Renewed Gaza combat thrusts Palestinians between mortal danger and mass displacement

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Updated 02 December 2023
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Renewed Gaza combat thrusts Palestinians between mortal danger and mass displacement

  • Nearly three-quarters of embattled enclave’s 2.2 million residents have been forcibly displaced since Oct. 7
  • Overcrowding in camps and shelters for the displaced could lead to spread of disease and shortage of aid

LONDON: A weeklong humanitarian pause in Gaza provided some respite for Palestinians in the beleaguered enclave. But the situation remains overwhelmingly bleak and, after the resumption of combat on Friday, potentially catastrophic.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel on Thursday it must account for the safety of Palestinian civilians before resuming any military operations in Gaza, where the temporary truce allowed the exchange of captives held by Hamas for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

However, with Israeli officials vowing to continue total war against Hamas, presumably both in Gaza and the West Bank, hope for any recovery has been offset by the imminent threat of further violence in the absence of a permanent ceasefire.




Military vehicles manoeuvre next to a fence, as seen from the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. (Reuters/File)

Since Oct. 7, when Israel launched a military offensive in retaliation for a deadly attack by Hamas, Gaza has endured destruction, displacement, and suffering on an unprecedented scale.

Relentless Israeli airstrikes have reduced entire buildings to rubble, flattening more than 46,000 homes and damaging at least another 234,000, according to UN figures.

The onslaught has forced nearly three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.2 million population from their homes, including the vast majority of the north’s residents.

Close to 15,000 Palestinians across the enclave have been killed, 40 percent of whom are children. A further 6,500 are believed to be missing or trapped under the destroyed buildings.

“Northern Gaza is a disaster zone where people feel it was a miracle to survive,” Ahmed Bayram, media adviser for the Middle East at the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Arab News.

“The sheer level of destruction and personal loss stretches beyond anything we have seen in Gaza. More people were killed in the first two weeks of this round of hostilities compared with the most recent large-scale conflict in 2014.”

INNUMBERS

• 1.7m Palestinians displaced inside Gaza as of Nov. 23.

• 7 Days of the duration of truce before combat resumed on Friday.

• 110 Hostages freed by Hamas from captivity.

• 240 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel.

Bayram said an estimated “1.7 million people have been displaced,” adding that “the few hundreds of thousands who remained in northern Gaza have done so because there is simply nowhere for them to go.”

Despite the seven-day suspension of hostilities, official Palestinian bodies and humanitarian organizations have been unable to pin down precise casualty figures, much less the number of people who could not leave northern Gaza.

“It has been very difficult to understand the numbers that remain in the north,” Oxfam’s policy lead Bushra Khalidi told Arab News. “From what we hear, it is between 200,000 and half-a-million still.”

She said an estimated 1.8 million people had been displaced to the south, “and they’re all crammed in this … what we could say, half the size of the original Gaza Strip.”

Following seven weeks of Israeli bombardment and Hamas rocket attacks, the two sides agreed on a four-day truce — which was later extended. The initial Qatar-mediated deal entailed the release of 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.




Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip along Salah Al-Din Street. (AP)

On Oct. 13, the Israeli military ordered the residents of northern Gaza to relocate immediately to the south, claiming it was for their safety.

Local media and NGOs operating in Gaza reported that nowhere in the besieged Palestinian enclave was safe — not even the “humanitarian passages” identified by the Israeli military or Israel Defense Forces.

Families crammed their most necessary possessions into small cars and pickup trucks and traveled south in a rush. Others who could not secure vehicles made the journey on foot, shielding their children’s eyes from bodies in the street and hiding from Israeli gunfire as battles raged around them.

The only exit route for civilians escaping Gaza City was Salah Al-Din Road, the area’s main north-south highway that stretches across the entire Gaza Strip.

Israel agreed on Nov. 10 to pause its bombardment for four hours every day, allowing Palestinians in northern Gaza to flee through dedicated corridors.

Consequently, tens of thousands sought refuge in UN-run schools and makeshift tents in eastern Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza. Many voiced fears they would never return home.

Gaza’s older residents may see history repeat itself as they recall the Nakba, the Arabic term for the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians — the ancestors of 1.6 million of Gaza’s residents — during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Khan Younis already had a population exceeding 400,000. As displaced families flocked there the already severe humanitarian crisis worsened, as the Gaza Strip has been under Israeli blockade for 16 years.

