Gaza – Together – The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor strongly warned of the repercussions of the Israeli army issuing on Monday displacement orders for displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the far south of the Gaza Strip, as an apparent prelude to the start of a military operation that represents an announcement of the execution of more than 1.2 million Palestinians in the city and an escalation of the ongoing crime of genocide. Since the seventh of last October.
Euro-Med said in a statement that the Israeli army began warning the civilian population to evacuate the eastern neighborhoods of the city of Rafah, especially the “Al-Shoka” area and the “Al-Salam”, “Al-Jeneina” and “Al-Byouk” neighborhoods, through written leaflets, text messages and recorded phone calls towards the “area.” Al-Mawasi”, west of the neighboring city of Khan Yunis, without any explanation of how civilians could be safely transported to the aforementioned area, or how they would be organized upon their arrival.
The areas affec
ted by displacement orders, which may affect more than 200,000 people, include ‘Abu Youssef Al-Najjar’ Hospital, which is the central hospital in Rafah, as well as the ‘Rafah Land’ and ‘Kerem Shalom/Kerom Shalom’ commercial crossings, noting that the entry of trucks Aid has been halted through them since yesterday afternoon.
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory added that the new displacement orders from the Israeli army were accompanied by a warning that Gaza City and its north ‘remain a dangerous combat zone,’ preventing Palestinian residents from returning north, and at a time when air strikes intensified in the last hours on residential homes in Rafah, leaving 26 people dead. At least most of them are children and women, and dozens of wounded, in addition to others missing under the rubble.
Euro-Med said that displacement orders for hundreds of thousands of civilian residents do not necessarily mean neutralizing them or protecting them from military attacks, especially since the vast majority of them have
already been displaced many times and have no other refuge, at a time when Israel began its attack on Rafah from the beginning of its war on the Gaza Strip, Hundreds of areas and residential homes were bombed and targeted without prior warning.
Before the new displacement orders in Rafah, the Israeli army placed more than 246 square kilometers, equivalent to about 67% of the area of ??the Gaza Strip, under illegal displacement orders, including all areas north of the Gaza Valley, whose residents were ordered to evacuate in late October. The first of last October, in addition to specific areas south of the Gaza Valley, which the Israeli army ordered to evacuate successively since the first of last December.
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory confirmed that the displacement orders issued by the Israeli army before launching ground operations contain a number of serious errors, including providing contradictory information and incorrectly naming areas in a way that does not provide any safe haven for displaced
civilians, and may violate Israel’s obligation under international humanitarian law to provide ‘ Effective advanced warnings.
Euro-Med highlighted that any ground military operation by the Israeli army in Rafah seriously threatens to commit horrific massacres and massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians, especially children and women, and to stop life-saving humanitarian relief operations in the entire Gaza Strip.
Euro-Med warned that 213 days after the ongoing crime of genocide, Israel wants to carry out another massive attack in the city of Rafah without paying attention to the fate of hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people who have taken refuge there since it was declared a safe zone by the Israeli army, while storming the city, given the numbers of displaced people, threatens a major massacre. It raises serious concerns about the scenario of forced displacement and displacement outside the Gaza Strip.
Israel is still carrying out the largest and most extensive forced displacement op
eration in modern history, when it forced, with military evacuation orders and under the weight of bombing and killing, about two million Palestinians to displace and live in shelters and tents, with more than half of them concentrated in the border city of Rafah.
In addition, Rafah is the center of humanitarian relief operations and the entry point for life-saving humanitarian supplies, and dozens of operating relief organizations store the supplies they provide to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, including food, water, and health, sanitation and hygiene supplies, which threatens an escalation. The approach of starvation against the residents of the Gaza Strip and the exacerbation of the spread of diseases expected resulting from the military operation.
Euro-Med stressed that the imminent Israeli ground attack on Rafah may represent the bloodiest point of escalation against Palestinian civilians, and will lead to a larger wave of displacement, more overcrowding, and the killing of opportunities to obta
in basic food and water, at a time when the already almost destroyed health system may completely collapse. Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah is located within the areas under Israeli displacement orders, noting that it is one of 12 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip that are only partially functioning, including 2 in northern Gaza, 3 in Gaza, 2 in Deir al-Balah and 2 in Khan Yunis, and 3 in Rafah, central and southern Gaza, while these facilities operate at limited capacity, are crowded with patients, and face severe shortages of fuel, medicines, supplies, and staff.
Six field hospitals are operating at full capacity, all located in the southern Gaza Strip, and 70 percent of primary health care centers throughout Gaza are still unserviceable.
Euro-Med highlighted that it is estimated that there are about 600,000 children in the city of Rafah, the vast majority of whom are either wounded, sick, or suffering from malnutrition, and their fate will be unknown among the hundreds of thousands of displac
ed people who fled to the southernmost point of the Gaza Strip to escape direct killing, hunger, and thirst. This requires decisive intervention to stop the Israeli escalation in the crime of genocide and forced displacement against them.
Euro-Med renewed its call on the international community to fulfill its international legal obligations to stop the crime of genocide committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and to activate real pressure tools to force it to stop its military attack and to comply with the rules of international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice to protect Palestinian civilians.
He added: “For this reason, we want clear and binding assurances to both parties of the end of the war and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.”
The official said that the Hamas movement is waiting for an American effort binding Netanyahu to stop the war, and ‘it will not risk signing a non-binding agreement to stop this war.’ He added: “This is a test for America: can it bind Netanyahu t
o the agreement or not?”
CIA Director William Burns is expected to arrive in Israel later, Monday, after heading from Cairo to the Qatari capital, Doha, to ‘prevent the blow-up’ of the Gaza negotiations, according to the Israeli Broadcasting Authority ‘Makan.’
But observers in Israel say that Netanyahu “will not stop the war because it means the end of his reign in power.”
The Hamas movement announced the direction of its negotiating delegation in Cairo to Doha, on Sunday, in order to consult with the movement’s leadership, noting that it had submitted its response to the mediators in Egypt and Qatar, after holding ‘in-depth and serious discussions,’ according to its description.
The movement stated that it deals with ‘every positivity and responsibility,’ and affirmed its ‘keenness and determination to reach an agreement that meets the demands’ of the Palestinian people, ‘ends the aggression completely, achieves withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced, intensifying relief, begi
nning reconstruction, and completing an exchange deal.’ “Prisoners.”
Speaking to Al-Sharq, a Hamas official considered that the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, went to Qatar before Israel, as an indication that Washington ‘will try to put pressure on the Palestinian side because it is unable to oblige the Israeli side.’
Source: Maan News Agency