Since the start of its genocide in the Gaza Strip on October 7, Israel has been issuing orders of evacuation to the residents in the Strip claiming that it seeks to protect civilians from bombardment.
The last orders of evacuation were directed to the residents of Deir el-Balah City in the Gaza Strip, which Israel previously designated as a “humanitarian safe zone” for civilians for months.
Apart from the evacuation orders to Deir el-Balah, Israel issues orders of evacuation to several blocks in the city tightening down the “safe zone" daily.
While it claims that these orders are intended to protect the population from the threat of bombing, Israel is forcing people to displace their places, breaching many international humanitarian laws.
Israel’s Evacuation Orders Are Typical To The Forced Displacement Orders Identified By International Law
As of last July, more than 1.9 million people were displaced from their homes due to the severe bombing of the Israeli military, which means 9 out of every 10 people in the Strip have been displaced. The number is increasing daily as the IOF threatens more Strip areas.
Israel claims that it seeks to protect people from the bombardment, identifying its orders as humanitarian evacuation orders.
On the contrary, Israel is forcibly displacing civilians in the Strip.
According to UNHCR, forced displacement is forcing communities to flee their homes to avoid certain situations such as armed conflict, which typically applies to the orders of evacuation issued by the IOF to the Palestinians in the Strip.
Forcibly displacing civilians is prohibited by international law according to the Geneva Convention.
Israel Threatens With Violence To Force People To Displace
When one analyzes the process that Israel follows in every threatened area, it is noticeable how Israel uses terror to force people to flee.
In the leaflets Israel dropped on people in any threatened area, it is stated clearly that the IOF “will act with severe force against the terrorist organizations in the area where you reside - as it has done until now,” which implies that Israel uses terror to force people to flee, breaching international law.
This threatening terror language was repeated many times in IOF’s leaflets. Israel dropped in the early days of the war leaflets addressing the people in the north of the Strip.
The leaflets translate: “Whoever chose not to evacuate from northern the Strip to the south of Gaza Valley may be considered an accomplice to a terrorist organization.”
These threats are a war crime of collective punishment according to Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's Senior Crisis Response Advisor.
By threatening with terror to force people to be displaced, Israel further breaches international humanitarian law which prohibits the use of terror as a means of displacing people.
The use of terror and threats with violence could also be found in many IOF’s doings against the civilian Palestinians in the Strip, not only in the leaflets.
Last March, during the IOF’s storm into the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, the IOF threatened the medical staff and the displaced in the complex to submit themselves to brutal investigations, torture, or executions, or to demolish the buildings over their heads.
After the IOF withdrew from the Shifa Complex back then, several horrible massacres unfolded. More than 400 were butchered, children included - some of them had not any trace but their clothes and their charred bone remains.
Threatening the main hospital in the Gaza Strip, and using it as a field of executions as well as executing medical units and civilians in the hospital breaches articles 18 and 25 of the Geneva Convention.
Carrying out executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court is a further breach of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.
Killing and maiming children is one of the six grave violations identified and condemned by the U.N. Security Council.
Israel Orders Palestinians To Evacuate To Inhumane And Destroyed Areas
Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states that in necessary cases the occupying power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area. The occupying power shall ensure that the removals are affected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety, and nutrition and that members of the same family are not separated.
None of these conditions were provided in the Israel-designated “safe zones.”
Israel is not following anything while it forcibly displaces people, acting contrary to every condition put on the occupying power.
No Safety For the Displaced in Gaza
“There is no safe place,” the displaced Palestinians repeatedly state. This is because Israel has never guaranteed the safety of civilians in any case anywhere.
In many cases, Israel killed civilians who followed the threats of evacuation fearing being considered accomplices to a “terrorist organization.”
After the truce of December 2023, the IOF declared that it needed to carry out its military activities in the south of the strip, ordering most of the people in Khan Younis City, a city in the South, which was considered a “safe zone” and people were pushed into it, to evacuate to an area called the Mawasi in the west of Khan Younis.
However, the Mawasi region does not meet the criteria of Article 49 in the Geneva Convention.
The Mawasi was almost a small desert land. The only option for Palestinians was to set up tents on the dunes of sand under the heating sun sometimes and the rainy storms of December the other times.
After pushing all the people to the Mawasi region in December 2023, Israel, without prior notice, attacked the Mawasi and stormed several parts of the region forcing all the people to flee on the spot under the fire of the military tanks and the aerial bombardment to Rafah, while killing and injuring many people and preventing ambulance vehicles from getting there.
Rafah was overcrowded with nearly one million people; a free spot to set up a tent, even in the streets, was hardly found.
