TEHRAN (Iran News) – The United Nations has branded the Israeli evacuation order for more than one million Gaza residents to head to the southern Gaza Strip as “horrendous” and says the small enclave was rapidly becoming a “hellhole”.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency has hit out at Israel’s order, saying, “This will only lead to unprecedented levels of misery and further push people in Gaza into abyss,” General Philippe Lazzarini, its commissioner, said.

More than 423,000 people have already been displaced, he added.

“The scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling. Gaza is fast becoming a hellhole and is on the brink of collapse.

“There is no exception, all parties must uphold the laws of war; humanitarian assistance must be provided at all times to civilians,” Lazzarini remarked.

The UN says it is not possible for everyone in north Gaza to leave.

The Israeli occupation had ordered 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to flee from their homes in the north and move south.  The question is where to? There is no safe place in Gaza.

This is the most densely populated place on the Earth – more than 2.2 million people live in a strip of land that’s 40 kilometers long.

Gaza City in the north is a major urban city. It can’t be emptied out.

Palestinians can’t leave the Gaza Strip because the Israeli occupation regime controls almost all its exit points and they are trapped inside. It’s been that way for 17 years.

In a statement, the United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths has said that “Gaza was under intense bombardment” and “roads and homes have been reduced to rubble.”

“Forcing scared and traumatised civilians, including women and children, to move from one densely populated area to another, without even a pause in the fighting and without humanitarian support, is dangerous and outrageous,” he added.

Egypt controls the southern Rafah border crossing and it is also closed.

Egypt has rejected calls from the Israeli army for Gaza’s northern residents to flee south.

Its foreign ministry has called the measure a “grave violation” of international humanitarian law, exposing more than one million people to danger.

Earlier this week, Egyptian authorities rejected an Israeli recommendation that Palestinians fleeing its air strikes should cross the southern border into Egypt.

Israel ordered civilians to leave before it “operate[s] significantly in Gaza City” in the coming days.

Despite authorities in Gaza warning of an Israeli plot to occupy the northern part of the territory and called on residents to stay steadfast, those who have traveled south have been killed by Israeli airstrikes anyway.

Gazan authorities have said 70 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on convoys fleeing Gaza City.

The cars were struck in three places as they headed south from the city, they said.

Reflecting the cruelty of the regime, it gave a hospital in Gaza “just two hours to evacuate” on Friday, a humanitarian organization said.

MSF International said Al Awda Hospital has been told to evacuate staff and patients by the country.

“Our staff are still treating patients,” it said in a statement posted on social media.

“We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza.

“We are trying to protect our staff and patients.”

There is only one major highway bridge over a small river that Israel is ordering more than one million people to cross, which in reality is practically impossible to do.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in occupied Palestine, has described Israel’s demand that 1.2 million people in Gaza leave their homes as a “war crime”.

Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has released the following statement:
“The Israeli military demand that 1.2 million civilians in northern Gaza relocate to its south within 24 hours, absent of any guarantees of safety or return, would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer. It must be reversed.

“The collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly … is illegal under international law.

“My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire.

“The loss of civilian lives caused by deliberate or indiscriminate use of force is a war crime for which the perpetrators will have to answer. We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted.

“The United States, the UK, the European Union, and other Western and Arab Nations who have influence over the Israeli political and military leadership must demand that the illegal and impossible order to relocate is immediately rescinded.”

Oxfam International has made similar accusations against the regime.

“The world can see that this evacuation order is both utterly inhumane and impossible; the Israeli government must rescind it immediately. We implore the international community to use its utmost influence to intervene – there are hospitals full of patients, women, children and elderly people who cannot move. Even for those who could move, there is no food, no water and little shelter. This must be stopped,” the charity group said.

TURKEY

Turkey has branded Israel’s “merciless” 24-hour deadline a “grave mistake”.

The Turkish foreign ministry has said it is “completely unacceptable” for Israel to order people in the north of Gaza to move south within 24 hours.

The warning, issued by Israel as it prepares for a ground offensive, was inhumane and violated international law, Turkey’s foreign ministry said.

“Forcing the 2.5 million people of Gaza – who have been subjected to indiscriminate bombing for days and who have been deprived of electricity, water and food – to migrate in an extremely limited area is a clear violation of international law and has no place in humanity,” it said.

“We expect Israel to immediately reverse this grave mistake and urgently halt its merciless… acts against civilians in Gaza.”

Airstrikes have been carried out all over Gaza. From refugee camps in the north like Jabalyia to central Deir al Baha and south to Rafah, no part of Gaza has been spared from Israeli attack.

The regime has not provided any detail about how hundreds of thousands of traumatised Palestinians, the sick, the elderly and children are meant to travel, what road to take or where to go.

Gazans are stressed, sleep-deprived and exhausted. Many will be hungry and weak from the last eight days of a relentless bombing campaign.

Roads are bombed, whole neighborhoods wiped out, there’s a constant threat of air attack.

Warning people in some areas of the tiny besieged enclave to get out ahead of an imminent ground invasion is a common Israeli military practice in its recurrent wars on Gaza.

Sometimes the Israeli military drops leaflets in neighborhoods ahead of a bombardment – as they did on Friday. They are also known to call the owner of a house to get out before they bomb it.

None of these measures have been undertaken under the current cycle of Israeli bombardment, which has been unprecedented.

With no way to get out and nowhere to go, Israeli demands to empty north Gaza is aimed at terrifying the Palestinians.

Authorities in Gaza have said the Israeli demands are a propaganda campaign and have called on Gaza’s residents to stay put.

They say Israel wants to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip like its ethnic cleansing in 1948. This time, authorities warn, invaders also intend to eventually replace the emptied land with Israeli settlements.

Amid the international outcry, the U.S., Israel’s staunchest ally, has been under heavy pressure to react.

The White House has been forced to issue a response to the Israeli demands.

This is a “tall order”, White House national security spokesman John Kirby says.

“That is a lot of people to move in a very short period of time,” he said in an interview on MSNBC.

But even Kirby tried to somehow justify Israeli war crime by saying “we understand what they’re trying to do and why they’re trying to do this – to try to isolate the civilian population from Hamas, which is their real target.”

Critics argue the real Israeli target is the entire population of Gaza which the regime wants to cleanse ethnically.

RUSSIA

Putin says civilian losses from an Israeli ground operation would be “unacceptable”

Speaking during a visit to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Putin said, “Israel is replying on a large scale and also with quite cruel methods.”

“In my view it is unacceptable,” Putin said. “More than 2 million people live there … all of them have to suffer, including women and children. Of course, it’s hard for anyone to agree with this.”

Meanwhile, the Russian president has called on the Israeli regime not to go ahead with a ground operation in Gaza.

Putin said such an operation would result in an “absolutely unacceptable” level of civilian casualties.

The Russian president added that there had been “unacceptable” calls in the U.S. for a blockade of Gaza on a par with “the siege of Leningrad” by Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

CHINA

In other developments, a staff worker at the Israeli embassy in Beijing was stabbed in an attack on Friday.

In a video posted on social media, a man in a white top and sunglasses can be seen stabbing a man several times in the street, before walking away.

Earlier on Friday, the regime’s foreign ministry expressed “deep disappointment” with China’s lack of condemnation of Hamas’s attack on Israel.

China has historically supported the Palestinian cause, but in recent months Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for closer ties with Beijing.

Since the latest conflict broke out, China has called for a two-state solution but has resisted Western calls for Beijing to condemn Hamas.