41% of the Gaza Strip has been put under evacuation orders since December, UN office says
The Israeli military has ordered 41% of Gaza to evacuate since it started dividing the strip into numbered blocks in December, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Tuesday. Since December 1,158 square kilometers (447 square miles) of the Gaza Strip, which 1.38 million people called home before October 7, was put under the orders, OHCA said. That area contained 161 shelters hosting an estimated 700,750 internally displaced persons (IDPs), it added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has been instructing people to leave particular areas of Gaza to avoid fighting in its war against Hamas. On Monday, the Israeli military ”urged” residents of Al-Nassar, Al-Sheikh Radwan, Al-Shati Refugee Camp, northern and southern Rimal, Sabra, Al-Sheikh Ajlin, and Tel Al-Hawa in western Gaza City to evacuate “for your safety” towards “designated shelters” to the south. The new order covered an area of 12.43 square kilometers, which amounts to 3.4% of the Gaza Strip. This area was home to almost 300,000 Palestinians before October 7, containing 59 shelters with about 88,000 IDPs sheltered there, OCHA said.
Some background: As of January 26, there were an estimated 1.7 million internally displaced people in Gaza, OCHA said, citing UNRWA, adding that the ongoing fighting and subsequent evacuation orders have forced some households to move away from the shelters where they were initially registered.
IDF tells civilians to evacuate northern Gaza for the south as fighting rages around southern cities
While much of the fighting in Gaza is focused on the southern city of Khan Younis, Israeli officials acknowledge that pockets of resistance by Hamas fighters endure in the north of the territory. Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Lt Col Richard Hecht Monday told CNN: “We’re acting now in the north of Gaza again. We always said there would be more pockets. There will always be insurgents.”
Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/famine-looms-in-gaza-israel-war-intl/index.html
Palestinians wait to receive food at a donation center in a refugee camp in Rafah, Gaza, on January 27.
“They are weak now, they always have diarrhea, their faces are yellow,” Hanadi Gamal Saed El Jamara, 38, whose family was displaced from northern Gaza, told CNN on January 9. “My 17-year-old daughter tells me she feels dizziness, my husband is not eating.” She tries to feed her kids at least once a day, she says, while tending to her husband, a cancer and diabetes patient.
As Gaza spirals toward full-scale famine, displaced civilians and health workers told CNN they go hungry so their children can eat what little is available. If Palestinians find water, it is likely undrinkable. When relief trucks trickle into the strip, people clamber over each other to grab aid. Children living on the streets, after being forced from their homes by Israel’s bombardment, cry and fight over stale bread. Others reportedly walk for hours in the cold searching for food, risking exposure to Israeli strikes.
Even before the war, two out of three people in Gaza relied on food support, Arif Husain, the chief economist at the World Food Programme (WFP), told CNN. Palestinians have lived through 17 years of partial blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
West Bank hospital raid draws praise from Israeli cabinet minister and condemnation from Palestinian officials
An attack on a hospital in the occupied West Bank by Israeli special forces on Tuesday has sparked a split reaction among Israeli and Palestinian officials. Disguised special forces killed three militant Palestinian men in a targeted infiltration on Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, according to Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
What Israeli officials say: Israel's far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, posted on social media surveillance video from inside the hospital appearing to show Israeli forces carrying assault rifles and dressed as medical staff, nurses, women in hijabs, and with one carrying a wheelchair and another carrying a baby car seat. "I congratulate and strengthen the naval commando forces of the Israeli police on their impressive operation last night, " Ben Gvir said alongside the video on X.
What Palestinian officials say: The Palestinian Ministry of Health condemned the attack and the targeting of a health center. They called on the UN General Assembly and NGOs to provide the necessary protection for medical treatment centers and emergency crews. "This crime comes after dozens of crimes committed by the occupation forces against treatment centers and crews. International law provides general and special protection for civilian sites, including hospitals," the ministry said on Tuesday.
Hamas’s military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, claimed one of the casualties, Mohammed Jalamneh, as a member. The Ibn Sina hospital said another casualty, Basil Al-Ghazawi, was receiving treatment when he was killed. The hospital said the three men were sleeping at the time of the attack.
A bullet hole is pictured on a blood-spattered pillow at the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, West Bank, on January 30
Gallant wants Israel to ‘operate’ in Gaza like West Bank: Report
Israeli war cabinet minister Yoav Gallant has reportedly told lawmakers that Israel will maintain control of the Gaza Strip after the war is over so it can “operate” there as it does in the occupied West Bank. “After the war, when it’s over, I think it’s completely clear that Hamas won’t control Gaza. Israel will control [it] militarily but won’t control it in a civilian sense,” Gallant was quoted as saying by The Times of Israel.
“When we’re talking about military freedom of operation, look what happened tonight in Jenin,” he added in reference to the Israeli raid inside the Ibn Sina Hospital, in which three Palestinian fighters were killed in their sleep. “This is military freedom of operation at the highest level, and yet we don’t control the area in a civilian sense,” Gallant said. “This is achievable [in Gaza as well], and it will take time.”
International silence allowed ‘Israeli terrorism’ inside Jenin hospital: Barghouti
Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, has told Al Jazeera from Ramallah that the killings in Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin were an example of “Israeli terrorism”. “They violated every international law, every international humanitarian law that speaks about protection of hospitals, protection of patients, protection of civil structures,” he said.
“The first crime was to invade the hospital disguised as doctors, nurses and a disabled man in a wheelchair. Second, they entered the hospital and executed people in hospital beds,” Barghouti added. He also said the Israelis “would not have dared” to commit these crimes “if it was not for the silence of the international community”.
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