Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabaliya in northern Gaza yesterday, killing at least 10 people queuing for food, according to Palestinian medics, and instructing people to evacuate as they pushed in against Hamas.
Jabaliya has been the focus of an Israeli offensive for around 10 days and the military has now encircled the camp and sent tanks into nearby Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun towns, with the declared aim of stamping out Hamas trying to regroup there.
Jabaliya is home to one of eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. As the operation has continued, people there have been caught between Israeli demands to move south and Hamas calls not to leave because it was too risky to do so.
“We have been hit from the air and the ground, non-stop for a week, they want us to leave, they want to punish us for refusing to leave our homes,” said Marwa, 26, who left with her family to a school in Gaza City.
People were afraid they would never be able to return if they head south, she said.
The United Nations human rights office said the Israeli military appeared to be ‘cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip’.
“The separation of North Gaza raises further concerns that Israel does not intend to allow civilians to return to their homes, and the repeated calls for all Palestinians to leave northern Gaza raise grave concerns of large-scale forced transfer of the civilian population,” it said in a statement.
Israeli officials said evacuation orders were aimed at separating Hamas fighters from civilians and denied that there was any systematic plan to clear civilians out of Jabaliya or other northern areas.
The military said it had killed the head of Hamas’ aerial unit Samer Abu Daqqa, who it said was among those responsible for the use of paragliders by Hamas gunmen during the October 7 attack on Israel.
But the operation has underlined how impossible life has become for Gaza civilians as fighting has shifted between different areas of the enclave.
Ten people were killed and 40 wounded by tank shelling in Jabaliya, including women and children, Palestinian medics said, while another eight were killed in a separate incident in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan district.
The Israeli military said the incident was under review.
The United Nations has described dire conditions affecting the civilian population remaining in Jabaliya, with more than 50,000 people displaced and water wells, bakeries, medical points and shelters shut down.