As tens of thousands flee north Gaza, Israeli politicians attend 'resettlement' conference

AS THE SIEGE and assault on northern Gaza enters its 18th day, UN aid agency chief Philippe Lazzarini has said his staff cannot find food or water.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli strikes and raids since the intensive operation began in early October, while hospitals have been besieged and entire cities told to evacuate. 

Across the whole Gaza Strip, the health ministry reported today that 115 Palestinians were killed and 487 wounded in the previous 48 hours.

“The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied,” Lazzarini said in a post on X today.

“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die.”

On Saturday, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency said that more than 400 people had been killed in the previous two weeks of the Israeli assault and siege. Then on Sunday, at least 87 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the city of Beit Lahiya.

When “evacuation” orders were announced earlier this month, Heba Morayef, the Middle East and North Africa regional director at Amnesty International, said the Israeli military was forcing civilians “to choose between starvation or displacement, while their homes and streets are relentlessly pounded by bombs and shells”. 

The orders covered an area with a population of around 1.1 million people.

More orders to evacuate were issued today via loadspeakers on drones above Beit Lahiya.

Israeli media has shown footage of masses of people marching through ruined streets in Jabalia. 

The crowds include women, children and the elderly while men have been rounded up and many have been taken captive, an all too familiar sight throughout the year-long war.

A displaced resident told the AFP news agency Jabalia “is being wiped out”.

“If we don’t die from the bombing and gunfire, we will die of hunger,” said 42-year-old Umm Firas Shamiyah, demanding aid be sent to the north.

Lazzarini said that on behalf of UNRWA staff in northern Gaza, “I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”.

“This is the bare minimum to save the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict,” he said.

No food, water or medical aid has entered the area for more than two weeks now.

The death toll in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has now risen to 42,718, the health ministry said.

‘We are afraid’ 

Today, people fleeing the north, walking past an Israeli tank on a rubble-strewn dirt road, they were checked before being allowed through in a single file.

Paramedic Nevin al-Dawasah said she was trapped for 16 days in a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp.

Eventually, she told AFP, an Israeli army drone equipped with loudspeakers was “telling us that the Israel Defense Forces were asking us to evacuate”.

“We responded and… evacuated the shelter, but suddenly there was shelling” that killed some people and wounded others, said Dawasah.

Advertisement

She said she felt compelled to take videos of the wounded because “there are no journalists in the north”, already ravaged by successive Israeli operations during more than a year of war.

Saida, 46, has fled with her mother and four children from a UN school-turned-shelter in Jabalia.

She said Israeli soldiers made her wait three hours at a checkpoint and detained her son.

“They took my 15-year-old son, Amjad, and forced him to strip naked,” Saida, who gave her first name only for security reasons, told AFP by phone.

She said the troops were “questioning him and asking if he knew anyone from Hamas”.

Dawasah also said she had to pass through an Israeli checkpoint as she was leaving Jabalia.

“When we left the shelter, the Israeli occupation set up checkpoints and separated the women and men on each side and searched them,” she said.

More checkpoints have been set up on main roads, often surrounded by tanks and armoured vehicles. Fleeing Palestinians also saw observation towers equipped with cameras and automatic weapons.

“They were telling us to go… and saying we deserve to be beaten. They repeated it more than hundred times from the top of the tank,” said Dawasah, who added that she saw several men being detained.

“We were very afraid.”

Condemnation 

Yesterday, Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin called on Israel to stop the siege and attacks, condemning the assaults on hospitals in the area.

On Sunday, medical charity Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator in Gaza, Anna Halford, said the non-stop Israeli attacks were producing “horrifying consequences”. 

“This is purely and simply a collective punishment imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, who must choose between being forcibly displaced from the North or killed. We fear that this will not stop,” Halford said.

“Israel’s all-out war on Gaza seems to have no end in sight.”

The siege and mass displacement have coincided with a renewed push among far-right politicians and organisations in Israel to colonise the Gaza Strip. 

‘Resettlement’ conference

Yesterday, a conference was held near the Gaza border in Israel entitled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza”, which was attended by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Israel withdrew from settlements in Gaza in 2005. 

Netanyahu has on a number of occasions said he does not intend to establish settlements in Gaza, but members of his cabinet have openly endorsed the idea.

“Settlement equals security,” Likud MP Tally Gotliv told the crowd. “Plain and simple.”

Speaking to Channel Four, one of the event’s organisers, Aharon Gottlieb, described Gaza as “an infection” that needed to be removed.

“When you have a cut in your body, and that cut, it has an infection, you have to take out the infection. When you take out the infection, then it will be clean again,” he said.

The conference was protested by some family and friends of people taken hostage during the Hamas-led attacks in October last year.

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.
Learn More Support The Journal