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.