Khalidi said these evacuation orders should be rescinded, as they represented “a grave violation under international law because it amounts to forcible displacement, and forcible displacement may amount to war crimes.”

In November, in what the chief of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described as a “recipe for disaster,” Israel proposed the establishment of a safe zone in Al-Mawasi camp on Gaza’s southern coast.

Al-Mawasi camp, according to Khalidi, is a 14-square-kilometer area “the size of London Heathrow Airport, where they (Israeli officials) want to cram 1 million people and call it a humanitarian safe zone.”

Dismissing the proposal as “absolutely inhumane,” she said: “But there’s no such thing as a safe zone. Historically, safe zones have been used to actually harm people.”

She noted that attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to some 1 million people in such a small area would be “a logistical nightmare.”

“Another thing about the safe zone is that you are talking about 30,000 to 50,000 injured people, some of whom have severe wounds,” Khalidi added.




Israeli flares light the sky above Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP)

“We are lacking medical supplies, and there are barely any hospitals running.”

She pointed out that other major concerns included the lack of a functioning water, sanitation, and hygiene system, which would accelerate the spread of infectious diseases such as gastroenteritis and diarrhea. This could “kill more people than bombs have.”

The WHO reported that, since mid-October, there had been more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea in Gaza, a particular risk for young children amid a shortage of clean water.

Conditions in places where Palestinians have taken shelter, such as Khan Younis and Rafah, have been no better — especially as winter weather sets in.

“Khan Younis and Rafah shelters are bursting with people crammed into small spaces,” Bayram said. “Sick babies, sick children, and sick adults are all at risk of transmissible diseases ahead of what promises to be the worst winter in Gaza’s history.

“There is not enough food for everybody, and even clean drinking water has become a luxury. People have resorted to burning anything made of wood — doors, school desks, window frames — just to cook something their children can eat or make some bread to keep them going for the day.

“There should be no place in this time and age for suffering like this,” he added.




Palestinians check the damage of a house destroyed in an Israeli strike on Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP)

And while the Hamas-Israel truce allowed Gazans to venture out, to scramble through the wreckage of their homes to look for warm clothes and recover more bodies, the looming threat of a broader Israeli assault persists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly warned that military operations against Hamas would resume once the temporary ceasefire expired. Now the truce has ended, Israel is expected to expand its ground operation into the south.

In mid-November, the Israeli military dropped leaflets on parts of Khan Younis ordering residents to evacuate.

Bayram said: “There is nowhere left for people to go in Gaza. Some shelters house 50 people at a time. If Israel goes ahead with its ground operation, it means killing off any chance of Gaza ever recovering from this (catastrophe).”

Khalidi pointed out that the Gaza Strip was “as small as East London,” and the borders have been closed and controlled by Israel. “That is why the international community has been very vocal about a (permanent) ceasefire and allowing people to go home,” she said.

 

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UN conference on Israel-Palestinian conflict postponed, Macron says

Updated 44 sec ago
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UN conference on Israel-Palestinian conflict postponed, Macron says

  • Postponed for logistical reasons as members of Palestinian Authority could not travel to New York

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that a United Nations conference co-hosted between France and Saudi Arabia to work toward a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians has been postponed after Israel launched a military attack on Iran.

Macron told reporters that the conference, which had been planned for June 17-20, had been postponed for logistical reasons as members of the Palestinian Authority could not travel to New York and that it would be re-scheduled as soon as possible.

“While we have to postpone this conference for logistical and security reasons, it will take place as soon as possible,” Macron said.


Palestinian ambassador: UK should recognize statehood to help end ‘deadly status quo’

Updated 13 June 2025
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Palestinian ambassador: UK should recognize statehood to help end ‘deadly status quo’

  • Husam Zomlot urges Britain to ‘right historic wrongs,’ show ‘political courage’
  • UN conference on 2-state solution could see states, including France, Canada, recognize Palestine

LONDON: The Palestinian ambassador to the UK has called on the Labour government to fulfill its manifesto pledge and recognize his nation as an independent sovereign state.

Husam Zomlot wrote in The Guardian that the move was “long overdue” ahead of a UN conference on the two-state solution next week in New York, and that it would help end the “deadly status quo” with Israel.

