AS THE SIEGE and assault on northern Gaza enters its 18th day, UN aid agency chief Philippe Lazzarini has said his staff cannot find food or water.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli strikes and raids since the intensive operation began in early October, while hospitals have been besieged and entire cities told to evacuate. 

Across the whole Gaza Strip, the health ministry reported today that 115 Palestinians were killed and 487 wounded in the previous 48 hours.

“The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied,” Lazarini said in a post on X today.

“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die.”

On Saturday, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency said that more than 400 people had been killed in the previous two weeks of the Israeli assault and siege. Then on Sunday, at least 87 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the city of Beit Lahiya.

Columns of smoke rise after heavy shelling on Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

When “evacuation” orders were announced earlier this month, Heba Morayef, the Middle East and North Africa regional director at Amnesty International, said the Israeli military was forcing civilians “to choose between starvation or displacement, while their homes and streets are relentlessly pounded by bombs and shells”. 

The orders covered an area with a population of around 1.1 million people.

More orders to evacuate were issued today via loadspeakers on drones above Beit Lahiya.

Israeli media has shown footage of masses of people marching through ruined streets in Jabalia. 

The crowds include women, children and the elderly while men have been rounded up and many have been taken captive, an all too familiar sight throughout the year-long war.

A displaced resident told the AFP news agency Jabalia “is being wiped out”.

“If we don’t die from the bombing and gunfire, we will die of hunger,” said 42-year-old Umm Firas Shamiyah, demanding aid be sent to the north.

תיעוד: עזתים עוזבים את ג'באליה@roysharon11 pic.twitter.com/sT9en1Ngsu

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 21, 2024

Lazzarini said that on behalf of UNRWA staff in northern Gaza, “I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”.

“This is the bare minimum to save the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict,” he said.

The Israeli military has released footage showing dozens of Palestinians being rounded up in besieged northern Gaza, near the Indonesian Hospital where many had taken shelter. pic.twitter.com/d0Gv9sNm4e

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 20, 2024

No food, water or medical aid has entered the area for more than two weeks now.

Yesterday, Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin called on Israel to stop the siege and attacks, condemning the assaults on hospitals in the area.

דובר צה"ל בערבית: "עשרות אלפי פלסטינים ממשיכים להתפנות מג'באליה, מחבלי חמאס מנסים להיטמע בהם ונעצרים"@ela1949
צילום: דובר צה"ל pic.twitter.com/L5qvOXCDKh

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 22, 2024

On Sunday, medical charity Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator in Gaza, Anna Halford, said the non-stop Israeli attacks were producing “horrifying consequences”. 

“This is purely and simply a collective punishment imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, who must choose between being forcibly displaced from the North or killed. We fear that this will not stop,” Halford said.

“Israel’s all-out war on Gaza seems to have no end in sight.”

Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, center, dances during a conference calling for Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The siege and mass displacement have coincided with a renewed push among far-right politicians and organisations in Israel to colonise the Gaza Strip. 

Yesterday, a conference was held near the Gaza border in Israel entitled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza”, which was attended by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Israel withdrew from settlements in Gaza in 2005. 

Daniella Weiss, one of the leaders of the settlement movement, was a featured speaker at the “Preparing to Resettle Gaza” Conference which took place over two days on Israel’s border with Gaza. Speaking to foreign journalists, she vowed to renew the Jewish presence in Gaza within… pic.twitter.com/SFmNA8SZce

— Rachel Fink (@RachelSFink) October 21, 2024

Netanyahu has on a number of occasions said he does not intend to establish settlements in Gaza, but members of his cabinet have openly endorsed the idea.

“Settlement equals security,” Likud MP Tally Gotliv told the crowd. “Plain and simple.”

Speaking to Channel Four, one of the event’s organisers, Aharon Gottlieb, described Gaza as “an infection” that needed to be removed.

“When you have a cut in your body, and that cut, it has an infection, you have to take out the infection. When you take out the infectio, then it will be clean again,” he said.

The conference was protested by some family and friends of people taken hostage during the Hamas-led attacks in October last year.

The death toll in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has now risen to 42,718, the health ministry said.