“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the humanitarian zone,” Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic-language spokesman, posted on social media.
As Israel’s military operation against Hamas stretches into its 10th month, Gazan civilians have been corralled into evermore cramped swaths of land, pitching tents in the rubble of cities they had already fled, or along the seashore. In some cases, families on the beach are so close to the waves that high tide swamps their tents.
Many of the residents in Khan Younis moved there from Rafah after it was targeted by Israel in May, prompting around 1 million people to flee in a matter of just weeks. Until then, Rafah had been the final refuge for civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Monday’s evacuation order came after a barrage of at least 20 rockets was launched from the Khan Younis area toward Israeli communities bordering Gaza earlier Monday, according to Israel’s military. No injuries were reported, and the IDF said it struck back against the sources of the rocket fire.
Small bands of militants are still launching rockets into Israel and targeting troops nearly nine months into the conflict, even as Israel’s military says it has destroyed most of Hamas’s battalions.
Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which aids Palestinian refugees, said the evacuation order could affect as many as a quarter-million people in Khan Younis — many of whom will struggle to evacuate amid difficult weather and humanitarian conditions. Even if they can leave, she said, it’s not clear where they can safely go.
Noting temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) “every day” in Gaza, Wateridge said: “Even the healthiest people will struggle to make a move in this heat with lack of food, with lack of water.” She added: “And then where do they go? That’s the next question.”
UNRWA described a massive movement of people on the ground, with chaos and panic spreading.
The latest evacuation order came as Israeli military operations continue apace in northern, central and southern Gaza. The IDF said Tuesday that its forces conducted strikes and raids in Rafah and in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, destroying infrastructure and killing militants. The IDF confirmed that four soldiers were killed Monday.
Caught in the middle are more than 2 million civilians. Describing scenes on the streets of Khan Younis early Thursday, Haitham al-Saqqa, a community program officer for the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said he had seen some people leaving the eastern neighborhoods without possessions and that many had slept in the street. “They were only carrying their children. Some of the women were without shoes,” he said.
“I tried to sleep at night, but I couldn’t. I was just thinking: If another evacuation order comes to us, how will we go out with the children and where will we go?”
Among those who fled Khan Younis after the evacuation order was announced Monday were patients and workers at the European Hospital, the largest operational hospital in the Gaza Strip, Yousef Aqqad, the director of the hospital, told The Washington Post.
On Tuesday, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said the evacuation order did not apply to employees and patients from the European Hospital. But the clarification appeared to have come too late.
Saleh Al-Hams, who heads the hospital’s nursing department, recounted how news of Israel’s displacement orders had flooded the phones of doctors and patients, prompting a scramble to pack up and leave. In the past, Israeli soldiers have detained medical staff who stayed behind to look after patients.
Hams said that the European Hospital canceled all scheduled surgeries to evacuate their 400 patients. “Some of the patients were dragged in hospital beds toward Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis by their families. Some of them were transported in ambulances and some of them went on foot,” he said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Israel issued evacuation orders “stretching from the southernmost regions of Rafah to the eastern parts of Khan Younis, an area that includes the European Gaza Hospital.”
“An ICRC team stayed in the hospital overnight,” the organization said in a statement Tuesday. “However, the hospital is now unable to continue functioning effectively because so many staff members have evacuated, including medical, nursing, administration and nutrition support staff.” The ICRC team and patients will be temporarily moved to the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah-Mawasi, the statement added, and staff will return to the European Hospital “once conditions allow.”
Amid the increasingly dire humanitarian situation, COGAT and the IDF announced they were working on making more water available in Khan Younis by supplying electricity to the struggling water desalination plant managed by the United Nations.
The plant “supplies drinking water to the areas of Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and al-Mawasi, where a large percentage of Gazans are currently located,” the two agencies said in a statement Tuesday.
The capacity of the plant is expected to quadruple — from 5,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day to 20,000 cubic meters — after being connected to the new power line from Israel, they said.
An Israeli official familiar with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government operations, said the fear was that any disease outbreaks “could also endanger the State of Israel and the IDF fighters in Gaza.” He added that the steps were taken in anticipation of deliberations by the International Court of Justice, which is considering a case of crimes against humanity against Israel.
The newspaper Israel Hayom reported that the order to connect the plant to an electricity supply from Israel was given by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The reports provoked anger among Israel’s far-right politicians, with Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop this foolishness.”
Here’s what else to know
Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv on Monday evening, calling for a hostage deal and an end to the war. “War isn’t a law of nature; it’s a choice. It is possible to make a different choice, and begin making peace,” said one of the main speakers, Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and best-selling author.
After the Rafah evacuations, approximately 1.8 to 1.9 million people remain in the humanitarian area between Khan Younis, Mawassi and the central camps Deir el Balah, Nuseirat and el-Bureij, according to Israeli estimates, said Col. Elad Goren, speaking at a briefing held by the Israeli military agency known as COGAT, or the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories.
Liora Argamani, whose daughter Noa Argamani was rescued by Israeli forces from Hamas captivity last month, has died, according to a statement released by Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. She was terminally ill with cancer and spent her final days with her daughter.
At least 37,925 people have been killed and 87,141 injured in Gaza since the war started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 320 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.
Lior Soroka, Alon Rom, Miriam Berger and Cate Brown contributed to this report.
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