2023-10-14 02:26:07
The Israeli army has called on civilians to leave the north of the Gaza Strip. Around a million people, half of Gaza’s population, are affected by the call. The UN Humanitarian Office (OCHA) estimates that tens of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip have already fled south. Israel had given the Palestinians 24 hours to leave the north of the enclave in preparation for the upcoming ground offensive.
As OCHA reports, a total of 400,000 Palestinians had already been displaced due to the conflict before the call to evacuate. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres describes the flight of civilians from Gaza City southwards as “extremely dangerous”. Guterres wrote on and in some cases simply not possible. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “Civilians must be protected. We don’t want to see a mass exodus of Gazans.”
Above all, there is currently no way for Palestinians to escape the Gaza Strip, which Israel has cut off from electricity and food. Calls for a humanitarian corridor or escape route for Palestinians from Gaza have drawn opposition from Arab neighbors. Egypt, the only Arab state to share a border with Gaza, and Jordan, which borders the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have both warned against the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and demanded that they remain in Gaza.
“This is the origin of all affairs, the cause of all Arabs,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Thursday. “It is important that the (Palestinian) people remain steadfast and present on their land.”
For Palestinians, the idea of leaving or being expelled from the land on which they want to create a state is reminiscent of the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” when many Palestinians faced theirs during the 1948 war that resulted in the creation of Israel Left houses. About 700,000 Palestinians, half of the Arab population of British-ruled Palestine, fled or were driven from their homes at the time, many flowing into neighboring Arab states, where they or many of their descendants have remained. Many still live in refugee camps.
Jordan’s King Abdullah also warned “against any attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from all Palestinian territories or to cause their internal displacement,” and called for the crisis to be prevented from spreading to neighboring countries and aggravation of the refugee issue. The head of the 22-member Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, urged UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to condemn “this insane Israeli attempt to relocate the population.”
The United States said this week it would talk to Israel and Egypt about the idea of safe passage for Gaza civilians. However, Egypt has not yet signaled any willingness to do so. It said it was trying to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, although this was hampered by Israeli bombings near the border. Cairo has also indicated that solving the problem through a mass exodus of Palestinians is unacceptable.
Opposition to the renewed displacement of Palestinians is deeply rooted in Egypt, where a peace treaty with Israel more than four decades ago secured an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula but never led to reconciliation at the popular level.
“Egyptian public opinion would overwhelmingly see this as a prelude to ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, basically expulsion, to which they would then be expected to simply never return,” said HA Hellyer, senior associate fellow at Royal United Services Institute.
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