ABC News | 29.12.23
Key points:
- Thousands of displaced Palestinians are again fleeing as Israeli forces advance through central Gaza
- Many of those displaced have crowded into camps made up of makeshift tents
- A UN organisation decried what it called “forced displacement” under Israeli evacuation orders
Tens of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families took flight again on Thursday in a new mass exodus in central Gaza, where Israeli forces mounting a major advance pounded areas already teeming with those driven out of the north.
Further south, Israeli forces struck the area around a hospital in the heart of Khan Younis, the Gaza Strip’s main southern city, where residents feared a new ground push into territory crowded with families already made homeless by 12 weeks of war.
Israel has escalated its ground war in Gaza sharply since just before Christmas, despite public pleas from its closest ally, the United States, to scale the campaign down in the closing weeks of the year.
The main focus of fighting is now in central areas south of the wetlands that bisect the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have ordered civilians out as their tanks advance.
Tens of thousands of people fleeing the huge Nusseirat, Bureij and Maghazi districts of central Gaza were heading south or west on Thursday into the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean coast, crowding into hastily built camps of makeshift tents.
“Over 150,000 people — young children, women carrying babies, people with disabilities & the elderly — have nowhere to go,” the main United Nations organisation operating in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a social media post, decrying what it called “forced displacement” under Israeli evacuation orders.
The eastern part of Bureij saw heavy fighting on Thursday morning, with Israeli tanks pushing in from the north and east, residents and militants said.
“That moment has come. I wished it would never happen, but it seems displacement is a must,” said Omar, 60, who said he had been forced to move with at least 35 family members.
“We are now in a tent in Deir al-Balah because of this brutal Israeli war,” he told the Reuters news agency by phone, declining to give a second name for fear of reprisals.
“Israel is killing doctors, social media influencers, journalists, and civilians,” he said.
Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians and blames Hamas for operating among them, which Hamas denies.
Israel says it will not halt its ground campaign in Gaza until it annihilates the Hamas movement which controls the enclave.
The war erupted when Hamas militants crossed the border and killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages on a rampage through Israeli towns on October 7.
The Israeli assault has laid much of Gaza to waste. According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, more than 21,100 people — nearly 1 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population — have been confirmed killed, with thousands more dead feared lost in the ruins.
Virtually all residents have been driven from their homes at least once, and many have been forced to flee several times. Only a handful of hospitals are still functioning.
Israel claims to have killed 8,000 Hamas fighters so far.