The Palestinian people in Gaza have launched a campaign on social media with the hashtag “We will not leave”, after Israeli occupation forces dropped thousands of leaflets on Gaza City on Wednesday July 10.
The leaflets, which were dropped from the sky, addressed “everyone present in Gaza City,” claiming that the Israeli occupation forces designated “safe routes” from Gaza City in the north to shelters in Deir Al-Balah and Al-Zawaidah in central Gaza, through which people can pass “rapidly and without being searched.” The leaflet also declared that Gaza City will remain “a dangerous combat zone.”
Yet, many Gazans are refusing to evacuate from one area to another to seek shelter, as they have become aware that no place is safe in Gaza under indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes, for which everyone is a target and no shelter is immune, not even United Nations-run facilities.
At least four schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), where thousands of civilians were seeking shelter, were hit by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in only four days last week.
“Since the war began, two thirds of UNRWA schools in Gaza have been hit, some were bombed out, many severely damaged,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted on X on Wednesday, July 10.
“Schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children, to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery,” Lazzarini added.
On Thursday, July 11, Al Jazeera reported that several civilians were shot dead by Israeli snipers while fleeing different neighborhoods within Gaza City. Al Jazeera also mentioned that ambulances were reportedly warned not to approach to retrieve their bodies, otherwise they would be killed.
After two weeks of Israeli offensive on Al-Shujayah district in Gaza City, at least 60 bodies were found under the rubble by civil defense crews and local residents upon the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces.
Around 85% of buildings in Al-Shujayah have become “uninhabitable”, while the neighborhood turned into a “disaster zone,” leaving 120,000 people without a dwelling, according to media reports.
On Wednesday, July 10, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor accused the Israeli occupation forces of using forced displacement and starvation as a tool of political pressure and blackmail, while the ceasefire talks are still in progress.
The organization further explained that the Israeli occupation forces’ targeting of displacement centers and their surrounding areas have expanded, and that the IOF is still carrying out mass killing operations against civilians and displaced people, preventing the displaced from returning to their homes, starving them, denying them access to basic survival supplies, and blocking humanitarian aid access.
As per the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, such policies demonstrate Israel’s insistence to commit genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Israel is stalling ceasefire talks
On Thursday July 11, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas accused the Israeli occupation of stalling ceasefire negotiations. “The [Israeli] occupation continues its policy of stalling to buy time in order to thwart this round of negotiations, as it has done in previous rounds,” The movement said in a statement. “This tactic will not deceive our people and their resistance.” Hamas added.
With regard to the ceasefire negotiations, Al Mayadeen reported via a source in the Palestinian resistance that Israel has been stalling in providing answers about the issue of detainees and the withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor and the Rafah border crossing. According to Al Mayadeen’s source, there is seemingly no real progress in the negotiations taking place in Doha.
