United Nations, August 24 (RHC)-- The Israeli military has forced 250,000 displaced Palestinians to move again and leave their areas this month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.
“During August alone, the Israeli forces have issued 12 evacuation orders – on average, once every two days – forcing as many as 250,000 people to move yet again,” Muhannad Hadi, Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory said Thursday.
The statement noted that “successive mass evacuation orders issued by Israeli forces amid hostilities have displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s residents since October 2023, often multiple times, exposing them to harm and depriving them of the essentials to survive.”
The statement referred to the recent displacement of tens of thousands of civilians from four neighborhoods in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis.
If evacuation orders are meant to protect civilians, “the fact is that they are leading to the exact opposite.” The evacuation orders are “forcing families to flee again, often under fire and with the few belongings they can carry with them, into an ever-shrinking area that is overcrowded, polluted, with limited services and – like the rest of Gaza – unsafe.”
“Civilians are exhausted and terrified, running from one destroyed place to another, with no end in sight.” “This cannot continue,” Hadi said, stressing that international humanitarian law should be respected.
The statement came as Gaza’s Government Media Office said the Israeli regime is cramming 1.7 million Palestinian civilians into just one tenth of Gaza’s overall area, amid its ongoing genocidal war on the besieged strip.
According to the media office, Israel has tightened the area it previously designated as the so-called “safe humanitarian zone” from 63 percent of Gaza in November to only 9.5 percent of the Strip.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 40,265 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 93,144 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
