The Russian mission in Palestine called the situation in Gaza catastrophic

​​The situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic, the residents of the enclave are in panic, independently moving from quarter to quarter of Gaza and from city to city, hiding from air raids. This is how Aliya Zaripova, press secretary of the Russian mission to the Palestinian National Autonomy, described the state of affairs in this part of Palestine on the evening of October 13 to Vedomosti. She added that the Russian diplomatic mission, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is “in touch” with the Russian consular post in Gaza.

“[Но] directly representative office help [российским гражданам в Газе] cannot, since it is physically impossible to enter the sector. Evacuation from the enclave is still being worked out. At the moment, there are more than 700 people on the lists, of which more than 400 are Russians,” Zaripova said.

Late in the evening of October 12, the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the country’s Defense Army (IDF) notified the UN of the need for a mandatory evacuation to the south of 1.1 million Palestinians from Gaza City in the north of the enclave. This is half the official population of the territory. The departure of people must occur within 24 hours. The IDF explained the evacuation of Gaza by saying that the territory is “an area where military operations are taking place” and where they will “actively continue.”

Tel Aviv continues to prepare for the ground operation in Gaza, which the country’s government approved on October 8. The Israeli military also called on UN humanitarian organizations to leave the area.

Israel has been conducting massive bombing of residential areas in the Gaza Strip for several days in response to the Hamas terrorist attack. By October 13, according to the Telegram channel of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 1,799 people were killed in the Gaza Strip and 6,388 were injured. In the sector, 447 children were killed due to Israeli air strikes, said UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder, also citing the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The UN, in turn, said on October 13 that the evacuation of such a large number of people in such a short time was “impossible” and would result in a humanitarian catastrophe.

“The UN considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” the organization’s press service quotes Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the organization’s secretary general, as saying. The UN strongly calls for the reversal of any such order if confirmed, the statement said. This, according to Dujarric, will avoid turning “what is already a tragedy into a catastrophic situation.”

The head of the UN Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, warned that the relocation order “will only lead to unprecedented levels of suffering and push people in the Gaza Strip further into the abyss.” He said more than 423,000 people in the enclave were already displaced, with more than 270,000 in UNRWA shelters.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it did not understand how such an evacuation could happen “in the middle of a war zone where people are already on the brink of death.”

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has joined the call for Israel to lift the relocation order. For many, this would be a “death sentence,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.

According to him, the health system in the Gaza Strip is at a “turning point.” Thus, two large hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip – the Indonesian Hospital and the Shifa Hospital – have already exceeded their total capacity of 760 beds, and hospitals in the south of Gaza are “overcrowded.” Six of the seven main hospitals in the Gaza Strip are only partially functioning, he added. At the same time, Jasarevic stressed that moving vulnerable patients, especially seriously injured children and newborns dependent on life support in intensive care units, would be a “death sentence” for them.

“Asking health care workers to do this is just cruel,” he said. Yasarevich added that even now doctors, due to a lack of consumables, have to choose which of the seriously wounded to provide care.

“Nothing can justify the attacks on Israel last weekend. But these attacks, in turn, cannot justify the complete destruction of Gaza,” says the press service of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Moscow. “The instructions given by the Israeli authorities to the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with a complete blockade, are incompatible with international humanitarian law,” it states.

The ICRC office believes that “given the current blockade of the Gaza Strip, it is difficult to imagine that such an evacuation will be carried out safely; in such conditions, the efforts of humanitarian organizations will simply not be enough.” After the Hamas attack, Israel closed the borders of Gaza, cutting off supplies of food, fuel, water, medicine and other vital goods.

Vedomosti asked the Russian Red Cross (a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement) to assess the humanitarian situation in the enclave and prepare possible missions to send humanitarian aid and specialists to the Gaza Strip.

China has already responded to the IDF’s order to the residents of Gaza. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Beijing opposes any actions that could harm civilians. White House spokesman John Kirby said on the evening of October 13 (Moscow time) that moving 1 million Gazans to the south in 24 hours would be “not an easy task,” although Washington has no doubt about the correctness of this decision. According to Kirby, Washington understands why the Israeli military is trying to do this: “[Чтобы] to isolate the civilian population from Hamas, which is their real goal.”

At the same time, a day earlier, Israeli radio Kan reported, citing sources, that Washington proposed evacuating the population of Gaza to Egypt. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, commenting on this information, said on the evening of October 12 that Gazans should “stay on their land” (quoted by AFP). The only conditionally operational checkpoint for exiting the enclave, Rafah, is located right on the Egyptian border, but its work is periodically interrupted by Israeli Air Force strikes.

Vedomosti sent a request to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry about the department’s position in connection with Israel’s demand for 1 million residents of Gaza to move from the northern part of the enclave to the south.

According to Nikolai Surkov, a senior researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at IMEMO RAS, the movement of more than 1 million Palestinians from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south will only worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the enclave and embitter its inhabitants against Israel. “The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places in the Middle East. The increase in population density in the south under current conditions does not bode well,” the scientist believes.

He noted that Israel appeared to be motivated by its own military and security considerations in its demand. The expert suggested that, obviously, things are heading toward “squeezing out” at least a million residents of the enclave to neighboring Egypt, which is not ready for this.

“Egypt does not have adequate infrastructure in the desert Sinai Peninsula, the country is already experiencing an economic crisis, as well as the consequences of an influx of refugees from neighboring Sudan, where there is a civil war. Therefore, Cairo in a veiled form opposes the possible reception of the Palestinians and fears such a scenario,” says Surkov.

He also noted that the displacement of such large masses of the Arab population of Palestine will only lead to a further deterioration of relations between Israel and its neighbors, and many participants in the “Abraham Accords” (the agreements signed in 2020-2021 to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab states of the region. – “Vedomosti”) can withdraw their signatures. “This brings to mind the waves of flight of millions of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, creating an additional negative background, given that two-thirds of the enclave’s residents are essentially refugees from previous conflicts with Israel,” Surkov concluded.