In Rafah, the safe zone before May 2023, Israel committed a horrible massacre in February 2024. In order to free two elderly Israeli prisoners, the Israeli army massacred 74 civilian displaced Palestinians in the tents.
Safety problems are not only related to the bombs and missiles that Israel launches towards the tents of the displaced in the “safe zones,” but also to the nature of the place in terms of danger.
In April, the Israeli army withdrew from Khan Younis leaving a completely destroyed city, and declared after a while that a military operation in Rafah was necessary so people in Rafah shall evacuate to a selected safe zone which included the destroyed Khan Younis and some parts of Deir Al-Balah and Zawayda.
Again, Israel forced people to flee to an inhumane area, but this time the area was utterly destroyed. Debris and parts of explosive materials could be found in any area in the current “safe zone,” risking the lives of the civilians and the children living in that zone.
Many people chose to set their tents on the sand in desert-like land so that their children would be far away from the explosive materials in the previous habitual regions in the city, which are now destroyed.
While big parts of Khan Younis were considered “safe zones” during the current Israeli military ground attacks in Rafah, Israel still attacked the displaced civilians in their tents inside the “safe zone.”
On July 13, the Israeli army bombed displaced civilians in the Mawasi region in Khan Younis. Five bombs and five missiles were launched into the fabric of the tents. 90 Palestinians were killed and 300 were injured and maimed.
Israel justified the attack by saying that “two senior Hamas terrorists” were hiding among civilians.
Killing civilians on the grounds that a combatant is among them is prohibited by international law and is a further breach of Article 48 of the Geneva Convention.
No Nutrition in Gaza
Israel closed the crossings and prevented food from entering the whole Strip, completely besieging it since the early days of the war, describing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as “human animals.”
After international pressure, Israel allowed the entry of “humanitarian aid.” However, humanitarian aid could never replace the availability of commercial goods. Food aid does not contain enough food for families, and if it runs out, families will have no choice but to wait for the next aid.
In November, the U.N. declared that the humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip was only 5% of what used to enter before. This acute lack of food led to thousands of cases of acute malnutrition.
After 9 months of the war and the lack of food, The U.N. declared that more than 8,000 had been diagnosed and treated for acute malnutrition - 1,600 of them were children with the most dangerous form of the condition.
Even though Israel permits the entry of food aid, it regularly puts a ban on different food in the aid arbitrarily. In March, Israel banned chocolate and dates, the most nutrient-rich food coming with the aid. Spices were banned in June.
Water is also a critical problem. After destroying Khan Younis and pushing people to it, the infrastructure of the new “safe zone” was utterly destroyed. Only 11 of the 37 wells were not destroyed in the whole city, leaving all the evacuees in the city suffering an acute lack of clean water.
Gaza’s Deplorable Hygiene During the War
Hygiene is also a critical issue in the “safe zones.” In Khan Younis, sewage accumulates everywhere in the city including between and inside the displacement camps, risking the lives of thousands of people. The U.N. confirmed the presence of poliovirus in the sewage in Khan Younis.
Hundreds of thousands of waste are piling up in Khan Younis too, attracting many insects and rodents that could pose a serious health risk to the displaced people in the camps.
As Israel cut off the fuel in the first days of the war, access to the main waste dumps undermined solid waste collection services. The U.N. spokesperson said the Israeli authorities prevent them from accessing the ware dumps.
Municipal crews in the Strip were unable to reach the main waste dumps in the east of the Strip as military operations continued, which prompted them to establish new waste dumps, most of which surrounded the tents of the displaced.
The Israeli military destroyed many waste disposal vehicles and trucks as well as many agencies’ sanitation, deliberately leading Palestinians to pile up their waste bags.
In the meanwhile, Israel bans the entry of all types of cleaning materials into Gaza. Hardly any hygiene products could be found in the safe zone. If found, hygiene products would be very expensive for most people.
Females in Gaza in particular face a hard time due to the lack of menstrual hygiene products in the safe zone. Over 540,000 women in Gaza are in dire need of access to essential hygiene and healthcare supplies, however, they can not because of the Israeli ban.
By destroying main waste dumps, Israel clearly aims to spread diseases in the Strip, not only breaching Article 49 of Geneva regarding the conditions of the safe zone but also breaching Article 56 regarding hygiene and public health.
Many Families in Gaza Were Separated
UNICEF stated in February that at least 17.000 children in the Gaza Strip were separated from their families. UNICEF reported on a kid from Rafah, the “safe zone” back then, who Israel separated from their families, bombing their homes and killing almost all of their other family members.
