Warns Red Cross as Israel steps up warnings, tightens siege
Palestinians mourn over the bodies of family members killed in an Israeli strike at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza yesterday. Photo: AFP
The Red Cross yesterday warned that any Israeli efforts to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel's military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a major planned offensive.
After nearly 23 months of devastating war, Israel is under increasing pressure to end its offensive in Gaza, where the United Nations has declared a famine and the majority of the population has been displaced at least once.
But despite the calls at home and abroad for an end to the war, the Israeli army is readying itself for an intensified operation to seize the Palestinian territory's largest urban centre and relocate its inhabitants.
"It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions," International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement.
The dire state of shelter, healthcare and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was "not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances".
An Israeli military statement on Friday declared Gaza City a "dangerous combat zone", adding that daily pauses in fighting intended to allow limited food deliveries would no longer continue.
The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was undertaking preparations "for moving the population southward for their protection".
A journalist working for AFP on the northern edge of Gaza City reported he had been ordered to evacuate by the army, adding conditions had become increasingly difficult, with bombardments coming closer to his position and gunfire and explosions heard nearby.
The UN estimates that nearly a million people currently live in Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City and its surroundings.
The territory's civil defence agency reported intense Israeli strikes in Gaza City's Sabra and Zeitoun districts, and an "escalation" in the Sheikh Radwan area north of the city centre.
On Friday, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, warned that there were "nearly one million people between the city and the northern governorate who basically have nowhere to go, have no resources even to move".
On Friday, the United States said it would not allow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to travel to New York next month for a United Nations gathering of world leaders, where several US allies are set to recognise Palestine as a state.
A State Department official said Abbas and about 80 other Palestinians would be affected by the decision to deny and revoke visas from members of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
Several European foreign ministers arriving at a European Union meeting in Copenhagen yesterday criticised the US decision.
Abbas had planned to attend the annual high-level UN General Assembly in Manhattan. He was also set to attend a summit there, where Britain, France, Australia and Canada have pledged to formally recognise a Palestinian state.
Abbas' office said it was astonished by the visa decision and said it violated the UN "headquarters agreement".
Under a 1947 UN "headquarters agreement", the US is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the UN in New York. However, Washington has said it can deny visas for security, extremism and foreign policy reasons.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the UN would discuss the visa issue with the State Department.
Since October 7, 2022, Israel's offensive has killed at least 63,025 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the UN considers reliable.
