Israel ramped up its threats against Gaza City, threatening to destroy it entirely in a “mighty hurricane” if Hamas doesn’t surrender and release all remaining hostages.
The Israeli air force has ramped up its strikes against Gaza City over the past couple of weeks, destroying many of the last remaining high-rises in the city. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the air force had destroyed 50 “terror towers” as preparation for the ground invasion of the city, warning that the worst was yet to come.
“I say to the residents of Gaza [City]: You have been warned — get out of there!” he said.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz delivered a more explicit warning, saying a “mighty hurricane” would hit Gaza City.
“This is a final warning to the murderers and rapists of Hamas in Gaza and in luxury hotels abroad: Release the hostages and lay down your weapons—or Gaza will be destroyed, and you will be annihilated,” he added in a post on X.
One of the destroyed towers on Monday was a 12-story building that was being used to house displaced Palestinian families. Israel issued a warning three hours in advance for the building’s inhabitants and those in the hundreds of tents surrounding it, Reuters reported, claiming Hamas fighters had “planted intelligence gathering means” and “have used it throughout the war to plan and advance terror attacks against IDF forces.”
Local hospitals told Al Jazeera that 32 people had been killed in Gaza City on Monday, with another 20 killed elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s concentration on destroying Gaza City’s infrastructure has utilized a variety of means, including heavy bombs and, recently, old armored vehicles laden with a large amount of explosives and detonated via remote control. The large-scale destruction is intended to deprive Hamas fighters of vantage points to monitor IDF movements, but it also worsens the deteriorating humanitarian situation.
Israel issued its first evacuation order for Gaza City on Aug. 29. The Israel Defense Forces have found that such orders are less effective nearly two years into the war, both due to their frequency and the widespread destruction of most of the Gaza Strip.
The IDF estimated last week that 200,000 of Gaza City’s roughly 1 million residents are likely to defy the evacuation order, complicating the planned armed incursion. Israel has tried to squeeze out the residents by depriving the area of humanitarian aid and destroying much of its remaining infrastructure, but many remain. It periodically drops leaflets, directing Palestinians to a narrow strip on the coast designated as a safe zone.
In the first three days after Gaza City was declared a combat zone, only about 14,840 Palestinians heeded the evacuation order, according to the joint humanitarian body Site Management Cluster. After Israel increased airstrikes, IDF officials estimated that only 70,000-80,000 Palestinians had fled as of Wednesday.
Israel blamed Hamas for preventing Palestinians from fleeing Gaza City, claiming they set up checkpoints to prevent residents from escaping. Hamas has called on residents of Gaza City to disobey the evacuation order.
Israel previously issued an evacuation order for Gaza City on Oct. 13, 2023, just a week after the war began, in preparation for its ground invasion on Oct. 27, 2023. Palestinians returned to the devastated city after the January ceasefire, but the city has come under sustained bombardment after the ceasefire broke down in March.
Israel announced on Monday that four IDF soldiers had been killed in northern Gaza. Hamas and its allies have utilized their tunnel network to continually regroup despite much of its leadership being killed.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which Hamas oversees, claims that 64,522 Palestinians have been killed in the war and another 163,096 wounded. Israel has denied and criticized these numbers, maintaining that most of those killed have been Hamas fighters or their allies. Roughly 460 IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza during combat operations, while another 1,200 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s opening on Oct. 7, 2023.
The virtual collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system and troubles with the population receiving aid have invited further criticism against Israel.
IDF EXPECTS ROUGHLY 200,000 PALESTINIANS TO DEFY GAZA CITY EVACUATION ORDER
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said last month that half a million Gaza residents were “facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution, and death,” 1.07 million were experiencing a food emergency, and the remaining 396,000 were in a food crisis, citing “reasonable evidence.” It warned that if conditions didn’t change dramatically within a month, one-third of Gaza’s population could experience famine, with most of the remainder experiencing a food emergency. Gaza’s Health Ministry claims there have been 393 deaths, including 140 children, due to starvation or malnutrition.
Israel has denied that any famine is taking place, accusing the IPC of fabricating data and changing its criteria to fabricate a narrative.