UNCIF clarified that the estimated number is not exact as there is no way to verify information under the current security in the Strip.
It should be noted that the UNICEF estimated number is way higher now in light of the intense bombardment in the “safe zone,” as the death toll has increased by about 13,416 compared to when the estimate was issued.
While UNICEF has only estimated the number of children separated from their families, many reports and features have addressed the problems of displaced people in safe areas who have been separated from their families.
Separating family members from each other further proves that Israel has never built a “safe zone” inside the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, it only forced people to displace their homes, threatening them with violence, and pushing them to dangerous regions that could never be safe in the shadow of the intense bombing and military attacks.
Israel Does Not Grant People Any Time To Evacuate
On August 24, Avichay Adraee, the head of the Arab media division of the IOF Spokesperson's Unit, posted evacuation orders to the residents of certain blocks in Deir Al-Balah and several areas in the Strip.
Without granting any time for residents to flee, Israel intensified its bombardment in Deir Al-Balah.
On the same day, Alaraby TV reported that since the dawn of August 24, the bombardment in the threatened part of Deir Al-Balah was very severe. Israeli drones were shooting at the homes of civilians and the tents of the displaced in Deir Al-Balah.
It bears mentioning that Israel has been pushing people to Deir Al-Balah previously on the first days of August calling it a shelter, meaning that it is utterly overcrowded with civilians that any strike could mean the killing of dozens.
Likewise, upon storming Rafah by the IOF in May, Avichay Adraee uploaded a video on May 6 ordering people in the East of Rafah to evacuate to the Mawasi region.
On the same day, Israel struck Rafah without granting people the time to flee.
The Guardian report on the strikes in Rafah on the same day of issuing the orders for evacuation
Not granting any time for civilians to flee while brutally bombing the threatened area exposes the lives of all of the civilians cramped in the threatened area to danger. By this, Israel continuously breaches international law by deliberately killing and targeting civilians committing war crimes.
Israel Does Not Protect Civilians Who Chose Not To Evacuate
Fearing the horrific journey of fleeing to the south, many people in the north of the Strip chose not to flee. Evacuating is not a simple or easy process, especially for the refugees, who are 70% of the residents, in the Gaza Strip who already experienced the same scenario 79 years ago when Israel forcibly displaced the Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948.
Refusing to flee does not deprive any civilian of the protections of international law. Thus, the Israeli army would normally be obligated not to target civilians or civilian infrastructure in accordance with international law.
The Geneva Convention requires armed parties not to harm or abuse any civilians as a collective punishment.
However, Israel clearly declared that anyone who chose not to flee would be considered a complicit in a “terrorist organization,” and acted accordingly.
All of the massacres the Israeli army committed in the north of the Strip included hundreds of civilians.
On November 1, 2023, Israel committed a full-fledged war crime by attacking a residential square in Jabalia refugee camp, northern the Strip, killing 120, claiming that the strike was to eliminate members of Hamas.
Independent investigations showed that no militant or any member of an armed group was present at the site according to testimonies of individuals who survived the horrific massacre, meaning that the civilians were the victims of the massacre.
In one of its deadliest attacks in Gaza City, northern the Strip, the 12-story Al-Taj residential building in Gaza was bombed to the ground with 20 missiles without warning. At least 129 were killed and 260 were injured, most of them women and children. Again, Israel justified its attacks by claiming that they were aiming to destroy a Hamas tunnel under the building.
According to an investigation by DER SPIEGEL, the victims of the attack were academics, schoolchildren, and babies. There is no evidence to suggest that they were militants or affiliated with Hamas.
Such indiscriminate attacks and attacks directed at civilians are war crimes under the Rome Statute and the Geneva Convention.
In several interviews, members of the IOF admitted that when attacking, they do not pay much attention to whether one is civilian or not.
In an interview following the rescue operation to free four Israeli hostages which killed over 270 Palestinians in June, Lt. Col. A., commander of the 200th Squadron which operates the Israeli Air Force’s fleet of drones, said, "We attacked on the side of the street to drive civilians away, and anyone who did not flee, even if they were unarmed - as far as we were concerned, were a terrorist. Everyone we killed should have been killed."
“Lavender,” an artificial intelligence-based program used for generating targets for assassination for the Israeli army, is said to include civilians in its data. According to sources from the Israeli military data science team, the only human supervision protocol taken before bombing the houses is ensuring that the AI-selected target is a male, not a female. Many civilian men were killed because of this policy, including civilian employees of the Internal Security Ministry, who have no relation to Hamas and are not militants.
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