“I call on the British government to end this vicious path, right its historic wrongs and officially recognize the state of Palestine while the conditions are uniquely ripe to do so,” Zomlot wrote.

“Recognition is neither a reward for one party nor a punishment for another. It is a long-overdue affirmation of the Palestinian people’s unconditional right to exist and live freely in our homeland,” he added.

“Peace is not made between occupier and occupied. It can only exist between equals.”

Ahead of the UN conference on June 17, set to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, several states yet to recognize Palestine have begun discussions about doing so, including the UK and Canada. 

Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer came under pressure in the House of Commons on Tuesday for the government to recognize Palestine unconditionally.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently told Parliament the UK had held direct talks with France about Palestinian statehood, but added the UK wanted the move to amount to more than just a symbolic gesture.

But Zomlot wrote: “Recognition (should not) be subject to ever more conditions on the Palestinian side. Delaying recognition simply reinforces the deadly status quo, denying Palestinians’ equal rights until Israel consents, thus granting our occupier a permanent veto over the future.”

Ahead of the conference, the French government, which is also believed to be among those set to recognize Palestine, published a letter laying out political commitments made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, including that a future Palestinian state would require Hamas “laying down its weapons” and “no longer ruling Gaza.”

The commitments included holding democratic presidential elections within a year, and Hamas accepting nonviolence, disarmament, and the two-state solution. Abbas also condemned the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by the militant group, and demanded the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza.

Hugh Lovatt, from the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Guardian: “Recognition would certainly allow London and Paris to press the PA towards political renewal, including the holding of long-overdue elections, but it does not provide them with much leverage over Hamas which does not consider recognition by itself as being of sufficient value of itself to disarm before a peace agreement with Israel is reached.”

A senior diplomat from a Gulf state told The Guardian that Hamas had agreed to the proposal to end its rule in Gaza, but not to disarming.

Another Gulf diplomat told the paper: “Israel is seeking the total annihilation of Hamas and will not be willing to hand security in Gaza to the PA or a multinational force.”

The US government sent a diplomatic cable on Tuesday urging countries not to attend the conference, calling it “counterproductive to ongoing, lifesaving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages.”

But Zomlot wrote: “This is a moment of historic consequence. It demands moral clarity and political courage. I urge the UK to rise to the moment and act now.”


Arab world, Middle East condemn Israel’s attacks against Iran

Updated 13 June 2025
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Arab world, Middle East condemn Israel’s attacks against Iran

DUBAI: The Arab world has responded to Israel’s strikes against Iran, each country offering its condemnation of the attacks that killed at least two top military officers, raising the potential for an all-out war between the two bitter Middle East adversaries.

The UAE, through its foreign affairs ministry, stressed the importance of “exercising the utmost self-restraint and judgment to mitigate risks and prevent the expansion of the conflict.”

 

 

“Enhancing dialogue, adhering to international law, and respecting the sovereignty of states constitute essential principles for resolving the current crises,” the foreign affairs ministry added.

The UAE emphasized the need to resolve disputes through diplomatic means rather than confrontation and escalation, and called on the United Nations Security Council to take urgent and necessary measures to achieve a ceasefire, and to reinforce international peace and security.

Oman offered its “strong condemnation of the brutal military aggression launched by Israel on the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which targeted sovereign facilities and caused casualties.”

 

 

“Oman considers this action a dangerous and reckless escalation that constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and the principles of international law. It also represents unacceptable and ongoing aggressive behavior that undermines the foundations of stability in the region,” the country’s foreign affairs ministry said.

And Jordan’s foreign ministry spokesperson Sufian Qudah warned of the “consequences of such escalatory actions, saying they threatened regional security and stability and risk exacerbating tensions”, state news agency Petra reported.

 

 

Elsewhere Qatar said it “considers the assault a blatant violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security, as well as a clear breach of international law and its established principles,” state news agency QNA meanwhile reported.

“The State of Qatar voices its grave concern over this dangerous escalation, which forms part of a recurring pattern of aggressive policies that threaten regional peace and stability and hinder efforts aimed at de-escalation and diplomatic resolution.”

Qatar emphasized “the urgent need for the international community to assume its legal and moral responsibilities and to act swiftly to halt these Israeli violations.”

