On the seventh day of its war in the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation forces ordered over 1.1 million Palestinians in the northern parts of the territory to evacuate their homes and move to the south in the next few hours on Friday, October 13.
Israel claimed it may launch a ground offensive to clear Hamas operatives who are allegedly hiding in the territory, AP reported.
The Israeli ultimatum includes the UN staff and all the shelters run by them for the Gazans who were displaced in Israeli bombings in the last seven days.
The order has raised the fear of a looming ethnic cleansing of Gaza and expulsion of over a million Palestinians from their homes. Several groups, including the UN, have asked Israel to desist from such a move as it may have devastating humanitarian consequences.
The UN has claimed that over 340,000 Palestinians are living in temporary shelters all across UN establishments and it would be difficult to move all of them to safety in such a short period.
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” said Stephane Dujjaric UN spokesperson in a statement.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas asked Palestinians to not to fall for Israeli propaganda and remain steadfast inside their homes.
Meanwhile, Israeli war planes continued to bomb Palestinian civilians in Gaza on the seventh day causing further death and destruction.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the number of Palestinians killed in the last seven days of Israeli bombings has crossed 1,500 with over 7,200 wounded as of 11 PM (UTC +3) on Thursday.
An additional 32 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli Occupation Forces and over 600 have been injured.
The Israeli blockade on food, fuel and other essential supplies to Gaza also continued for the third day with most of the hospitals running out of electricity endangering the lives of thousands of patients.
Francesca Ablanese, UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, argued that there is no justification for Israel targeting innocent Palestinian citizens in Gaza. In a press statement released on Thursday, Albanese said that what Israel is doing is a “collective punishment” prohibited by international law and constitutes a war crime.
“What is happening is that a significant part of the Palestinian population in Gaza is wiped off,” Albanese said. “Not differently from what happened before…but with increased ferocity.”
Hamas refutes claims it targeted civilians during operation Al-Aqsa Flood
Hamas issued a long video on Friday putting its own version of the events since the launch of operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Saturday calling it a purely defensive act.
It refuted the accusation that its forces targeted civilians and claimed that its forces only targeted Israeli military installations and soldiers. It characterized all the allegations made in the US and other Western media, about its forces supposedly committing atrocities against children and women, as fake news and shameless lies.
Moreover, Hamas alleged that Israel has a doctrine which allows killing of innocent civilians. It claimed that it has repeatedly targeted Palestinian residential areas killing innocent people.
It decried the support from the US and other nations for Israeli bombings of Gaza as support for genocide of Palestinians and a grave war crime. It called the US president Joe Biden’s speech on Tuesday in support of Israeli occupation as “racist” and based on blatant lies.
Hamas claimed that it had warned Israel for its repeated violations of human rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories and its repeated attacks against Al-Aqsa mosque, asserting that the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was in response to these violations.
It claimed that Israel and its backers in the West are equally responsible for the suffering of Palestinians in the last seven decades and cannot wash their hands from the Israeli war crimes in the occupied territories.
It also called for support from all the progressive, like-minded governments and people from across the world in their fight against Israeli occupation.
Pro-Palestine protests across the world
Meanwhile, large scale demonstrations were held across West Asia on Friday in support of Palestinian people and against Israeli war crimes. Thousands of Jordanians marched to the borders with the occupied West Bank on Friday to express their solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Thousands of people took to the streets in Iraq’s capital Baghdad on Friday in support of the Palestinian cause. The protesters marched to the city’s iconic Tahrir square with Iraqi and Palestinian flags and shouted slogans against the Israeli occupation.
Similar protests were held in Tehran in Iran and Sa’ada in Yemen where thousands of people participated in the marches.
Protests were organized in different countries across the world. In France thousands of citizens turned up to express their support for Palestinians despite the government banning such demonstrations on Thursday.
During a phone conversation between Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi on Thursday both the countries demanded that Israeli war crimes inside Gaza must end. Both believed that Israeli regime’s crimes and the US green lighting of it will cause destructive insecurity for the Israeli regime and its backers in the region, one of the Iranian officials was reported saying by the Tasnim news agency.
The US secretary of state Anthony Blinken visited Israel on Thursday and extended his country’s full support to Israeli offensives inside Gaza. Blinken’s visit came in the aftermath of the US deciding to deploy one of its warships in the region and supply weapons and ammunition to Israel. Blinken also visited Jordan to meet Jordanian king and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
