The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said that thousands of Palestinians who Israel has forced to leave Gaza City and Jabalia camp are facing extremely harsh humanitarian conditions, living in overcrowded shelters and temporary tents that lack clean water, sanitation, and even the most basic security.
The Israeli occupation army is intensifying its military operations in Gaza City as the war, now approaching its third year, continues, part of a systematic plan to force nearly one million people to flee to the south, deliberately destroying residential towers and buildings, which has destroyed more than 1,600 residential towers housing dozens of apartments and hundreds of families who have been left homeless.
UNRWA: displacement is ‘increasing’ with ‘no safe space’
The agency confirmed in a post on the “X” platform that “displacement is increasing and there is no safe place in the sector,” at a time when the Israeli army continues to carry out systematic destruction targeting residential buildings, towers, and United Nations schools.
Although its teams continue to provide some services, UNRWA stressed that the scale of the disaster exceeds the capacity of any single institution to respond, warning that the humanitarian crisis has become “enormous.”
In recent days, Israel has stepped up its campaign to destroy towers and high-rise buildings in Gaza City, doubling the number of displaced families and forcing them to flee south. Observers say the aim of this policy is to empty the northern areas of their inhabitants as part of a broader plan to displace them from the Strip.
According to the government media office, since August 11, the Israeli army has completely destroyed about 1,600 towers and residential buildings, caused severe damage to about 2,000 other towers and buildings, and destroyed 13,000 tents, resulting in the displacement of more than 100,000 people.
Countless dead
This comes in the context of the ongoing war since 7 October 2023, which Israel has now killed 64,871 martyrs and wounded 164,610 people, most of them women and children, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced persons. Famine has also caused the deaths of 422 Palestinians, including 145 children, according to official Palestinian statistics.
This situation comes on top of decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and parts of Syria and Lebanon, and its refusal to withdraw from them or allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the pre-1967 war borders.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.