 

 

“The State of Qatar reaffirms its firm position in rejecting all forms of violence, and reiterates its call for restraint and the avoidance of escalation that could widen the scope of conflict and undermine regional security and stability,” QNA reported.

Turkiye also condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s air strike on Iran, calling it a provocation that violates international law and risks further escalation in the region.

The Turkish foreign ministry in a statement said the attack showed Israel “does not want issues to be resolved through diplomatic means” and urged it to halt “aggressive actions that could lead to greater conflicts.”

 

 

Jassim Mohammed Al-Budaiwi, Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), also described the Israeli attacks as a ‘clear violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.’

Al-Budaiwi, in a statement, called on the ‘international community and the Security Council to assume their responsibilities towards immediately halting this aggression and avoiding escalation that could ignite a wider conflict, which would have dire consequences for regional and international peace.’

In its condemnation of the attacks, Bahrain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned of its “grave repercussions on regional security and stability”.

And it called for “de-escalation, restraint, and a reduction in tensions”.

The Ministry reiterated Bahrain’s call for an immediate halt to military escalation to spare the region and its people from the consequences on regional stability, security, and international peace.

And it affirmed Bahrain’s stance advocating for the resolution of the crises through dialogue and diplomatic means, as well as the necessity of continuing US-Iranian negotiations regarding the Iranian nuclear file.


Trump urges Iran to ‘make a deal, before there is nothing left’

Updated 13 June 2025
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Trump urges Iran to ‘make a deal, before there is nothing left’

  • Trump earlier told Fox News he was aware Israel was going to conduct strikes on Iran before it happened
  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier Thursday that the United States was “not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region”

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump urged Iran on Friday to “make a deal,” warning that there will be more “death and destruction” after Israel launched deadly strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.

His comments on his Truth Social platform came after Israel pounded Iran in a series of air raids on Friday, striking 100 targets.

The operation killed senior figures – among them the armed forces chief and top nuclear scientists – and Iran has called Israel’s wave of strikes a “declaration of war.”

On Friday morning, Trump said: “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal.”

He added that Israel – which Trump has aligned Washington to since his return to the White House – has a lot of weapons thanks to the United States and “they know how to use it.”

“There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left... JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” he said.

Trump earlier told Fox News he had been made aware of the Israeli strikes before they happened, and stressed that Tehran “cannot have a nuclear bomb,” the US broadcaster said.

He also said that “we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table,” according to Fox News.

During Trump’s first term, he pulled the United States out of a landmark agreement to relieve sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

Fox News also reported that Trump’s administration reached out to at least one key Middle Eastern ally to acknowledge that the strike was going to happen, but said the United States was not involved.

“Trump noted the US is ready to defend itself and Israel if Iran retaliates,” Fox News said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier Thursday that the United States was “not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.”

“Let me be clear: Iran should not target US interests or personnel.”

Trump will be attending a National Security Council meeting Friday morning.


UN nuclear watchdog chief ready to travel to Iran to assess situation

Updated 13 June 2025
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UN nuclear watchdog chief ready to travel to Iran to assess situation

VIENNA: UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Friday he was ready to travel to Iran to assess the situation there after Israel carried out widespread military strikes that hit the sprawling nuclear complex at Natanz.

In a statement to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors, Grossi said the other main enrichment center in Iran, Fordow, was not hit and neither was another nuclear facility in Esfahan, citing Iranian authorities.

There are no elevated radiation levels at Natanz, he added.

“I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation. I reiterate that any military action that jeopardizes the safety and security of nuclear facilities risks grave consequences for the people of Iran, the region, and beyond,” Grossi said in his statement.

“I have indicated to the respective authorities my readiness to travel at the earliest to assess the situation and ensure safety, security and non-proliferation in Iran.”

He did not say what the extent of the damage at Natanz was or what parts of the site were hit. The site includes a vast underground uranium enrichment plant and a smaller, above-ground pilot enrichment plant.

Iran is enriching to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade, at the pilot plant, but it is producing smaller quantities of that material there than at Fordow, a site dug into a mountain that military experts have said would be difficult for Israel to destroy through bombardment.

“Despite the current military actions and heightened tensions, it is clear that the only sustainable path forward – for Iran, for Israel, the entire region, and the international community – is one grounded in dialogue and diplomacy to ensure peace, stability, and cooperation,” Grossi said.