Palestinians surrounded Israel expands military operation in Gaza
Israel's army is expanding its ground operations in the Gaza Strip and, according to the UN, is pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into an ever smaller area on the Mediterranean coast.
13.04.2025, 06:50
SDA
According to Israel, it wants to create a larger buffer zone along its border. In the evening, a military spokesman called on residents in the Nuseirat area in the center of Gaza to leave designated neighborhoods immediately. According to the army, Israel had previously been fired on from there. One rocket was intercepted.
Meanwhile, according to unconfirmed Arab reports, a clinic building in Gaza City in the north of the sealed-off area was hit in air strikes. Israeli troops have begun new operations in the city to destroy Islamist Hamas infrastructure and expand a "security zone" in the area, according to an army spokesman.
Dozens of terrorists had been killed. Hours earlier, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz had announced an expansion of the military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Army to conquer extensive areas
According to him, the army is to conquer extensive areas in the sealed-off coastal strip, which are to become Israeli "security zones".
The town of Rafah in the south, which has been surrounded since Saturday, is now part of such a zone, Katz wrote in a statement to the Palestinian population, according to Israeli media. Israel's military will soon extend its deployment to other parts of the Gaza Strip. The population will have to leave the combat zones, the statement continued.
After a ceasefire lasting around two months, Israel's army resumed its massive attacks in mid-March after no agreement was reached with Hamas on an extension. Since then, the UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that almost 400,000 people have been displaced within the sealed-off Gaza Strip. In total, more than two million people live in the densely populated area on the Mediterranean.
UN office warns of forced evictions
The increasingly frequent evacuation orders from Israel's army have led to Palestinians being forcibly pushed into ever smaller areas where they have little or no access to water, food and shelter, the UN Human Rights Office lamented.
The temporary evacuation of civilians in certain areas could be legal under strict conditions. "However, the nature and scope of the evacuation orders give rise to serious concern that Israel intends to permanently expel the civilian population from these areas in order to create a so-called buffer zone," said the office's spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, in Geneva on Friday.
Forced displacement violates the Geneva Conventions on the protection of the civilian population under an occupying power. It is a crime against humanity. For more than a month, Israel has also stopped allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. With this measure, which primarily affects the suffering civilian population, Israel wants to increase the pressure on Hamas to hand over the last Israeli hostages who were abducted during the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and other extremists on October 7, 2023.
Hundreds remember hostages on Passover
However, Hamas is only prepared to release the 24 hostages and hand over 35 bodies of abductees if Israel agrees to an end to the war. In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, several hundred people commemorated the fate of the hostages during Passover, one of the most important Jewish festivals.
In the open air at the so-called Seder meal, some symbolically held an empty chair at their table, while others set up pictures of the hostages. The meal commemorates the captivity of the people of Israel described in the Bible and their liberation from slavery.
Meanwhile, a Hamas delegation traveled to Cairo at the invitation of the Egyptian government. The aim was to discuss an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Hamas is therefore sticking to its condition that Israel ends the war and withdraws completely from the Gaza Strip. Israel's leadership rejects this. Their goal is the complete destruction of Hamas.
