The Israeli army will begin to prepare for the forced displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza City, he said on Saturday, because health officials said that he had killed at least 40 people, including a baby in a tent and people looking for help during his latest attacks.
The announcement came a few days after Israel said she intended to launch a new offensive to take control of Gaza City, the largest urban center in the enclave, in a plan that has raised an international alarm. The Israeli offensive has already moved most of the population, killed tens of thousands of civilians and created a famine.
Gaza residents would receive tents and other shelter equipment from Sunday before moving them from combat areas south of the enclave “to ensure their safety,” the Israeli army said on Saturday. He didn’t say when mass displacement would start.
Israel has repeatedly bombed the areas it had declared as safe areas. On Saturday, a little girl and her parents were killed when an Israeli air strike struck a tent in Al-Muwasi, previously designated a humanitarian area by Israel, southern Gaza, officials and witnesses of Nasser hospital said.
“Two and a half months, what did she do?” Asked his neighbor Fathi Shubeir. “These are civilians in an area safely designated.”
The army of Israel said that she could not comment on the strike without further details.
Al-Mowasi is now one of the most populous areas of Gaza after Israel has pushed people in the desolate area. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said that Israel was planning to expand his upcoming military offensive to include the region, with Gaza City and “Central Camps” – an apparent reference to Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps built in the center of Gaza.
According to the civil defense agency, at least 13 of the Palestinians killed on Saturday were killed by troops while they were waiting to collect food aid near the distribution sites in the north and south.
There have also been 11 other deaths related to malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health announced on Saturday, including at least one child. This brings deaths linked to malnutrition due to the Israeli blockade on aid at 251.
In recent days, residents of Gaza City have reported more frequent air strikes targeting residential areas, especially in the east and south, including the Zeitun district. Hamas said on Saturday that soldiers were aiming for the region with war, artillery and drones.
Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said the conditions in Zeitun quickly deteriorate with residents with little or no access to food and water in the middle of heavy Israeli bombings.
He said that around 50,000 people were estimated in this region of Gaza City, “the majority of whom are without food or water” and missing “the basic necessities of life”.
Ghassan Kashko, 40, who refers with his family in a school building in the neighborhood, said: “We do not know the taste for sleep.” He said that air strikes and tanks caused “explosions … which do not stop”.
Israel was doing an ethnic cleaning in Zeitun, said Bassal. The Israeli army says that it respects international law, although rights defense groups, including in Israel, say that it commits a genocide.
In its announcement on Saturday, the army said that shelter equipment would be transferred via the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza by the United Nations and other international rescue organizations after being inspected by the staff of the Ministry of Defense, the army said. Israeli inspections and bureaucracy has so far led to great help in the territory.
A spokesperson for the United Nations Bureau for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spoke concerned about Israel’s plans to move people in the south of Gaza by saying that it would only increase suffering.
But the United Nations organization has welcomed the recognition of Israel that the refuge is a desperate need and that the tents and other shelter equipment will again be allowed to enter Gaza. “The UN and its partners will seize the opportunity that it opens,” said the spokesperson.
The UN warned Thursday that thousands of families who have already hardened appalling humanitarian conditions could be pushed on the edge if the Gaza City plan is advancing.
Palestinian and United Nations officials said that no place in the enclave was sure, including the southern Gaza areas where Israel ordered residents to move.
The soldiers refused to comment when he was asked if the refuge equipment was intended for the population of Gaza City, estimated at around a million people currently, and if the site to which they will be moved to the south of Gaza would be the Rafah area, which borders Egypt.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that the plans for the new offensive were still being formulated.
The Islamic Palestinian militant faction Jihad, an ally of Hamas, said that the announcement of the military “as part of its brutal attack to occupy the city of Gaza, is a flagrant and frightening mockery of international conventions.”
Demonstrations calling for a release of hostages and at the end of the war were expected throughout Israel on Sunday, with many companies, municipalities and universities saying that they will support the striking employees for the day.
The families of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas called on Sunday to the “National Damage Day” to express an increasing frustration during the war. They fear that the upcoming offensive will put the 50 remaining hostages in Gaza in danger, of which only 20 would still be alive.
