Israeli evacuation orders leaving civilians with shrinking space to live in Gaza: UN

In a news conference, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that Israel on Friday issued “two new displacement orders covering vast areas in northern and southern Gaza.”

“Several medical facilities and storage sites containing critical supplies are located within newly designated displacement zones,” he added.

Citing the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Dujarric warned of “life-threatening consequences” for those in urgent need of care due to newly designated displacement zones.

“With this latest development, OCHA reports that more than two-thirds of the Gaza Strip is either under active displacement orders or designated as no go zones,” he continued, noting that “this leaves Palestinians with less than a third of Gaza’s area to live in, and that remaining space is fragmented.”

Dujarric further reported that it has now been 40 days since Israel imposed a full closure on cargo entry into Gaza.

“Today, six out of 10 such attempts were blocked outright,” he said, adding that since the closure by Israel “no one, including our humanitarian partners, have been permitted to bring in supplies, regardless of how critically needed those items may be.”

Warning that “everything is running extremely low,” Dujarric stated: “Bakeries have shut down, life-saving medicines have run out, and water production is drastically reduced.”

More than 50,900 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.