering” and “stay on their land” as calls grew for Egypt to allow safe passage for civilians from the Gaza strip.
Egypt, which advocates a diplomatic solution and calls for restraint on both sides, opposes the idea of letting Palestinians fleeing the war enter its territory.
Drink sea water
“The only power plant in the Gaza Strip ran out of fuel and stopped working, cutting off the only source of electricity” in the enclave where most residents “no longer have access to electricity.” “drinking water,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in a statement.
According to this organization, a water reservoir and a desalination plant were hit by airstrikes.
“UNICEF indicated that some began to drink sea water, very salty, and contaminated by 120,000 m3 of untreated wastewater every day,” adds the text.
The Gaza Strip, a poor and cramped enclave crowded with 2.4 million inhabitants who have suffered a land, air and sea blockade since 2006, is now in a state of siege, deprived of water, electricity and electricity supplies. food, cut off by Israel.
In addition to the bombings, the Israeli army has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers around Gaza and on the border with Lebanon, a country from which pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, regularly launches rockets against Israel.
Blinken in Jordan
During his whirlwind visit to Israel, Antony Blinken said he discussed “ways to address the humanitarian needs of Gaza residents in order to protect them, while Israel conducts its legitimate security operations to defend itself against terrorism and attempt to make sure this never happens again.”
“We will always be at your side,” the head of American diplomacy assured Mr. Netanyahu.
In Jordan, where he arrived overnight from Thursday to Friday, the Secretary of State is due to meet King Abdullah II and the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. He is then expected in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Friday to address the situation in the Gaza Strip. A first meeting of the Council, on October 8, did not result in any unanimous condemnation of the Hamas attack.
With Amélie Bottollier-Depos at the United Nations