Middle East Monitor / November 28, 2024
Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel on Tuesday of carrying out unsafe evacuations in the Gaza Strip, describing them as brutal and illegal and paving the way for further crimes against civilians. The rights organisation said that Israeli forces are ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to leave places including schools that have been turned into shelters, detaining men, then burning, attacking or militarily occupying the shelters. It accused the Israeli occupation forces of killing civilians, including children, in these shelters in recent days.
HRW pointed out that the renewed Israeli attack on northern Gaza is displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and putting them at risk. Since early October, it added, Israel has renewed its mass evacuation orders for the area in the besieged Palestinian enclave, ordering civilians to move south, especially to the crowded Al-Mawasi area, which lacks adequate food, shelter, water, sanitation and medical care, and which has been subjected repeatedly to Israeli bombardment.
The organisation noted that the Israeli forces in northern Gaza are issuing evacuation orders after doing everything they can to ensure that there is no safe place in the Strip. Such evacuations, it said, may amount to war crimes and it urged the international community to act in order to prevent them.
Senior HRW official Lama Fakih added that forcing people to evacuate again without ensuring their safety is illegal, and deliberate forced displacement is a war crime. She called for a more serious response from the international community to these crimes.
The organisation based its data on numerous videos, photographs, satellite images, media reports and reports from UN agencies, which show that civilians are at risk of mass forced displacement and other atrocities, noting in the same context the targeting of the last remaining places of refuge in northern Gaza, including shelters and hospitals.
The organisation quoted the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as saying that more than 60,000 people were displaced in the northern Gaza Strip in October alone, especially from Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun. In its statement, HRW said that it had documented Israel’s use of collective punishment and starvation as weapons of war, which are considered war crimes.
