Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 14: Tens of thousands in Gaza are estimated to have fled south after Israel gave Palestinians 24 hours’ notice to evacuate from the enclave’s north in light of a planned ground offensive against Hamas, U.N. humanitarian office OCHA said on Saturday.
Prior to the evacuation order, more than 400,000 Palestinians had been internally displaced due to the hostilities, OCHA said on its website.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on Saturday confirmed that over 150 civilians are being held captive in Gaza by the Hamas terrorist organisation. Israel’s military said it had struck a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon in response to the “infiltration of unidentified aerial objects into Israel” and fire on an Israeli drone. The military intercepted the objects and the fire on its drone, it said.
The Israeli army said that ground forces made “localised” raids into Gaza in the last 24 hours. The aim of the raids was to “cleanse the area of terrorists and weaponry in addition to finding “missing persons,” the army said. The Israeli military said a senior Hamas commander, who headed the group’s aerial operations in Gaza City, has been killed in an airstrike. Israeli fighter jets struck a Hamas operation centre, killing Murad Abu Murad.
Israel has alleged that Hamas took about 150 Israeli, foreign, and dual national hostages during the attacks last week. “Over the past 24 hours, IDF (Israeli military) forces carried out localised raids inside the territory of the Gaza Strip to complete the effort to cleanse the area of terrorists and weaponry,” an Israeli army statement said.
In the backdrop of the Israel – Hamas conflict, a top grouping of Islamic nations has called an “urgent extraordinary meeting” in Saudi Arabia to discuss the Israel-Gaza war. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) seeks to address the “military escalation” and “threat to defenceless civilians in Gaza.” Saudi Arabia, which chairs the current session of the Islamic Summit, has invited the member nations for the meeting to be held in Jeddah on Wednesday.
“At the invitation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia… the Organisation’s Executive Committee is convening an urgent open-ended extraordinary meeting at the ministerial level, to address the escalating military situation in Gaza and its environs as well as the deteriorating conditions that endanger the lives of civilians and the overall security and stability of the region,” the OIC said in a statement on its website.
The OIC is the second-largest organisation after the United Nations with a membership of 57 nations spread over four continents. It calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world.”
The Israeli military said “several terrorists” trying to cross into Israel from Lebanon. Israeli forces “identified a terrorist cell which attempted to infiltrate from Lebanon into Israeli territory,” a spokesperson said adding that a drone strike “targeted the terrorist cell and killed a number of terrorists.” Hamas’ armed wing said that nine captives including four foreigners, were killed due to Israeli air strikes in Gaza over the past 24 hours. A statement from Al Qassam Brigades said the captives were killed “because of the Zionist bombardment on the areas they were staying in”.
Following the attacks, at least 2,215 Gazans — including 724 children — have been killed in wave after wave of Israeli airstrikes on the densely populated Gaza enclave. As violence escalates in the region, tensions spilled over to other nations in the Middle East and beyond with protests erupting in major cities in support of Palestinians and condemnation of Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings, killing civilians. Thousands protested in Beirut, Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Bahrain in support of the Palestinians.
Israel also faces a separate confrontation on its northern front with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group. The Israeli army said its forces were “responding with artillery fire towards Lebanese territory” after a blast damaged the border barrier.
A Reuters video journalist was killed in south Lebanon in an Israeli strike, while two other Reuters reporters, two from AFP, and two from Al Jazeera were injured.
The United Nations said the Israeli military’s advice to 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to immediately relocate to the south in 24 hours was “impossible.” “Forcing population transfers constitutes a crime against humanity, and collective punishment is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” a UN official said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said hospitals in Gaza were struggling to handle the sheer number of dead and injured from relentless Israeli airstrikes and shelling. The health system in Gaza was “at a breaking point,” the WHO said.
The OIC’s urgent meeting call comes on a day Saudi Arabia suspended talks on potentially normalising ties with Israel. Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel on October 7 which killed 1,300 people, sparking a retaliatory bombing campaign that has killed at least 2,215 in the Gaza Strip ahead of a potential Israeli ground invasion of the territory.
“Saudi Arabia has decided to pause discussion on possible normalisation and has informed US officials,” a source familiar with the discussions said. The Gulf kingdom, home to the holiest sites in Islam, has never recognised Israel and did not join the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords that saw its Gulf neighbours Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as well as Morocco establish formal ties with Israel.
US President Joe Biden’s administration had been pushing hard in recent months for Saudi Arabia to take the same step. Under de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, son of the ageing King Salman, Riyadh had laid out conditions for normalisation including security guarantees from Washington and help developing a civilian nuclear programme.
In the week since Hamas launched its attack on Israel, Riyadh has voiced increasing disquiet about the fate of Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where Israel has launched thousands of strikes and ordered the evacuation of the territory’s north, prompting thousands to flee.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia denounced the displacement of Palestinians within Gaza and attacks on “defenceless civilians” in its strongest language criticising Israel since the war broke out.