LAST UPDATE | 7 Nov 2023
CLUTCHING MAKESHIFT WHITE flags, Gazans made their way in between dead bodies and Israeli troops today as they followed Israel’s orders to flee south across the Palestinian territory.
“It was so scary,” said Ola al-Ghul, one of the masses of Gazan civilians displaced in the month-long bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
“We held our hands up and we kept walking. There were so many of us, we were holding white flags,” she told AFP.
The majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced by the fighting, with around 1.5 million fleeing within the territory according to the United Nations.
Holding one of her toddlers, Amira al-Sakani recalled Israel’s repeated air drops of flyers, seen by AFP, telling civilians to flee to the south.
“We came by foot from the centre of Gaza to the south,” she said. “I was not expecting the distance to be that long.”
On the way, Sakani saw “bodies of martyrs, some in pieces”.
“We want peace, enough is enough, we are tired, we want a happy future,” she said.
More than 10,300 people have been killed across the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza health ministry. Most of the dead are civilians, including more than 4,200 children.
The bombardment has come in response to the unprecedented surprise attacks by Hamas on 7 October, which killed around 1,400 people in Israel, also mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and stressed there would be no ceasefire until the militant group releases its 240 hostages.
Sakani said her children have by now learnt what bombs are: “They tell me: ‘That’s dangerous mum, I don’t want any strikes’.”
Those seen fleeing by AFP journalists had few belongings with them, while some carried children or were using wheelchairs.
Haitham Noureddine said he walked four kilometres with his mother and other relatives until they reached the southern Bureij refugee camp.
He told AFP the family left their Gaza City home near Al-Shifa hospital, due to the heavy bombardment in the area, and saw decomposing bodies en route.
The Israeli military says its troops have encircled Gaza City but will allow civilians to leave the north.
But casualty figures show no area in the territory is safe, with nearly 3,600 people killed in southern and central Gaza, according to health ministry data.
Holding a walking stick, Hatim Abu Riash recounted his fear of walking past Israeli forces.
“Next to the soldiers, next to the guns, next to the tanks, the aeroplane… it was really horrible,” he said, after fleeing the northern Jabalia refugee camp, which Israel has repeatedly bombed since the start of the assault.
“We are not terrorists – we are civilians – we want to live in peace,” he added.
The Gazans’ plight does not end once they flee to central or southern areas, where more than 550,000 people are sheltering in 92 establishments run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Facilities are limited and disease is rife. In one, UNRWA reported that more than 600 people were sharing one toilet.
There are also thousands of cases of acute respiratory illness, skin infections, diarrhoea and chicken pox, the UN says, while accessing basic supplies such as bread has become tough.
Standing on a dual carriageway as fellow Gazans walked past, resident Motaz El-Ajala described the conditions as “inhumane”.
“The situation is catastrophic,” he told AFP, as an elderly woman was pushed past in a baby’s buggy.
Iyad Shaqura, a doctor of pharmacy turned by war into an emergency physician, had become used to the flow of dead and wounded streaming into the hospital in Khan Yunis.
But yesterday evening, he fainted when he saw the bodies of his two children, his mother and his two brothers arrive at the emergency room.
His family had been killed by a strike that hit their home in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
This morning, his eyes filling with tears, Shaqura took a last look at his loved ones, draped in white shrouds and placed on the mortuary tables in the emergency room of Nasser Hospital, AFPTV footage showed.
Pointing at the bodies, one after the other, he listed their names: “My mother, Zeinab Abu Dayya, my brothers Mahmud and Hussein Shaqura, my sister Israa and her two children Nabil and Nur, and my two children, the apple of my eye, Abdelrahman, seven, and Omar, five”.
“I have five children, but he was my favourite,” said Shaqura, resting his forehead on the bloodied one of Abdelrahman.
His shroud and that of his brother were open at the face.
“What did they do to have tonnes of bombs and explosives dropped on their heads in their home?” he said, before adding with resignation, “God called them back to him like many other children before them”.
Gaza’s health ministry said today that 10,328 people have been killed in the month-long war, as UN rights chief Volker Turk decried a month of “carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair”.
The suffering in Gaza has been immense, with entire city blocks levelled and bodies in white shrouds piling up outside hospitals where surgeons have had to operate on bloodied floors by the light of their phones.
Since the attack, Israel has relentlessly hammered Gaza with more than 12,000 air and artillery strikes and sent in ground forces that have effectively cut the strip in half, with soldiers and tanks tightening the encirclement of Gaza City.
Basic medical supplies are running low or have completely run out in Gaza’s hospitals but resupplying is a perilous task for humanitarian organisations.
Today the International Committee of the Red Cross said a humanitarian convoy carrying lifesaving medical supplies came under fire in Gaza City.
The convoy of five trucks and two Red Cross vehicles was carrying supplies to health facilities, including to Al-Quds hospital, when it was hit, an ICRC statement said, adding that two trucks were damaged and a driver lightly wounded.
