Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 14th Oct. UN humanitarians voiced grave concern on Friday for all civilians in the Gaza Strip after Israel asked the entire population of Northern Gaza to leave and move to Southern Gaza due to the ongoing airstrikes and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
UN Spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric in New York on Thursday stated that UN representatives in Gaza had been “informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military” that everyone living north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within 24 hours.
Some 1.1 million people would be expected to leave northern Gaza, Mr. Dujarric said.
He added that the same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities, including schools, health centres and clinics.
Mr. Dujarric said that UN considers it “impossible” for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences and appeals for the order to be rescinded.
WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said that WHO has called for Israel to rescind the relocation order, which amounted to a “death sentence” for many.
He told journalists in line with the assessment of health authorities there, that it would be “impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients from the north of Gaza”.
UN reiterated its calls for the immediate release of hostages held in Gaza after Hamas’s deadly Saturday attack on Israel, and for the protection of civilians and urgent aid access to the sealed-off enclave.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres and his envoys continued their diplomatic efforts.
UN humanitarians urged the parties to save civilian lives.
UN relief chief Martin Griffiths, tweeted that “the noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening“, asked how such a huge number of people could possible move across a “densely populated warzone” in just 24 hours.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA warned that the relocation order “will only lead to unprecedented levels of misery and further push people in Gaza into abyss”.
He said that over 423,000 people across the enclave have already been displaced, of whom more than 270,000 have taken refuge in UNRWA shelters.
UNRWA tweeted later on Friday that Gaza was “fast becoming a hell hole and is on the brink of collapse. There is no exception, all parties must uphold the laws of war.”
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder regretted that the humanitarian situation has now reached “lethal lows”.
He highlighted that the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on the planet and people, including hundreds of thousands of children, who are finding themselves “with nowhere safe to go”.
OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke underscored the impossibility of a relocation, asked “in the middle of a war zone where people are already at the end of the rope, how is that going to happen?”
He insisted on the urgency of humanitarian access to Gaza as all supplies were rapidly depleting.
“We’re pretty much locked out,” he said.
UN launched a flash appeal for $294 million for 77 humanitarian partners to address the most urgent needs of 1.26 million people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
He said “This is a response to an escalation that has put civilians in a situation in which they should never be,” Mr. Laerke said about the appeal.
“The most urgent priority is now to de-escalate,” he added.
WHO Mr.Jašarević insisted that the health system in Gaza is at a “breaking point”.
Two major hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Indonesian Hospital and Shifa Hospital, have exceeded their combined 760-bed capacity and the hospitals in the south of Gaza were also “overflowing”.
He stressed that moving vulnerable patients such as those critically injured and adults, children and newborns depending on life support in intensive care, would be a “death sentence”.
“Asking health workers to do so is beyond cruel,” he said.
Mr. Jašarević pointed a very grim picture of the reality in Gaza’s health facilities, stated that health workers on the ground described dead bodies “piling up” as there is no more space in the morgues, and ambulances and doctors have to make a “horrific choice” as to who to save and who to leave behind.
He added that as of Thursday 34 attacks on health care in the Gaza Strip had been confirmed since the beginning of the current offensive resulting in the deaths of 11 health care workers on duty.
The Gaza Emergency Operation Centre, supported by WHO, has sustained heavy damages, he said.
He cited reports of an attack by Hamas on Ashkelon hospital in Israel over the past weekend, in which one paramedic was killed.
UN office of human rights in Geneva spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani stressed that civilians “must never be used as bargaining chips”. She called for the “immediate and unconditional” release of hostages and their humane treatment.
OHCHR urged Palestinian armed groups to “halt the use of inherently indiscriminate projectiles, which violate international humanitarian law, as well as attacks directed against civilians”.
OHCHR urged Israel to ensure full respect for international humanitarian and human rights law “in any and all military operations”.
It said that rhetoric from Israeli high-level officials “raises concerns that a message is being sent to the members of the Israeli Defense Forces that international humanitarian law has become optional rather than compulsory”.
UNICEF’s James Elder also insisted that in this dire situation, “compassion and international law must prevail”.
Ms. Shamdasani said that UN rights chief Volker Türk deplored the fact that in many countries, there has been a “proliferation of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate speech”.
She appealed to leaders to end hate speech and incitements to violence, the OHCHR spokesperson that faced with this desperate situation, the world should unite.
“This is a time for the international community to come together in solidarity, advocating for the protection of all civilians, no matter where, no matter what,” she added.
UN Security Council is to hold closed doors meeting to address the situation in Gaza.
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