While heavy Israeli bombardments, from the air, sea and land, have continued almost uninterrupted, a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in the Gaza Strip, a part of the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). The calamitous deterioration of the situation follows the complete blockade on electricity, fuel, water, and food supplies from Israel into Gaza, and after the Israeli military requested all people in northern Gaza, to flee to the south within 24 hours.
On Thursday night, Israeli forces issued an order for 1.1 million Palestinians in north Gaza to move to the south within 24 hours, amidst ongoing airstrikes. The next day, Israeli forces reportedly began to enter Gaza. Following the evacuation order, hundreds of thousands of people scrambled for safety but with nowhere to go, as there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip and borders are closed.
Hundreds of thousands have fled in panic to the south since Friday, though the Israeli military is carrying out bombardments there as well. Israel has completely besieged the tiny enclave, blocking supplies of water, food, fuel and electricity in violation of international humanitarian law. People fleeing were reportedly bombed as they moved south along congested and damaged roads.
Within days, more than 2,000 people in Gaza have been killed and thousands more have been injured by Israeli military attacks. Many casualties are still trapped beneath the rubble, with rescue teams are unable to access areas due to safety concerns, equipment shortages and severe damage to streets.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there is no power, no water, no fuel, and few shelters. Food supplies are running dangerously low. Entire residential neighborhoods have been razed to the ground.
Humanitarian workers and medical staff have been killed. Humanitarian organizations are overwhelmed and without adequate means to help people in desperate need. Hospitals, overwhelmed with patients, are running out of medicine. Morgues are overflowing. Meanwhile, homes, schools, shelters, health centers and places of worship are under intense bombardment.
Following a large-scale attack by Palestinian armed groups on October 7, the Israeli cabinet declared as state of war and the military begun launching indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 2,300 Palestinian civilians and wounding more than 9,700. Among those killed are at least 12 UN staff.
Human rights organizations have expressed deep concern about incidents where civilians and civilian objects appear to have been directly targeted by Israeli airstrikes. More than 9,200 housing units in Gaza, a densely populated area, have been completely destroyed or severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable, while tens of thousands residential buildings have also sustained damage.
As of Thursday, at least 423,000 people had been internally displaced in Gaza due to the attacks by the Israeli military; an estimated 270,000 people were sheltering in 92 UN schools. The numbers continue to increase as airstrikes from the Israeli Air Forces are continuing and hundreds of thousands of civilians seek safety.
The World Health Organization (WHO) described the humanitarian impact of the recent evacuation order as a “death sentence” for many and said that it is “impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients from the north of Gaza.”
All hospitals in the Gaza Strip, except a small number which were evacuated, are partially operational and continue to treat an average of 1,000 injuries per day. Hospitals are struggling with severe shortages of fuel and medical supplies, and cannot restock supplies.
According to OCHA, all hospitals in Gaza are believed to have about 48 hours of fuel to operate backup generators. The shutdown of generators would place the lives of thousands of patients at immediate risk. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated that, “hospitals in Gaza risk turning into morgues without electricity”.
As of Thursday, most residents no longer have access to safe drinking water from service providers or domestic water through pipelines. Two out of three seawater desalination plants have ceased operations entirely. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the shortage of drinking water is putting two-million people at risk of dehydration and contacting water-borne diseases from consuming unsafe water and fluids.
The United Nations, humanitarian organizations, and human rights groups have urgently called on Israel and Palestinian armed groups to stop targeting civilians and allow them access to basic services. Fearing catastrophic consequences, they warned that neither the demand to leave the northern part of the territory nor the total siege of Gaza imposed by Israel is in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Meanwhile, a UN human rights expert warned Saturday that Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing and called on the international community to urgently mediate a ceasefire between warring Hamas and Israeli occupation forces.
“There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale. The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again,” said Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.
She noted that Israeli public officials have openly advocated for another ‘Nakba’, the term used for the events of 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and lands during the hostilities that led to the establishment of the State of Israel. The ‘Naksa’, which led to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, displaced 350,000 Palestinians.
“Israel has already carried out mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war,” the expert said. “Again, in the name of self-defense, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing.”
“Any continued military operations by Israel have gone well beyond the limits of international law. The international community must stop these egregious violations of international law now, before tragic history is repeated. Time is of the essence. Palestinians and Israelis both deserve to live in peace, equality of rights, dignity and freedom,” Albanese said.
The humanitarian and human rights situation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has drastically deteriorated following retaliatory attacks by the Israeli military due to atrocities committed by Palestinian armed groups in Israel a week ago.
On October 7, Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, including fighters from the militant Hamas group, launched thousands of rockets toward Israel and breached through a perimeter fence of Gaza at multiple locations. Members of armed groups entered into Israeli towns, communities, and military facilities near the Gaza Strip, killing and capturing Israeli forces and civilians. More than 1,300 Israelis and foreign nationals, most of them civilians, were reportedly killed and nearly 3,400 injured.