Tel Aviv, Israel – A senior Israeli military official said on Wednesday that authorities estimated that an imminent offensive in the Gaza Strip would displace one million Palestinians, planning a new “humanitarian area” for them.
The Israeli military has been gearing up to seize Gaza City, the Palestinian territory’s largest urban centre, with the United Nations estimating that nearly a million people live in and around the northern city.
A senior official from COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that in recent days, “we saw a movement of people from the north to the south.”
“Until now, approximately 70,000” Gazans left the north, the official said, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity.
Without giving a specific timeframe, the official said Israeli authorities expected “a million people” to flee south.
In late August, an Israeli military spokesman said the evacuation of Gaza City was “inevitable”, while the Red Cross has warned that any Israeli attempt to do so would be impossible in a safe and dignified manner.
The Israeli official said that “we want to identify a humanitarian area” which would be formally announced in the coming days.
The area would extend from a cluster of refugee camps in central Gaza to the southern area of Al-Mawasi and eastwards.
Israel had designated the coastal area of Al-Mawasi a humanitarian zone in the early days of the war, but has repeatedly struck it since.
In mid-August, UN human rights office spokesman Thameen al-Kheetan said Palestinians in Al-Mawasi had “little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents”.
A statement from COGAT last week announced a raft of preparations for “moving the population southward for their protection”, including a new water line from Egypt to Al-Mawasi, repair works on Israeli water lines, and the connection of a power line to a southern desalination plant.
COGAT also said work had begun to reopen the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis, which has been closed for several weeks following a military operation which Israel said killed Hamas’s presumed leader in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar.
Israeli moves to annex parts of West Bank a ‘red line’, says UAE
Israeli moves to annex parts of the occupied West Bank are a “red line” for the United Arab Emirates, one of the few Arab countries to recognize Israel, a senior official said on Wednesday.
Annexation in the West Bank would “severely undermine” the Abraham Accords that established ties in 2020, said Lana Nusseibeh, the foreign ministry’s assistant minister for political affairs.
Last month, Israel approved a major settlement project just east of Jerusalem that the international community has warned threatens the viability of future Palestinian statehood.
And on Wednesday, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for annexation of swathes of the West Bank, after Belgium became the latest country to announce it would recognize Palestine as a state.
“From the very beginning, we viewed the Accords as a way to enable our continued support for the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspiration for an independent state,” Nusseibeh said in a statement sent to AFP.
“The proposals to annex parts of the West Bank, reportedly under discussion in the Israeli government, is part of an effort that would, in the words of an Israeli minister, ‘bury the idea of a Palestinian state’,” Nusseibeh added.
The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco recognized Israel under the Abraham Accords during US President Donald Trump’s first term in office, bucking the Arab consensus that there should be no ties without a Palestinian state.
“Annexation in the West Bank would constitute a red line for the UAE,” Nusseibeh said.
“It would severely undermine the vision and spirit of (the) Accords, end the pursuit of regional integration and would alter the widely shared consensus on what the trajectory of this conflict should be –- two states living side by side in peace, prosperity and security.”
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law.
Critics and the international community have warned construction on the E1 site east of Jerusalem would undermine hopes for a contiguous future Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Smotrich, the far-right Israeli minister, has said the project was intended to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.
On Wednesday, he said annexing large parts of the West Bank would “take the idea of dividing our tiny land and establishing a terrorist state at its center off the agenda once and for all”.
Nusseibeh said: “We call on the Israeli government to suspend these plans.
“Extremists, of any kind, cannot be allowed to dictate the region’s trajectory.”
