WHILE the Israeli regime escalated its ground invasion of Gaza City yesterday, around one million Palestinians are resisting the occupying force’s attempts to forcibly displace them from their homeland.
The Gaza Government Media Office announced that about one million Palestinians in Gaza City and northern Gaza are refusing or are unable to be forcibly displaced to overcrowded ‘safe zones’ in southern Gaza.
‘More than one million Palestinians remain rooted in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, holding onto their land and homes, and categorically rejecting displacement to the south, despite the savage bombardment and genocidal war carried out by the Israeli occupation,’ it said.
The statement highlighted that the population of Gaza City and northern Gaza ‘exceeds 1.3 million people’, most of whom have already been displaced from their neighbourhoods to central and coastal areas.
Gaza officials emphasised that the al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south of the strip currently host around 800,000 Palestinians living in harsh conditions.
A new statement from the Health Ministry in Gaza accused Israeli forces of ‘deliberately’ thwarting attempts by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to bring fuel into hospitals in the besieged territory.
The ministry said Israeli forces have been preventing WHO teams from using alternative routes to deliver fuel to hospitals in Gaza City and other northern areas.
‘Preventing the supply of fuel needed to operate generators in Gaza’s hospitals means a complete halt to health services,’ it said, warning the crisis threatens to shut down the Assahaba Medical Complex, the Public Service Hospital, the central oxygen station, ambulances, and other hospitals within just a few days.
‘The shutdown of the central oxygen station and ambulances in Gaza Governorate means we are facing a serious health and humanitarian disaster,’ the ministry added, calling for urgent intervention to ensure the delivery of fuel into Gaza’s hospitals.
‘Act against Israel now!’ – say aid agencies
TWO dozen of the world’s leading aid groups have called for the international community to take stronger action against Israel’s assault on Gaza City, describing the situation across the Strip as an ‘unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe’.
The statement – co-signed by Save the Children, ActionAid International, Oxfam and Islamic Relief, among others – said governments need to act to ‘prevent the evisceration of life in the Gaza Strip’.
The demand comes in the wake of a UN inquiry finding evidence of genocide in Gaza. They said the moment is a ‘test of humanity’ that the world is currently failing.
‘States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action,’ they said.
‘Now, as the Israeli government has ordered the mass displacement of Gaza City – home to nearly one million people – we are on the precipice of an even deadlier period in Gaza’s story if action is not taken. Gaza has been deliberately made uninhabitable.’
