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Israel cramming 1.7m Palestinians into 10% of Gaza

August 22, 2024 at 11:15 am

A Palestinian family flee to safer areas following the Israeli army’s call for the evacuation of the Hamad area in Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip on August 20, 2024 [Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu Agency]

Israel is “deliberately strangling 1.7 million Palestinian civilians” by cramming them into a narrow area of land which is no larger than one tenth of the Gaza Strip’s overall area, the Government Media Office (GMO) warned yesterday according to the Palestinian Information Centre.

“The Israeli occupation army is deliberately strangling 1.7 million Palestinian civilians, cramming them into a narrow area that does not exceed one tenth of the total area of the Gaza Strip,” the GMO said, adding that this is part of the occupation’s crime of forced displacement Palestinian civilians.

“The IOF [occupation] pushed the displaced Gazans to forcibly move and leave their homes and residential areas under the threat of gunfire, bombing and internationally prohibited weapons, which is a crime against humanity,” the GMO said.

“This confirms, beyond any doubt, that the Israeli occupation army is deliberately strangling the Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip in a very narrow area that does not exceed a tenth of the area of the Gaza Strip,” it added.

Highlighting how Israel has shrunk the “safe zone” in Gaza since October, the office said that in November 63 per cent of the Strip was deemed “a safe humanitarian zone”, however since then this has dropped to 9.5 per cent of the enclave. Gaza City and the northern areas of the Strip are not considered “safe zones”, despite the presence of 700,000 Palestinian civilians in these areas, it explained.

READ: UN says nearly 86% of Gaza Strip under Israeli evacuation orders