North Gaza looks like “Stalingrad” thanks to being besiged by Israeli forces, top aid officials have warned, as the United Nations reports that almost no UN assistance has been allowed into the area over the past month.
Four weeks into a devastating Israeli push on Hamas positions in the north, Israeli tanks advanced further into the town of Beit Lahiya on Friday, forcing another wave of families to flee fearing they of never being able to return.
The UN’s aid coordination office, OCHA, reported that approximately 100,000 people have been displaced during this renewed offensive, though as many as 95,000 remain in the area as of Monday.
On Thursday, Stephanie Tremblay, a Spokesperon for the UN Secretary-General, warned that no UN aid was being allowed in, apart from supplies to hospitals during medical evacuation missions. This, she said, was “preventing Palestinians from accessing essentials for their survival, including water.”
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told The Independent as he was leaving the Strip, that the devastation in North Gaza was so extreme that the area resembled “a documentary on Stalingrad.”
“I cannot recall such a densely populated area subjected to such intense and indiscriminate bombardment for this long, with no escape,” he said, adding that NRC staffers were among those forcibly displaced.
“The [Israeli military] is not hiding its intent to depopulate all of northern Gaza because there are armed men shooting at them. But you cannot besiege an entire population as they are doing.”
“That is exactly what Assad was doing in besieged areas of Syria,” he continued, referring to the Syrian president’s encirclements of areas like Eastern Ghouta and Eastern Aleppo, which shocked the world just under a decade ago.
The Israeli military denies that it is forcibly transferring civilians or blocking aid and refutes recent reports in Israeli media that the military’s plan is to prevent displaced civilians from returning home to the north.
“The United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries now providing arms for this destruction were outraged by what Assad did,” Mr Egeland said.
“There is no difference in what Israel is doing. This is a suffocation or strangulation technique. Even Assad allowed convoys into besieged areas of Syria—I know because I led that work,” he added.
In a statement to The Independent, the military said it was forced to clear the northern town of Jabalia and begin clearing nearby Beit Lahiya to combat Hamas militants who it claims have regrouped there.
“To prevent harm to civilians, a structured evacuation of civilians from these areas is being conducted,” it stated. “The [Israeli military] is facilitating and easing the entry of humanitarian aid into the northern Gaza Strip, both through the Erez Crossing and by enabling aid convoys from the south to the north,” it said, adding the that included aid supplies, food boxes, and fuel.
A staff member from the global medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who was forced to flee the north after the hospital they were sheltering in was bombed, described in a voice note shared with The Independent that they saw people being targeted as they fled, with “blood and remains of young bodies” littering the streets.
Israel has unleashed its most devastating bombardment of Gaza to date in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, during which militants killed over 1,000 people and took more than 250 people hostage.
Since then, Palestinian health officials report that Israel’s strikes have killed more than 43,500 people and injured 102,000 more, the vast majority being women and children.
The soaring death toll has prompted accusations that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide, allegations that Israel vehmently denies. On Thursday, Ireland’s Dáil parliament passed a non-binding motion agreeing that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.” Michael Martin, the Irish deputy premier, added that Ireland intends to intervene in South Africa’s case against Israel for alleged genocide by the end of the year.
On Friday, the United Nations human rights office reported that nearly 70 per cent of the fatalities they have verified in Gaza were women and children and condemned what it called a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.
The 8,119 victims the UN has verified, using three sources per death, represent a much lower count than the over 43,000 reported by Palestinian health authorities for the 13-month-old war. However, the UN breakdown of victims’ age and gender supports the Palestinian assertion that women and children form a large portion of those killed in the conflict.
The youngest victim verified by UN monitors was a one-day-old boy, and the oldest was a 97-year-old woman, according to the report.
Concerns over North Gaza are deepening.
Dr Muhamad Abuafash, director of Medical Relief Centres in North Gaza, who remains in the north , told The Independent that medics cannot perform surgeries due to a lack of tools and medications, and festering wounds are now becoming infested with maggots.
“There has been no health, food, or water supply to the besieged northern Gaza area for about 33 days. Because of the shortages of supplies, we’ve noticed the appearance of worms and infections that may lead to limb amputation,” he said.
“We have a large number of martyrs and wounded in hospitals since this started on October 6. Many remain under the rubble. Transporting the injured is challenging because all ambulances operating in northern Gaza have been targeted. There are no ambulances or civil defense teams to save the wounded,” he added.
There are no ambulances or civil defense teams to save the wounded
MSF, whose own staffers were recently trapped in Jabalia, reported that the three remaining hospitals in North Gaza governorate have been targeted, with some staff arrested by Israeli forces. Between October 1 and 21, Israel only facilitated six percent of coordinated aid movements between southern and northern Gaza, according to MSF.
One MSF staff member shared in a voice note with The Independent that they initially sought shelter in the Yemeni hospital in the north but were forced to flee when it was attacked by Israeli forces.
“There were strikes that hit the hospital... Quadcopters bombed the houses around us,” they said. “While we were fleeing, we witnessed people being targeted on the street. There was blood on the street and the remains of young bodies.”
Meanwhile, in Israel, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant officially stepped down Friday in a ceremony that replaced him with former Foreign Minister Israel Katz after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Gallant earlier this week.
Gallant’s dismissal has rocked Israel, sparking mass protests across the country. Many view Gallant as the sole moderate voice in a far-right government and interpret his removal as a sign that the Netanyahu administration has lost interest in negotiating the return of hostages held in Gaza. Katz, his replacement, is a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister.
