UNITED NATIONS: Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip’s Rafah must be protected but there should be no forced mass displacement, the United Nations said on Friday, after Israel began preparing an evacuation plan to defeat Hamas in the strip.
“We are extremely concerned about the fate of civilians in Rafah,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.
“It’s clear that people need to be protected, but we also don’t want to see any forced displacement – forced mass displacement – of people, which is by definition against their will,” Dujarric said. “We would in no way support forced displacement that is against international law.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country’s military on Friday to develop a twin plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah in southern Gaza and defeat the last Hamas fighters.
More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering in Rafah, many of them sheltered by the border fence with Egypt and living in makeshift tents.
“The unprecedented population density of Rafah makes it almost impossible to protect civilians in the event of ground attacks,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday. “The congestion in Rafah has reached the point where normal routes are blocked by tents pitched by families looking for a straight, clean place.”
The war in Hamas-controlled Gaza began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, according to Israeli records. In retaliation, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that health authorities said killed more than 27,000 Palestinians and thousands more bodies were feared lost among the ruins.