The ICRC did not specify who had fired at its convoy or from what direction the fire came.
“These are not the conditions under which humanitarian personnel can work,” said William Schomburg, the head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza.
“We are here to bring urgent assistance to civilians in need. Ensuring that vital aid can reach medical facilities is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law.”
After the gunfire the convoy altered its route and reached Al-Shifa hospital where it delivered the medical supplies, the ICRC said.
Later the ICRC convoy accompanied six ambulances with critically wounded patients to the Rafah crossing to Egypt, it added.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has said Israel would assume “overall security” in Gaza after the war ends, while allowing for possible “tactical pauses” before then to free captives and allow aid into the besieged territory.
Speaking to ABC News yesterday, he stressed that the war would continue until Israel had restored overall control of Gaza.
“Israel will, for an indefinite period, … have the overall security responsibility,” he said. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”
He stressed that “there will be no ceasefire – general ceasefire – in Gaza, without the release of our hostages.
“As far as tactical, little pauses – an hour here, an hour there – we’ve had them before.
“I suppose we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods – humanitarian goods — to come in or our hostages, individual hostages, to leave,” he added.
The United States said today that it opposed a new long-term occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel.
“Generally speaking, we do not support the reoccupation of Gaza and neither does Israel,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said today that Israeli forces were operating “in the heart of Gaza City”.
“We are in the heart of Gaza City,” Gallant told reporters. “Gaza is the largest terrorist base ever built.”
Israeli troops stationed near the Gaza border told AFP they felt proud to protect their country but also nervous as the war intensifies.
Stationed near Gaza, a 20-year-old soldier who could not be identified said he was “a bit scared to go” into Gaza because “you don’t know if you can come back alive”.
Around 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the offensive, the latest yesterday, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing Israeli sources.
The Israeli army said that in the latest battles its “troops secured a military stronghold belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in the northern Gaza Strip. Anti-tank missiles and launchers, weapons and various intelligence materials were located in the compound by the troops”.
Israel has air-dropped leaflets and sent text messages ordering Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to head south, but a US official said on Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.
The operation is hugely complicated for Israel because of the hostages, including very young children and frail elderly people, who are believed to be held inside a tunnel network spanning hundreds of kilometres.
Fresh departures from Gaza were announced today, with Romania saying 103 of its citizens and their family members have received permission to leave via Rafah.
The US also said it has assisted 400 of its citizens, residents and their relatives to leave the Gaza Strip after the reopening of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
“We have assisted more than 400 US citizens, lawful permanent residents and other eligible individuals to depart Gaza,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said, an update from a weekend figure of some 300 leaving.
It was unclear how many other Americans were still waiting to leave.
AFP video footage from the Gaza side today showed hundreds of people waiting with suitcases, bags and other scant belongings at the Rafah terminal complex.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs has said there are an estimated 8,000 foreign and dual nationals and immediate dependants in Gaza who are seeking to leave.
The Department said the departures are being managed country-by-country on a phased basis and it will “take some time for this process to be completed”.
“As of this morning, the Department understands that less than 20% of EU nationals in Gaza have been asked to leave so far. A further group, including EU nationals, is expected to leave today,” the spokesperson said.
“The names of all Irish citizens in Gaza who have asked to be included on the list of those due to leave have been submitted to the relevant authorities. Our embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv are in regular communication with the authorities in Egypt and Israel in this regard,” they said.
“We are also in regular communication with Irish citizens on the ground and are updating them directly as we have confirmed information.”
On Friday, Irish citizen Ibrahim Alagha, who is trapped in Gaza, told The Journal that Israel is “applying every kind of punishment you can think of” on the besieged region.
Alagha, his wife, and three children visited Gaza during the summer to see their family. He told The Journal that they now find themselves “trapped in this war”.
Alagha said that he is receiving “at least a message a day from the Department of Foreign Affairs”.
“The message just gives an update, and the update is the same content every day – we’re trying, we’re hoping in the very near future (to evacuate you). But it is sent every day and that’s nice.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after a Middle East tour of crisis diplomacy, arrived in Japan today for a meeting of G7 foreign ministers set to seek a common line on Gaza as calls mount for a ceasefire.
As the war rages on, Blinken has also discussed options for who will control Gaza after fighting ends.
In a visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, he suggested the Palestinian Authority under president Mahmud Abbas should retake control.
Abbas said the PA could return to power in Gaza in the future only if a “comprehensive political solution” is found for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas said it would never accept a puppet government in Gaza, and the senior Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, vowed that “no force on Earth could annihilate” it.
Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protest have been held around the world, with demonstrators voicing revulsion at the spiralling human suffering in Gaza.
In one of the latest demonstrations, hundreds of US Jewish activists peacefully occupied New York’s Statue of Liberty to demand a ceasefire.
One of them, photographer Nan Goldin, said that “as long as the people of Gaza are screaming, we need to yell louder, no matter who attempts to silence us”.
© AFP 2023 with reporting from The Journal team
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