Israel targets high-rises, tells Gaza City residents to leave

Israel’s army called on Palestinians in Gaza City to move to a humanitarian area it designated in the south as it expanded its operations in preparation for seizing the famine-stricken city, including targeting high-rise buildings, on Saturday.

Parts of the city, home to nearly 1 million people, are already considered “red zones”, where evacuation orders have been issued ahead of the expected offensive. Aid groups have repeatedly warned that a large-scale evacuation of Gaza City would exacerbate the dire humanitarian situation, after the world’s leading authority on food crises declared the city to be gripped by famine, Palestinians have been uprooted and displaced multiple times during the nearly two-year-long war, with many being too weak to move and having nowhere to go. Israeli army has told residents to move to a ‘humanitarian zone. Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in X that the army declared Muwasi — a makeshift tent camp in southern Gaza Strip — a humanitarian area and urged everyone in the city, which it called a Hamas stronghold and specified as a combat zone, to leave. The army said they could travel in cars down a designated road without being searched. The military, in a statement, provided a map showing the area in Khan Younis that the humanitarian area encompassed, which included the block where Nasser Hospital was located. The area around the hospital has been considered a red zone, though not the medical facility itself.

The declaration of a so-called “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza was done by the Israeli authorities unilaterally, and the UN and the wider humanitarian community were not part of that designation, said Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, whose country is a key mediator in efforts to end the Gaza war, on Saturday said describing the displacement of Palestinians as voluntary was “nonsense”.

Israel earlier called on Gaza City residents to leave for the south, as its forces advance deeper into the enclave’s largest urban area. “If there is a manmade famine (in Gaza), it is to push residents out of their land. It is nonsense to say that this is voluntary displacement,” Abdelatty said in a joint press conference with the commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has supported the idea that Palestinians in Gaza should be allowed to voluntarily leave and suggested that other countries should accept them.