By Frank Kamuntu
More than one million people have fled their homes in Gaza in scenes of chaos and despair as Israel bombarded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and continued amassing troops Monday in preparation for a full-blown ground invasion.
Israel declared war on the Islamist group a day after waves of its fighters broke through the heavily fortified border on October 7, shooting, stabbing and burning to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
Israel then unleashed a relentless bombing campaign of Gaza that has flattened neighborhoods and left at least 2,670 people dead in the territory, mainly civilians.
Palestinians carrying whatever belongings they can, in bags and suitcases, or packed onto three-wheeled motorbikes, battered cars, vans and even donkey carts have become a common sight.
Fleeing the bombardment and following an Israeli order to move to the south of the Gaza Strip, people have had to find shelter wherever they can, including on the streets and in UN-run schools.
“No electricity, no water, no internet. I feel like I’m losing my humanity,” said Mona Abdel Hamid, 55, who fled Gaza City to Rafah in the south of the enclave, and is having to stay with strangers.
US President Joe Biden said in an interview with the CBS news programme 60 Minutes that while invading and “taking out the extremists” was needed, any move to occupy the territory would be a “big mistake”.
A bereaved and infuriated Israel has massed forces outside the long-blockaded enclave of 2.4 million in preparation for what the army has said would be a land, air and sea attack involving a “significant ground operation”.
Hamas backer Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is also supported by Tehran, have warned that an invasion would be met with a response.
“No one can guarantee the control of the situation and the non-expansion of the conflicts” if Israel sends its soldiers into Gaza, said Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
Fire along the Israeli-Lebanese border has intensified in the last week, prompting Israel to shutter the area to civilians.
On Sunday, a rocket hit the UN peacekeeping base in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah attacks killed one person in Israel, the Israeli military said.
More than 10 people have been killed in Lebanon and at least two in Israel in the past week.
Among those killed in Lebanon was a Reuters journalist, Issam Abdallah.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due back in Israel on Monday after a crisis tour of Middle Eastern countries in a frantic attempt to avert a wider crisis in the volatile region.
But as Israel seeks to avenge the worst attack in its history, the Arab League and African Union warned the invasion could lead to “a genocide of unprecedented proportions”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned that the entire region was “on the verge of the abyss”.
Escalation risk
Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said his country had “no interest in a war in the north, we don’t want to escalate the situation”.
The United States, which has given unequivocal backing to Israel, has sent two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent.
The White House has voiced fears at the prospect of Iran becoming “directly engaged”, after it praised the Hamas attack but insisted it was not involved.
But asked in the 60 Minutes interview whether US troops might join the war, Biden said “I don’t think that’s necessary”.
“Israel has one of the finest fighting forces in the country. I guarantee we’re gonna provide them everything they need,” he said.
The United States has also appealed to China to use its influence in the region to ease tensions.
On Sunday Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Israel’s response had “gone beyond the scope of self-defence”, and demanded that it “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.
Aid agencies’ alarm
Massing thousands of troops and heavy weaponry in the desert south of the country, the Israeli military has said it is awaiting the “political” green light to go into northern Gaza.
The army has told 1.1 million Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip to head to the south of the enclave.
But Israeli air strikes were continuing in the south, including in Khan Yunis and Rafah, where one resident said a doctor’s house was targeted.
“All the family was wiped out,” said Khamis Abu Hilal.
The UN said Monday that 47 entire families, amounting to around 500 people, have been wiped out in Israel’s bombing campaign.
Foreign governments and aid agencies, including the UN and Red Cross, have repeatedly criticised Israel’s evacuation order.
The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees said Sunday that some one million Palestinians had already been displaced in the first week of the conflict — but the number was likely to be higher.
Lynn Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, decried that Israel was connecting humanitarian aid into Gaza with the release of scores of hostages seized during the Hamas attack.
“Neither should be conditional,” she insisted in a video posted by the UN.
“They have said they want to destroy Hamas, but their current trajectory is going to destroy Gaza.”
Evacuations
In Gaza, hospitals are becoming overwhelmed with increasing numbers of dead and injured.
Health officials on Sunday said some 9,600 people have been wounded.
Israeli energy minister Israel Katz on Sunday said water supplies to southern Gaza had been switched back on.
But power outages threaten to cripple life-support systems, from sea water desalination plants to food refrigeration and hospital incubators.
Even everyday functions — from going to the toilet, showering and washing clothes — are almost impossible, locals said.
Gazans are effectively trapped, with Israeli-controlled crossings closed and Egypt also having shut the Rafah border in the south.
Blinken said he was confident the crossing “will be open” for aid into the strip, amid reports that Egypt was blocking the passage of Gazans with foreign passports until relief supplies are allowed in.
He categorically rejected the idea floated of expelling Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
Hostages
The mood in Israel has swung between collective grief, fury and a strong desire to punish Hamas, which Netanyahu has likened to the Islamic State group. It is proscribed as a terrorist group by several Western governments, including the United States.
There are deep fears about the safety of 155 hostages that Hamas has taken to the Gaza Strip.
“We must bring them back home alive,” said a tearful Yrat Zailer, the aunt of children aged nine months and four years whom Hamas abducted along with their mother.
Israel said last week it had found the bodies of 1,500 Islamist militants in southern towns near the Palestinian enclave recaptured by the army.
Planeloads of Israelis have returned from around the world to join the latest of the many wars in their country’s 75-year history.
