2023-10-13 22:45:00
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli infantry carried out their first attacks on the Gaza Strip on Friday since Hamas fighters invaded southern Israel at the weekend, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the campaign Military retaliation is just beginning.
Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas after fighters from the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza invaded Israeli towns and villages on Saturday, killing 1,300 people, mainly civilians, and fleeing with dozens of hostages.
Since then, Israel has placed the Gaza Strip — home to 2.3 million Palestinians — under a total siege and bombarded it with unprecedented airstrikes. Gaza authorities say 1,900 people have died.
This Friday, Israel gave more than a million residents of the northern half of Gaza 24 hours to flee south and escape an attack. Hamas vowed to fight to the last drop of blood and told residents not to leave.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said troops backed by tanks carried out raids to attack Palestinian rocket teams and seek information on the location of hostages taken by Hamas.
In an unusually brief televised statement after the start of the Jewish Sabbath, Netanyahu said: “We are attacking our enemies with unprecedented force.” And he added: “I emphasize that this is just the beginning.”
Earlier, several thousand residents could be seen on the roads leading out of the northern part of the Gaza Strip, but it was impossible to know their number. Many others said they would not go.
Hamas, which controls the densely populated Palestinian territory, has vowed to fight to the last drop of blood. The Israeli military said a significant number of Gazans had begun moving south “to save themselves.”
“Death is better than leaving,” said Mohammad, 20, standing in the street outside a building reduced to rubble in an Israeli airstrike two days ago near central Gaza. “I was born here and I’m going to die here, leaving is a stigma.”
Mosques convey the message: “Stay in your homes. Stay on your land.”
“We say to the people of northern Gaza and Gaza City: stay in your homes and in your places,” said Eyad Al-Bozom, spokesman for Hamas’ Interior Ministry, at a press conference.
“By carrying out massacres against civilians, the occupation wants to displace us once again from our land.”
The United Nations (UN) said Israel’s request for Gaza civilians to leave the territory was impossible to carry out “without devastating humanitarian consequences”, prompting a rebuke from Israel, which said the UN should condemn Hamas and support Israel’s right to self-defense.
“The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How can 1.1 million people move through a densely populated war zone in less than 24 hours?” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths wrote in social media.
“HARD TASK”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it would be impossible for aid organizations to assist “such a massive displacement of people in Gaza” while it remains under Israeli siege.
“The needs are staggering, and humanitarian organizations need to be able to scale up aid operations.”
The United States, which called on Israel to protect civilians, did not hesitate to publicly support its ally. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said such a large withdrawal was a “difficult task” but that Washington would not question the decision to tell civilians to leave.
“We understand what they’re trying to do and why they’re trying to do it — to try to isolate the civilian population from Hamas, which is their real target,” he told MSNBC.
Israel’s withdrawal order applies to the northern half of the Gaza Strip, including the enclave’s largest settlement, Gaza City. The UN said it was informed that Israel wanted the area’s entire population — about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people — to cross the Gaza Wadi nature reserve, which divides the enclave.
“Gaza City civilians, move south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from the Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the Israeli military said.
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which is a rival to Hamas, told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jordan that the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza would constitute a repeat of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now Israel. The majority of Gazans are descendants of these refugees.
Gaza is already one of the most crowded places in the world and, for now, there is no way out. Israel has imposed a total blockade, and Egypt, which also shares a border with the enclave, has so far resisted calls to open it to fleeing residents.
Cairo said Israel’s call for Gazans to leave their homes was a violation of international humanitarian law that would put civilians in danger.
Since Hamas fighters crossed the barrier and killed 1,300 Israelis on Saturday, Israel has responded with the most intense airstrikes of its 75-year conflict with the Palestinians. Gaza authorities say 1,800 people have been killed, and the UN says 400,000 people have been left homeless.
(Reporting by Henriette Chacar, Dedi Hayun, Maayan Lubell, Emily Rose, James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, Michelle Nichols in New York, Emma Farge in Geneva, Jeff Mason in Washington, Humeyra Pamuk in Tel Aviv, Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Emma Farge in Geneva)
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